Diana Sutherlin with Sutherlin Group shares her transition from a sales agent to a real estate agent. Diana discusses how being a sales agent and former actress has taught her a very importance of learning from others and not having the need to show off. Next she emphasized that an agent should know a client's personality and try to quickly assess their motivation and their needs. Last, DJ and Diana discuss the importance of listening to your client and letting them know they are both heard and seen.



If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!



Diana Sutherlin can be reached at (551) 998-8485 and [email protected].



This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.











Transcript



D.J. Paris 0:00top producers understand the importance of connecting deeply with their clients. We're going to show you how to do that today. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren't converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.



Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I'm your guide and host through the show, by the way, welcome to everyone who is new to the podcast and welcome back. Of course, to our returning fans and listeners, we love all of you. In just a moment, we're going to be speaking with Diana Sutherland total superstar, top 1%. Producer, before we get to Diana, the best way that you can help our show if we're helping you and I hope we are is by well, two ways actually telling a friend, you know if you can pause this podcast for just a second, send a link share it to to another agent in your office or somebody that you know that could really use some encouragement and some advice from a top producer this year. And the second way is by supporting our sponsors, we have the best and greatest sponsors. We love our sponsors. They are on our show because you guys purchase and use their services and products. So please check out what they're offering. We've met them we know they're awesome, and they're going to help you grow your business. Alright guys, that's enough. Let's get to the main event, my conversation with Diana Sutherlin.



Today, my guest is Diana southerly from the Sutherland group in New Jersey, specifically Jersey City, Hoboken and up the Gold Coast. And let me tell you more about Diana. Now prior to a career in real estate Diana Sutherland produced sales training programs for Fortune 500 companies for nearly two decades. Her expertise in every area of sales, along with a background in interior design led her to a career that incorporated all aspects of her unique and invaluable background culminating in a sales volume of 18 million in her first year as a real estate agent. That's an incredible number. As we all know now Diana and her team are distinguished Gold Coast agents that offer truly hands on full service sales and tailored marketing services. She's partnered with developers since 2005 and has been the top selling new construction and waterfront agent for 18 years. She gets chosen by developers. We're going to talk to her about that as well. Some of her projects have included 77 Hudson golds Cove phase one and two Trump Plaza Crescent court. 25 Senate plays Hamilton square and lofts. 222 Diana has received platinum level awards for the past 13 years from the NGR Circle of Excellence which is the New Jersey Association of Realtors, and the triple platinum award four years in a row at her previous brokerages. She closed on the highest priced waterfront condo in New York, sorry in New Jersey history in 2017 and continues to break her own records on top selling brownstones in Jersey City. Please everyone follow up Diana visitor website, a big fan of her website Sutherland group.com. That's su t h e r l i n group.com. We will have a link to that in the show notes. And please follow her group on Facebook and Instagram which is Sutherland group and we'll have a link to those as well in the show notes. Diana, welcome to the show.



Diana Sutherlin 4:51Hi, thank you for the very lovely introduction.



D.J. Paris 4:55Well I love doing introductions for people because it is always so awesome. auditioning to me about how, you know our guests have have really just accomplished so much. And oftentimes in a short amount of time, and I know you're not new to the business, but even in your first year to do 18 million is really impressive. I know it's not your first year in the business any longer. However, you have only gone up from there. So I am super excited to hear about how you've done that. And, and also, you know, what your overall philosophies are working with clients, I know you have certain thoughts of how you have grown your business that we're going to explore. But the first thing I always like to know is how you got into real estate, you are a sales trainer prior to that, but but walk us through how you how you move from, from being sales, sales training program, sort of person to working in sales directly.



Diana Sutherlin 5:49Okay. I, I ran a company for almost 20 years, and I trained fortune 500 companies in sales, all aspects, reading body language, overcoming objections, I loved I loved working with people, I loved drawing people out, I used to have to interview CEOs and high level executives on camera, and they'd be so nervous. And I just took pride in the fact that I would put them at ease, I'd ask the right questions. I just loved people skills. And, and I did that for a long time. Sometimes we like to reinvent ourselves, I went back to get my interior design degree, because I had always been buying properties, fixing them up selling them, and so forth. And I love design. So I was in just about ready to get my degree in interior design. And my girlfriend said to me, and I still had my other company, I'm very much a workaholic. So my girlfriend said to me, why don't you get your real estate license? And I'm like, Oh, maybe I could do that part time. And she goes, Diane, I don't know what you do part time you do nothing part time. I'm like, No, I get some I still had my other company open. And I was doing programs for very big corporations. And I thought, well, I'll just do this, you know, on the side. And I literally I sold over 18 million in my first year I was I won Rookie of the Year for the northern region. I was a New Jersey, it was just crazy. And, and I thought why didn't I was sort of taking all my skills, working with people, my sales skills, and my design skills. And I thought I should have been doing this years ago, years ago. So I just fell in love with it. And and I worked my butt off. I mean, I took you know, I always tell the story, but it's really the truth. I worked I took two days off my first year, Mother's Day and Christmas. And that's it. And people laugh about it all the time. I mean, it really was two days. But um, you know, it's it's probably where I should have been all along. But all of those other things sort of led me to this.



D.J. Paris 8:24Yeah, well, you clearly had the skills that you were training to different sales organizations to allow you to really flourish in so quickly. And on top of having not just a job but running a company, and then doing 18 million, and I suspect it wasn't one transaction for 18 million, probably was a lot of transaction



Diana Sutherlin 8:47transactions. And I didn't even realize what I was doing. I was just sort of doing it, doing it doing it. And I used to do in my first year, I would get out there I did like three open houses a week, every single week. I was like oh, and I and I loved it. And I was learning it. And I was realizing that I was taking all these things that I had learned about communication skills, some of which actually came from a former life to a different. I started many, many years ago, in Manhattan, I was living there and I was an actress. And I had I still attribute some of the most important tips that I learned in every business that I've been in to what I learned in the acting world. Not that you're acting or putting on a show, but that I actually I studied an acting technique that is very famous in New York, but it forces you to focus on the other person To listen to the other person to react to them hyperfocused and, and I took that into some of the sales training that I did. So many people are so self conscious, they want so badly to impress and show that I'm the market expert, or I'm this or that they're not really paying attention to the person sitting in front of them. And you know, so that was a really big, big, big part of what I think that fed into my skills, almost more than anything else.



D.J. Paris 10:41It's interesting. You meant it's interesting that you mentioned acting, because you know, and I don't know, you know, where you studied, I was trying to think what are the, you know, I do know,

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