January-February 2018/ENTREPRENEUR.COM/ 49Ht
AconversationwitharealestateagentandaGirlScout
LOS ANGELESreal estate titan
Tami Halton Pardee and 8-year-
old Oklahoma Girl Scout Blake
Cavner share their best sales tips.
Let’s start with your bona fides.
Tami, what does a good year of
real estate sales look like?
TAMI HALTON PARDEE: This year
we’ll do about $750 million.
Wow! Blake, how many boxes of
cookies do you sell each year?
BLAKE CAVNER: At least 1,600
or 1,700.
You both must rely heavily on
word-of-mouth advertising.
HALTON PARDEE: That is number
one for us. Fifty-seven percent of
our clients are return or referral.
The average is 11 percent in
real estate. It’s all about trust.
People want to buy a home
from someone who is looking
out for their best interest.
CAVNER: I sell to some of my
mom’s friends, and I set
up booths outside restaurants
and stores.
Are there particular stores
where you sell the most?
CAVNER: I sell more at Walmart.
How do you persuade people
to buy more cookies
than they planned to?
CAVNER: People always say, “I’ll
come back after I buy stuff from
the store.” So I say, “OK,” and then
I just start dancing and being
happy, and they’re like, “OK,
actually, I’ll buy more now.”
Tami, do you dance in your
properties?
HALTON PARDEE: I will if they
want me to! It’s similar, though—
you just want to relate to clients.
We want to see what excites these
people, and a lot of times we’re
not upselling them, we’re moving
them to a property that will excite
them. If they walk into a condo
and I see that they’re pregnant, I’ll
say, “I think a house with a yard
might be better.”
Blake, what’s your go-to pitch?
CAVNER: “We take cash, credit
cards, and checks.”
Credit cards! That’s high-tech!
CAVNER: We do it on people’s
phones. Like, my mom’s phone
[through the Girl Scout app].
Tami, you must leverage
tech a lot.
HALTON PARDEE: Web is how
99 percent of people are looking.
We partner with Zillow and a
lot of online real estate sites. We
have 4,000 Instagram followers,
and 20,000 people subscribe
to our newsletter. Our house
average is 67,000 views per
month. We’re in Silicon Beach,
where Snapchat and Google are,
so I use my personal Snapchat
account for business. A lot of my
clients are Snapchat employees,
so they only Snap you.
Last question: What’s your
best sales tip?
CAVNER: If someone is mean, just
say, “OK” and never care about it,
instead of saying, “That’s not nice,
you should never say that.”
HALTON PARDEE: My mom taught
me to have the best manners.
Say “please” and “thank you” with
a big smile. It’s amazing how far
you can get.
GARY BRACKETTwas great at foot-
ball in high school. Two-way star
player. Second team All-State. But
schools aren’t exactly clamoring for
a 5-foot-10, 205-pound linebacker,
so when he went to college, he did it under humbling
circumstances: as a walk-on.
He made the team at Rutgers, but it didn’t go well.
“It was kind of a lowlight,” he says of his early college
career. “I’m not thinking about the NFL. I’m just think-
ing, Let me get a scholarship to pay for my tuition.”
To hit his scaled-back goal, he worked—hard.
He was the first to the weight room and the last to
leave. He studied game film compulsively. In time,
he won the respect of his teammates. He volun-
teered for special teams, the gigs that no one else
wanted. “People used to go to the bathroom when
special teams were on,” he says, laughing. “It wasn’t
sexy.” But Brackett didn’t care. He had to take every
opportunity he could.
Still, two years passed without a scholarship.
Brackett recalls almost packing up and going home.
But then something shifted: A new coach joined
the team and said that whoever worked the hardest
would be the leader. That was Brackett. He got his
scholarship his junior year, became team captain
and MVP. “I never looked back,” he says.
He got a pretty good job afterward: star linebacker
for the Indianapolis Colts for nine years, six as a cap-
tain. He even won a Super Bowl. He retired in 2011,
earned his MBA, and now runs a successful chain of
sports bars, The Stacked Pickle, in Indianapolis. He
attributes much of his success to lessons learned
during those years toiling in obscurity. “Be realistic
about your potential,” he says. “Have the mindset
that you’re going to continue chopping wood. Good
things will happen.”
t
Accordingtoaformer
NFL linebacker
PHOTOGRAPH BY GETTY IMAGES/HANDOUT (BRACKETT)
REPORTING BY Clint Carter,
Boyd Farrow, Jason Feifer,
Joe Keohane, Chris Kornelis,
Mary Pilon, Amy Wilkinson