Hello, and welcome to the Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcast. My name is Dean Jackson, and today, I'm very excited. We have Zac Pasmanik with us.
Zac is a long-time friend and a very successful real estate broker in Atlanta, Georgia. We go back almost 22 or 23 years now, and Zac's had a lot of success running our Getting Listings program in Atlanta.
Today, we get to talk about that, and especially how to capitalize on all this equity that he’s built up, and we talked about some great strategies to go deep in a few of the segments of his market.
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep007
Dean: Zac Pamanik
Zac: Dean Jackson, how are you?
Dean: I'm so good. How are you?
Zac: Doing great. Thanks.
Dean: I am excited today.
Zac: Am too. What a way to start the New Year and now I get to chat with the great Dean Jackson.
Dean: Listen, there's so much stuff that we could talk about because we go back … I was thinking about that the other day. This is 2018 this now and I think that we go all the way back to 1995 I think.
Zac: Well, I recently cleaned out some of my oldest stuff and I found a cover of, by referral only magazine that I was on a panel with Terry Mellor and with Tom Cook and I had no clue that I knew Tom Cook that far back.
Dean: Yes. Isn't that amazing?
Zac: Yeah. I threw it away and I so regretted it when I told Tom, I threw it away because it was a great picture of us on stage and that was like, I was just getting rid of stuff as fast as I could and I saved everything.
Dean: We read your Marie Kondo book The Magic of Tidying Up and it didn't spark joy for you. That's probably what happened.
Zac: Well, tell me about that book. I have not read it yet.
Dean: Oh, that's … We've got, there's a great book called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and basically, I'll give you the short version of it. She says you start with everything is gone. You basically get, you go through your whole environment in categories starting with your clothes and you take all of the clothes in your entire environment and you pile them all in one pile, and then, you pick up each piece and you only keep the ones that spark joy and everything else is gone. You're not trying to decide what you might wear, what is useful, what still fits, what you should keep, what you might need. It's just keeping the things that spark joy.
She goes on down the list of starting with your clothes, starting with, then going to books, and then, going to things, all the things lying around your house, and then, all your papers and stuff. It's a pretty deep process, but you do feel pretty cleansed after it.
Zac: Right. Well, I will have to get that because I think that would be a great book to give that time of listing presentation.
Dean: Okay. That's exactly to get people on the right track. I love it. All right, so speaking about listing presentations, we are recording a Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcast so let's talk about that. Let's talk about the listing centric approach to building a business. I'm just so happy to actually have you on here because I know you've taken on listing approach all through your whole career, and I've been waiting for just the right words to describe what I really want to advocate and that Listing Agent Lifestyle is it. It feels just like the right words at the right time.
Zac: Well, I think if I were a listing agent I would be able to give you my Listing Agent Lifestyle but I'm really not a listing agent. I'm a team leader.
Dean: Yeah, you're a mogul. That's the next level of this.
Zac: I wouldn't go that far.
Dean: I would and what I really mean by that, what I mean by that is you're, you have a team that you're not actually doing the listing and the selling yourself, but you have a team that as an organization is doing all of these things. Maybe just for the people who don't know who you are maybe just a little bit of the history and the evolution of the Zac Pasmanick story because you've been; you've got quite a history in the real estate world here.
Zac: Well, as they say, I have been around the block more than once. I got into a real estate in 1984. I think I was 23. I went to work for a Bank for five and a half years, and then, I went to RE/MAX in 1984. Did I say I got into real estate in 1978 or … Yeah. That's when I got to real estate 1978 and '84 I went to RE/MAX. In '87, I purchased the franchise … Please, don't laugh but I purchased the franchise a few weeks before the October 1987 stock market crash and I finally unloaded the franchise, sold the franchise to another RE/MAX broker-owner in 1993 about less than 30 days before the recession ended. Went to work for seven years and I did stay on, I had a five-year non-compete clause. I stayed 13 years, and then, one day I just decided to leave for no really good reason. I wish I had not, well, glad I did, but I went out on my own for two years. Then, I went back to RE/MAX about five and a half years ago.
I thought it was greener on the other side, however, I realized that the only reason why I was unhappy is there was so much shit over there, and so, I left. That's exactly right. I'm back at RE/MAX. I have a team of 14 buyer agents, 6 of them in the last 6 months. We've been on a recruiting binge. I have two listing partners that I co-list on my properties. I do make them do most of the work and I do share that with the sellers. One of my listing partners doesn't like when I say that but I think it's pretty funny.
I'm telling the seller right up front. I'm not the contact person, and so, sometimes after the initial listing presentation, I will not ever have a conversation with the seller. Now, any issues that come up, I like solving issues. I really do. I'll be busy over the weekend so that's enough real estate for me in one day. Then, I have four admin including a sales manager who manages, or training the new buyer agents.
Then, I have also a team manager, market manager. Then, I have a couple of virtual assistants in the Philippines. Very good and I don't have to deal with their baggage.
Dean: Right.
Zac: I think I wish I just did not say that in case I shared this with my team, but I did. I was just sort of looking up what my numbers were as of Friday. This past year, we did close to 215 properties. Now, this was as of Thursday and I think we had a number of properties that closed on Friday. We did about 70 million in volume.
Dean: … very nice.
Zac: In the last 3 years we helped over 750 folks with their real estate. I would say there was a good bit of it, a good bit of it that came from what we refer to on my team is the DJ cards and so …
Dean: DJ cards.
Zac: I use to call them the ugly yellow cards but I just don't like to use negative words like that so we just call them the DJ cards.
Dean: I love it.
Zac: It's been good. It's been good. I'm very excited about moving forward in my new directions with some of your other products.
Dean: I love it. You're talking about, of course, the getting listings program to DJ, the Dean Jackson card. I love it. You guys, the funny thing is because we have always had this ongoing thing that we've always come to compromises in a lot of ways. I'll call it that, right? That there's the Dean way, and then, there's the Zac way on things, right? That we've come to the, in a lot of places compromises on them. When we haven't, and then, but that at some point, I think there was a period where you went, let's say 90% Dean way. Is that right? Has it always been sort of …?
Zac: I think that's a horrible accusation.
Dean: Not at all.
Zac: … even though I do resemble it.
Dean: You and Tom Cook are my two favorite shining examples of that. I always tell Tom, that Tom has to, he has to cook it up. You are a creative innovator and you think outside the box and the joy that you get is in applying your creativity to your real estate business and you've been doing it for 40 years now. Well, 1978 this is 2018 so that's close to 40 years as damn is to swearing.
Zac: Yeah. I'll account 38.
Dean: Okay.
Zac: But again …
Dean: When you look at that?
Zac: They're mentalist as well.
Dean: Yeah. Exactly, and that's what the thing that you do, you are in my observation of it, very, you love to like blazed a new trail and what's the new thing and what's the, you love to like hear a great idea and implement it and prove that, yeah, that did work or that you've been able to implement it, innovate on it, and then, move on to the next new thing. That would be fair to say.
Zac: Right. Well, I think change, and so, I'm all about to continue to make progress in my practice.
Dean: There's some interesting, it's a fun thing to look at. Like to really figure philosophically what your approaches, and there's the fact is you're doing the right things. You're doing things in a right way. Maybe let's talk about some of these, the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle like we talked about getting listings, we talked about multiplying your listings, we talked about getting referrals, talked about converting leads, and we talked about finding buyers.
Those are the five core systems that we look at and you talked about the DJ cards, the getting listings program and where would you say that the state of you're getting listings function in your business is right now? Would you say that that's one of your strengths or that that's something that needs some improvement?
Zac: It's definitely one of my major strength and as far as I'm concerned everything always needs some improvement.
Dean: Absolutely. That's good.
Zac: But we are in the process of building another.
Dean: Oil well. I love it. When you look at that, what's the current state right now? Describe, narrate you're getting listings systems for me. How does it work and what happens?
Zac: Okay. We've slowed down considerably on the postcards. A year before last I did over 300,000 getting listings postcards, and last year … Oh, well, last year, I mean … Okay. 2015 we get over 300,000. 2016, I cut it back, and then, last year I bet we didn't do 50 or 60,000 card and so I have very mixed emotions. I have over 2000 seller leads in my boom town account. Most of them from getting listings, the postcards, and then, some from other sources and we drip on them and we recently had a closing with a seller call. First thing he said is, "I'm sorry I never return your phone call. I'm sorry I never replied to the emails, but I did open most of them."
Then, one of the drips said something like, "Are you ready to talk?" Then, he just sent back an email, "Yes. What about this afternoon?" We whitelisted it. I don't think there was any competition. That's the one thing that I really, really love about the people who have been on the drip campaigns for a long time. They don't really shop agent. They think you're the agent.
Dean: That is exactly right.
Zac: Even though they may not ever have talked to you or reply to you and we refer to as raising their hand. They raise their hand, come talk to me. We're also …
Dean: Did you see the video that I did with the audio from the Chuck Charlton interview where we talked about the fish jumping in the boat?
Zac: I have not.
Dean: Well, Chuck's in a similar situation to you and that he's been doing, getting listings for over 10 years and he's got 1700 seller leads in his listing lead portfolio.
Zac: What did you say?
Dean: 1700 so just less than what you have. You've got 2000, he's got 1700 and for a while, he was up to sending about 250,000 postcards a year. Maybe a little bit more. Almost in that 300,000 range, 25,000 a month. He got up to 1700 seller leads and now he sends a weekly sold watch email to those, to that list with the super signature that says, "Whenever you're ready here are the three, four, whatever ways I can help you."
People just when they're ready jump in the boat. That's the way we described it. That there's a great video of somebody at night driving their boat down the canal and shining a flashlight on the water and the fish jumping out of the water into the boat. That's the way that it feels is like with these, you've stocked your pond, here you've stocked your canal with 2000 fish, 2000 people who at one point raised their hand about getting information about what their in-town condo was selling for or their whatever neighborhood that you sent out to.
Now, just driving the boat, figuratively, up and down the canal is the sending out the weekly email and when they're ready, people just jump out of the boat. Now, what I'm really interested in Zac is a couple of things, a couple of dynamics here that you basically, you sent out the 300,000, you're 25,000 cards a month basically, and you got up to 2000 and what I'm really interested in seeing is the ROI.
I know you don't have your specific numbers for the year yet but I just want to do a little check in on what level of tracking you're looking at here and knowing what this portfolio, what this asset that you have of 2000 seller leads is yielding for you.
Zac: I don't have any numbers whatsoever but I can tell you that over the last 4 years I would think that over a $100,000 of our GCI came from the postcards if not more. I think two years ago it was even more than that. Then, there's the trajectory that I can't even compute. I have no clue as to what the, how much of the buyer transactions came from the listing.
Dean: Marketing for the listings. Right. Yeah. I get it.
Zac: Because the leads come in, go out automatically, and so, that part of it is not counted. That is all tracked based on the website that they may have come off of or call-ins because I have the listing.
Dean: We did … I just wrapped up a four-year case study with Tony Kalsi.
Zac: Yeah. His call was great. It was absolutely great.
Dean: Perfect. That was … Now, here's the thing about Tony Kalsi and what I appreciate so much about this. He takes a very scientific approach to this, same way I do, and that if it's not broken he's not going to fix it kind of thing. He does, he's done it exactly with precision for four full years, from September 2013 to September 2017. We tracked every single thing about it. We tracked how many leads he got each month. We tracked how much he spent every month. We tracked every transaction, every listing that came from it.
What was really fascinating was how valuable the leads that responded in the first year were even in the fourth year. What we found that we looked at it that he mailed for the first five months without getting his first transaction. He mailed from September all the way through the fall, and then, he did his first transaction in February, but what happened was that in the, from that point on if you look at the people who responded in the first year, he did 21 or 22 transactions with people who responded in the first year of sending out the postcards even into year four because we would measure whatever we did, whenever he did a transaction we would trace it back to the month that they responded. The month that they first raised their hand.
The cumulative value of those leads over the four-year period like every single year there were people who responded, who listed their house who were, who had responded in the first year. Now, Chuck Charlton, 11 years in is still getting that same thing happened that they are getting people who responded six, seven, eight years ago that are ramping up. It's pretty amazing that way.
The thing that really puts this approach and just a way of thinking about it for you is that I look at this as a cumulative ROI rather than an expense based approach. I look at in trying to get people to take a capital investment approach to sending the postcards as opposed to an expense based approach where you're, think you're putting a limit on it. You're saying, "Well, I mailed the postcards this month. I spent …"
What I was really getting frustrated with was looking at it at the course of a year. You're saying, "Okay. I sent 300,000 postcards. I spent $150,000 on mailing postcards this year and we made this much on it." Looking at that as the ROI, looking year-over-year but what I really realized was that doesn't account for the fact that most of these people need some period of time to gestate that there's some nurturing period and that next year, you're going to run into a situation where you get just as many or nearly as many transactions as you got in the first year.
Dean: Frenchie, you remember him? He texted me last night. I posted up on my Facebook wall one of my old ads. I used to have on the front page of the real estate section in the Georgetown paper and he was cleaning up and doing stuff and he found this so he texted it to me, but we were talking about, I did an ad for him, a half-page newspaper ad offering the, how to sell your house for top dollar fast book, and he ran the ad.
We did an experiment where he ran the ad every week for a year. It was $10,000 to $200 a week to run it for, on a contract basis all through the year. He spent $10,000 doing the running the ad and he made $84,000 or something like that on the transactions that he did in that year. Then, made another 70,000 something in the second year from people who responded in the first year. The ROI just keeps growing, keeps expanding.
Zac: Well, with the new oil wells, the rigs that we're building, we can keep those records from day one.
Dean: Yeah. Let's do that.
Zac: Just getting ready to …
Dean: Yeah. That would be fantastic. What I started to say was that if you're, you look at it that if you take that approach that you're not bundling or burdening the, this month expenditure with getting an ROI this month or this quarter that you're separating the outcome so I look at it that it's almost like where people start to, what I notice as a trend, is people start to start day trading or stock picking that you're thinking, "Okay. I'm just going to mail now. I'm just going to mail every other month or I'm just going to mail on a quarterly rotation into these areas or I'm going to jump over here and start another area."
Where that really sort of ends up costing you is three, four years from now, whereas you're not constantly adding new people into the mix there.
Zac: Yes. But see, I've never really looked at the expense. I've always looked at it as an investment.
Dean: Yes. Perfect and that's great.
Zac: Yeah, the more you want to make.
Dean: That's exactly right because right now you … The thing is you have a known amount. This would be an easy way to sort of look and calculate this out retroactively is you've got 2000 who have responded and you've spent unknown amount of money. That's a knowable number if you look back at it, you could see that I've spent over the period of time. I've spent whatever amount of money that is on it. You've spent $250,000 or whatever. Excuse me.
You now can also know what the total amount of, at least listing, side commission you've made from listings that you got because of people who responded to the postcard. You start to look at that and it's, that's really where the great indication comes from. That there is nothing that you can do in the real investment world that would get you the returns that investing in listing leads would get you in your own business. It's ridiculous.
Yeah. We did with Tony the 4 year cumulative was over 11 times ROI. He spent 53,000 and made 543,000 so it was 11 times, and that's a pretty encouraging thing, and it's over that. Now, he's halfway through his fifth year and it just keeps getting better. Now …
Zac: Well, we've always felt that the majority of the calls that come in and to the 18 months on average. Yeah. Those are the one … Well, the card says if you think about they could lose 12 months and you're not sending out something that says, "List with me today."
Dean: Right. Which is why there's less competition because just like you said everybody else is saying, "Now's the time. The spring market is here. List now. Call now." All of this we're trying to convince people to list their home, and here you are just taking this nice, calm approach up on them.
Zac: Right.
Dean: Beautiful.
Zac: Well, we do … We have been over the last I think four years when we enter the lead into our system, we do name it DJ and then the year that it came in. We're looking more and more at how long does it take.
Dean: Yeah. That would be perfect to do that analysis for you just to see because if you take these, if we reconstruct these gross numbers, you've got an amazing asset here plus here's the thing that you've got right now is you've got these 2000 homes. You've got these 2000 future home sellers and where you and I talked and decided we would come and do this call was talking about now bolstering this up with a buyer program, to find the buyers for these listings.
When we look at it, you had been mailing primarily to in town condos. You've got …
Zac: We’ve got condos and neighborhoods but the condo market, we went from having no condo inventory, high-rises to probably in the top five agents now with condo, probably the top three was condo listing and high-rises and we've always, we're building with that two listings in right now and so we're, yeah. It definitely worked.
Dean: Now, here's the thing, and that's great because that same approach Tony went to number one in his entire MLS district for the … yeah, because of that, which is great. When you pick a market and you plan to dominate that's what we're talking about here. Now, where you have this great opportunity is … We'll talk about it for the condos, but this is equally applicable to the neighborhoods because, would you say that you have, of the 2000 that most of them or not most, but the largest single category of them would be the condos?
Zac: Yes.
Dean: Okay. If we look at it that right now you've got … How many of them would be condos would you say?
Zac: I would say well over a thousand.
Dean: Okay. More than half of them so you've … Maybe let's call it 1200 just for, we'll pick a number. Those are people that I look at as your secret inventory. You've got something that nobody else knows about right now. You've got those people who at one point asked about their, the values of the condos and you sent it to them, and you've been sending it to them for, you've been sending them information for a long time.
You've got equity in the relationship with those people. How many condos are there that you were mailing to?
Zac: Maybe 15,000.
Dean: Okay. You've got, and you're right at the point now, it's exactly what we talked about. You've got roughly 10% of the total pool have responded and identified themselves to you, right? 1 in 10 of these condo owners is, knows who you are and is getting valuable information because you are acting as their realtor.
Now, what the number one thing that they want is when they are going to sell, the number one thing that they want is a buyer. They want to be sold. Now, and I look at this that you've got an advantage because the first thing that people want is do I know somebody who wants to buy my condo right now? Okay. If I don't then I need to pick a real estate agent. The next layer down would be, do I know a real estate agent that I like and trust to do the job for me? If I don't then I need to find a realtor so who do I know?
Typically, that will go to they're the ones that come to top of mind. That's why people spend so much money getting top of mind awareness, right? That everybody, and you've done that in your market more than anything. A lot of people know Zac, right? A lot of people who are mega agents are very, have big brand awareness.
Then, this is where it comes down to it, is that for the people who have raised their hand and you're sending them out all this information every month, you immediately move into that position of the one who they know because you've done it in a way, you've been more frequently, consistently, valuably in contact with them over the last three or four years, it could be, than any other real estate agent, right?
You're going to get … You're going to get that call. Now, where … What it really comes down to is you may get that call, and in many cases, you may be the only one who gets the call, but you may also be one of two or three that get the call. Well, this one I know and this friend of a friend here, I'm going to see what they have to say. The real thing, it all goes back to number one again, right? Is do I have a buyer for my condo. If there's a buyer there's no need to list my house.
I always talk about it that if no matter how good your listing presentation is if I came in right behind you and I was the fourth agent that they're interviewing, and I just said, "How much would you like for your house? When would you like to move? Fine. I'll take it." If I said that, that would beat any listing presentation on the market today. Because it's the sure thing. Even if one of the agents was their mother, they would have to let their mother down because I had a buyer.
It's just business mom. It's just business. They had to fire. Really, that's the truth, right? Everything we can do to elevate …
Zac: I would tell that seller that I'll call his mom myself if he wants.
Dean: That if you, if I … Everything that we want to do is to raise to that level where we have a buyer and if we don't have the buyer that we have the closest thing to the buyer for them. That's really who they're going to pick is who they feel is going to get them to that check moment faster. They go by reputation. They go by your experience. They go by your marketing plan. They think whoever's going to expose my house more, but the thing that all of those other listing programs have Zac is that they're saying once we list your house, here's what we're going to do to expose it.
Now, what your … What you have the opportunity to do right now is to start finding and building a pool of in-town buyers.
Zac: Now, I'm excited about it.
Dean: Yeah. Now when you look at this, part of the thing that we're looking for is to think about the category rather than the individual listing, and that's where we really get a great thing. You saw the things that we've done in Cape Ann and South Beach and Paradise Valley and looking for, and the lakefront homes here in Winter Haven with the ad, if you're looking for an amazing lakefront home in Winter Haven, read this, that offering people a guide to Winter Haven lakefront house prices. That is going to be appealing to people who are buyers, who are looking for homes in that area.
Zac: Right.
Dean: When I look at it, what I look at for you, I still love print ads for category buyers. There's still, I think, a really great value there that you can have, because I look at ROI, again, right? We're still running print ads at 10, 11, 12 times ROI, and they're truly set it and forget it. Where would be a good place to run an ad like that? Where would somebody who's looking for an in-town condo.
Zac: Because Atlanta is so large the daily paper, which most people don't even get anymore is too prohibitive because I just work like a four or five square mile area. There's a lot of monthlies. There's the three monthlies, and then, there's the subscription monthlies. We're going to start with the free monthlies because their rates are a lot less than the subscription monthlies.
Dean: Yes.
Zac: We're going to probably run, we are going to run it approximately four to six publications. I'm giving this 100% to get it going in a hurry. We're rotating between three different categories. The first category is the townhome category. The Atlanta market the hottest product being built are townhouses, and they're not cheap. Now, maybe way, way out the suburbs, they are cheaper but in the areas that I work, they probably start average of 600,000, 5 to 600,000.
Now, I also know that a lot of this product is new and is even under construction. Fact that it going to take me at least a year of setting them out and continuing to increase the amount of cards that go out so we're going to do that one first. Then, we're going to do amazing condos with a view.
We're already working the condo sellers and we may cut back on the condo sellers and just work the condo buyers for a while.
Dean: Here's part of the things, this is what I would encourage you to maybe look at is to look at it and look to see how we can dominate this over the next 10 years. You've been in real estate now this is, you're not going to all of a sudden get out of real estate and be, and go into another business you're pretty much committed to the real estate business, right?
Zac: Right.
Dean: Now, the condos are not going anywhere, right?
Zac: Right.
Dean: This is the blessing of having a 40-year vista. 30, I've started in this year, 2018 will be 30 years for me. We know how fast that goes. We know that that's, it's certainly 10 years from now is going to arrive and imagine you're looking at these as individual brands, as individual little triangulations here that you're looking to set up. You've already got and invested in 1500 or 1200 in-town condos.
The real value for you is going to be in finding the buyers for those in-town condos because you got a secret inventory of them.
Zac: Let me show you one more thing, which I haven't shared yet and that is all of the condo leads that I have are getting electronic version of all my home price reports. There's a directory that has, I guess all 600 reports. At this point, it will be real soon every month, and then, the most recent two years of those sellers are getting by US mail, a summary page of the CMA.
Dean: Yes.
Zac: We’re still touching those people. We just saw the amount of replies to go down, and so, that's when I decided to do all the townhouses, and then, after that, we're going to do the … Yes, so I have to splice this together.
Dean: Oh-oh. That's okay. Just keep, pick up where you were.
Zac: Remind me where I was.
Dean: Well, you were seeing the, your focus on the condos. You were seeing the responses go down so you decided you would continue on go into the townhouses, and then, you started telling me about what you were doing with the contents.
Zac: We're going to go after a condo or amazing condos with a view.
Dean: Yes. Perfect.
Zac: Not all condos have a view but as long as they want a view will help them find one or one without.
Dean: Absolutely. There's part of the thing is you may as well start with the best version of something. That's what people are always most interested in. That's the thing that is compelling to people. You almost start with the dream come true, rather than having somebody looking for condos they're going to have to go and scour the individual listings but if you're looking for a lakefront house or a condo with a view or an oceanfront condo or an oceanfront home or a mountain view home, whatever the iconic like dream scenario was, you can run an ad that attracts the people who are looking for that.
Now, I use as an example of the, a real-world example, excuse me, of people doing that as the Molson beer where Molson would run and ad in Cosmo magazine with a model looking guy, the Cosmo dream guy, and they would just, it would just be an image ad. That would be the whole thing and it would say just address the intersection between masculinity and sensitivity. His beer Molson Canadian.
Now, the only reason that they were running that ad was so that they can run an ad in the men's magazines that said hundreds of thousands of women pre-programmed for your convenience. They would say while you're looking at this ad and they'd show the Cosmo ad and say that hundreds of thousands of women are reading a completely different ad scientifically designed to increase the attraction they feel to men who drink Molson.
Now, that really their target audience is the men who they want to drink more Molson but what the men want is they want the women and so they are doing something that they perceive as helping the men get what they really want, which is the women. Now, if we take this same approach here you really want ballistics, right? Listings are what you really want. That's your target audience.
What the listings, what the sellers really want. The sellers don't want to list their house they want a buyer so when you sell people that even if you take this same approach, you run this ad in the luxury magazine. This is why I don't even look at it that my primary market is not that the ad is going to be profitable even though it will be or that it's as effective as it could be as the buyer stuff, what I'm really looking at it is so that I can show it to a potential seller and say, "I started looking for the buyer for your house 180 days ago and here's what we do."
What every other person coming in here to talk about selling your house is going to say is, "Once we list your house here's what our marketing will do to expose your property to the world." They're going to start from a standing start what you're able to say is you've got all of these buyers now. People who responded six months ago because they wanted an in-town condo with a view and you've been sending them every week in-town condos with views and you've been offering them every week; join us for a daily tour of in-house in-town condos.
Now, what that gives you is when people want to start looking at in-town condos, you've got this secret inventory of all of them and you can send individual emails to people and say, let's say that I'm showing a condo in this particular building, and I know that you live in that building because you responded four months ago to my postcard. I can say to you, "Hey, Zac, I'm showing condos this week to a couple from Charlotte and they're looking in your building. There's only a couple for sale right now. I remember looking up your condo when I sent you the in-town condo report a few months ago and I'm not sure what your plans are, but I thought I'd check in and see if I could tell them about your condo." You may be able to match them up here.
Zac: We've been doing that with the condos now. We refer to as the market.
Dean: Yes. Exactly.
Zac: We definitely double-ended some transactions. Also, I was once in the lobby waiting for a buyer that we did the market maker and we created, got some buyer leads that my buyer agents we're showing the condo the wasn't on the market yet, and then, a buyer came along and said, "Are you a real estate agent?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Well, are you showing units here?" I said, "Well, sort of." They said, "Would you, do want to show mine?"
Due to certain circumstances was going to list it with me because he had once for a couple of years and yadda-yadda-yadda. We went up on the, we went up and did a presentation and shared with him what we were doing and he signed the listing agreement on the spot.
Dean: You see.
Zac: Yeah. He was sort of a market maker only because I was in the lobby the right place at the right time when he spotted me. I guess he could spot realtors like I can. It worked out perfectly, and sold it this time and he moved to Seattle.
Dean: Well, that's it. There's brilliance of it. Being a market maker now, you're going to increase the velocity of that and you're going to have evidence that when you show people, "Look, I'm running …" Most people are thinking, "Well, what are you going to do to advertise my property?" That would be the questions that people would have as a seller evaluating people but when you show them that you've got a full-page ad in a luxury magazine in town that they would never, you'd never do that for a single listing, but because it's a viable category, you can do it and you get the value of it for creating market-maker opportunities. That's what I really look at for this more than anything.
Now, you take … I was going to say, Zac, that the thing that often when you look at this is that I would look for you to take the Procter & Gamble approach to this, where you've got these individual brand categories that you are dominating on their own and it may be that the way that your team gets set up or the way that you manage these is that you start to maybe think about having a brand manager or that somebody's only role is to manage the in-town condo category.
Zac: Well, I have a great marketing manager on my team already so … Yes, and so, I think she's going to really like this.
Dean: Perfect. I look at it that part of the thing that I know that you and I have had discussions about is this idea of logic versus logistics. That you do things grand scale, but then, you sometimes use the argument of logistics to water down somewhat what could happen, right? Whereas if … I would just love if you would take one category and just forget the, even at logistical complexity do exactly what we talk about with this because the ROI.
Zac: Why not do three categories at the same time?
Dean: I love that. I love this townhouse thing as an emerging market because if it's new construction that's going to drive the next three to five years. Those resales are going to be at the peak because that's the way new markets evolved.
Zac: I also feel like the buyers of these townhouses are going to have something that they need to sell.
Dean: Well, that's exactly right and a lot of them if they're new construction have bought directly from the builder from a plan so they don't have existing real estate relationship and you getting in there early it's like having the beachfront property. Townhouses was my, that was my power move. I remember a new complex had come in Georgetown and there were 350 townhouses that were all built in there and I ended up because I was focused on townhouses. I ended up getting all these listings when they were just getting … Well, people were taking occupancy, when they were selling them because their situations had changed.
It was so funny because you end up in one complex, you end up having multiple signs on the same street. I remember one guy, was that one of my seller's houses standing out in the driveway talking with him and somebody else from across the street came over and my client introduced to me and he goes, "Oh, you're Dean. I didn't know whether you're a real estate agent or whether you were running for mayor."
Zac: Right about that.
Dean: That's so funny, right? I thought you were running for mayor. All the signs.
Zac: Yeah. I had someone think that I was part of the government getting out free information.
Dean: Oh, I love that. That's a beautiful thing, right?
Zac: One of my past clients, I've even helped his kids, he said, "Oh, I should have known you were up to this."
Dean: I love it.
Zac: … he had glasses on to see my name tiny on the bottom.
Dean: I love it. I love it.
Zac: Let me ask this, Dean. People that are doing the getting buyers programs, does this continue to be unbranded?
Dean: Yeah, because what is branded is that you're making what they're looking for the star of it. I told you what happened with Kenny in Cape Ann. We had this beautiful ad that it's on the member blog in GoGoAgent that the, did you see the ad? You're looking for an amazing oceanfront home, read this. It's got the iconic picture of exactly what your dream oceanfront view would be.
You imagine that he was with … I won't say the name. It's a luxury brand that was very protective of their branding and so he ran that ad and his broker was not happy because it wasn't, it had the name of the company but it wasn't like the big branding that goes with that company. That wasn't the star of the ad. It was the fact that we're legally required to put the name of the broker was the only reason the name of the broker was in there. It's not the star of the show.
His broker redid the ad to make it where the brand was the star and when, ran it, the unbranded version got 34 responses. 34 people looking for oceanfront homes and the branded version got 5. When you look at … It's just such an amazing difference when you make the thing, you make the townhouses the star or you make the in-town condos the star. It's not about the branding it's about getting the person who's looking for that to feel compelled to raise their hand.
Now, once they've raised their hand, now we do all the branding. Now, we want them to know that Zac is the one. Now, we introduce them. Then, they fall in love with Zach.
Zac: Okay. That makes a lot of sense.
Dean: Let's do this. When you put that together let's … I'll take a look at it. I'll help you with that ad, and then, we'll on one of our Thursday GoGoAgent calls we'll do that. Are you thinking that this … Can we do that this week? Is there going to be a chance that we'll be able to run that before the academy in February?
Zac: I think so because we're hoping for the new edition and sometimes this come out early.
Dean: Yeah. They will. Absolutely. Maybe they'll be hitting right as we get, yeah, right as we do it.
Zac: We could bring the publications and I could bring copy of the ads if you want me to do that.
Dean: Yeah. Certainly, do that.
Zac: Yeah. I was thinking earlier in the conversation that I really need to, since most of these are free, but they're really not luxury.
Dean: That's okay. I mean …
Zac: They’re in color but they're just not luxury like you kept saying.
Dean: Well, I look at the thing that when you look at it that where, what we've done is usually there is sort of a luxury monthly magazine like a …
Zac: Yes. A lot of magazines.
Dean: Yeah. I always look for too, first of all, are there, do you have homes from land or do you have any of the real estate specific publications?
Zac: Not in my marketplace.
Dean: No. Okay.
Zac: Someone in someone else's marketplace may not want that.
Dean: Oh, yeah. No. That's why I always say …
Zac: Yeah.
Dean: That's why I always say that in … Like here in Winter Haven, we did the lakefront homes in the Homes & Land magazines, which is I think still great especially for category things like this.
Zac: I think the price range of the people who look, who buy, or who list, who market their products in those magazines tends to be a lot lower and way, way out suburbs. I just need to gather them all up and see if that is right because it's certainly could be and that would be also another source of running the ads, but when these ads come out I'm going to get a stack of each of the publications so I can just take the whole publication, all the publications on every listing appointment.
Dean: Right. That's exactly it. That's what this is. That's what the most valuable thing is, is that you get to show people this overwhelming evidence that you, even though it's not a specific ad for their house it's as good as running a full-page ad for their house.
Zac: Sure.
Dean: Yeah.
Zac: Then I share the numbers with them.
Dean: Right. That's the point and that you're showing that you've got all of these people and that everybody, these are the first people that you'll tell, and by the way, in your weekly update to those people, you can have a PS that says, "Hey, I am going over to see about a new listing this week. It's a two-bedroom. Let me know if you'd like me to send you the details as soon as I get them."
People will respond and say, "Oh, yeah, yeah. Me … That sounds like what I'm looking for." That's what you can go into the listing appointment with.
Zac: Right.
Dean: Yes. I love it. This is great, Zac. You're going to have some, you're going to have a great year with this. I can't wait.
Zac: I have no doubt.
Dean: Awesome. Well, what's your take away, Zac?
Zac: Well, there were a couple of them. Mostly, that I'm not the star on my own postcards and that's the number one takeaway. I've never really … I've gone from being unbranded, I've gone with that big branded, definitely the unbranded has always been better, but then, I see what you're saying about then brand the responses.
Dean: Yes. You want to brand to the people you are interested. Now, it's all about that, but you're privately branding to those people. You're intimately branding. Right.
Zac: The other takeaway was to track these numbers on these three new campaigns from day one. Just track every single thing because we may see one is considerably better than the other two, at the same time we're running the ads evenly.
Dean: I love it.
Zac: Or maybe even run two ads in one application.
Dean: Yes. Well, there's the thing. One for townhouses, one for in-town condos, and whatever. It doesn't matter. It's like they're all individual brands that all have their own valid reason for existing. I love it.
Zac: I do too. I can't wait.
Dean: Zac, I had fun. This was great. I can't wait to see the results. Let's connect this week and get the ad started, and then, I will see you in a couple of months here at the GoGoAgent Academy.
Zac: I look so forward to it.
Dean: Thanks, Zac.
Zac: Bye-bye. Happy New Year.
Dean: You too. There we have it. Another great episode. If you want to continue the conversation, you can go to, gogoagent.com and you can get a 30-day free trial, truly free, no credit card required. Just come on in, say hi, and see what we're up to. You can see examples of the ads that we were talking about for triangulation, all these market-maker ads that we were talking about for South Beach and for Cape Ann and for all the luxury markets that we've been talking about. You can see what we end up coming up with for Zac. That's where we'll put everything there at gogoagent.com.
If you'd like to be a guest on the Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcast, you can go to listingagentlifestyle.com and click on the be a guest link and love to hatch some evil schemes with you for how we can apply the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle to your business just like we did with Tony Fabiano a couple of weeks ago. Everybody this is a podcast where the focus is on helping you apply the Listing Agent Lifestyle elements to your business.
I will see you over at gogoagent.com and we mentioned and talked about the GoGoAgent Academy that we're doing at the end of February in Orlando. Zac will be there. I'll be there. Tony Kalsi will be there. A lot of the people that you hear on the podcast and we get to spend two days going deep in applying all of the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle, and you get to be around people who are doing the same thing. I look forward to meeting you and seeing you at gogoagent.com. Have a great week.