Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast we're talking with Cyndee Haydon from sunny Florida, and we have a really great conversation lined up.
We’re talking about something that could have an immediate impact in your business. Your Listing Multiplier Index. The number of transactions per listing, that you end up creating with your marketing. Things like finding a buyer for that listing, and finding other buyers who are going to buy other homes from you, getting other listings in that neighborhood, and getting a referral from the seller.
There's lots of opportunity to amplify what you do and I think you're going to find it very inspirational, when we do the math on what happened for Cyndee, going from a Listing Multiplier Index of 1.2, to now being up over 3.3. That’s over three transactions per listing in an area where each commission is $15,000 or more. That's real money. That makes a big, big difference.
All the things I mention here, I'm going to post up on the GoGoAgent blog at gogoagent.com. This is going to be something that you’ll really want to come over and check out, because the resources we share, just in this episode, can make an amazing difference in your business.
I'm really looking forward to you listening to this episode.
Links:
GoGoAgent.com
Be a Guest
Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep019
Dean: Cyndee, hey there.
Cyndee: Hi, Dean.
Dean: How are you?
Cyndee: Good. That's some great warm up music.
Dean: You like that, huh.
Cyndee: I did, I did.
Dean: Well, welcome to the Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcast. All very exciting. I love getting reconnected here.
I saw you in Orlando for our GoGoAgent Academy. I'm excited to hear all the things that you have going on. Particularly one of the things I want to talk about is so many things but one of them is your listing multiplier index because I know that's something that you kind of took too early and it made some adjustments there and I've had some good results and then … the other things that you've got going on too.
Cyndee: Yes. I remember the day that you posted your email that shared about the thought that agents get so excited that 10 listings I sold them all in one day and if your average commission was $5,000 you made $50,000.
Dean: Yeah.
Cyndee: You post this question that said, "What if you actually had intention and did five transactions."
Dean: Yeah.
Cyndee: Why that really was exciting to me is because as you know Jack and I built our business. It was started in 2006 in a down market and really focused on getting buyers. We focused on a luxury market and have sales, half a million. We've done well, but like the whole purpose of this podcast at some point the listing agent lifestyle is what we all would like to get to.
Dean: Yes.
Cyndee: That was a really appealing to think okay. Fundamentally, we had fewer listings. It was harder for us really building that pipeline. My thought was when you said that how can we leverage that and do more. I really got intentional and inspired and went on to do the … women would get a listing, we would explain to someone about writing a letter from them, letting their neighbors know, having a private neighborhood open house.
Building that, what was so interesting is people would say to me, you know we always see signs go up and we never know what happened to the people. It's almost like body snatchers. Like all of a sudden.
Dean: There's goes another one, yeah.
Cyndee: Boom, they're gone, what happened. Everybody wonders. They said it's so nice to know. But the magic I found in doing that too is it gave us the ability to help the seller get comfortable and craft their story.
I remember one time I was helping someone who was a senior and she lives in a condo and the expenses were really just eating into her livability.
It was really kind of too much for her, but she lived there for like 20 years. It's kind of embarrassing. You don't want people to know that obviously.
We just talk about it and we wrote a letter that talked about how now that her grandkids were grown. She was good and she was healthy. She was going to take this time to travel and enjoy life and get some place smaller to be around but really to just see the world and this was her time, this next step.
What's funny is prior to that when I met with her she was embarrassed and be able to hope that nobody in the community would ask her why she was selling. Just have a little bit of this not your best advocate for the property.
Afterwards, she's at the mailbox telling people, "Yeah, I'm so excited. I'm going to be traveling and this and that." We were able to just really get comfortable. Her neighbors came to the open house. Everybody was like, "Wow, this is so nice to do it." I mean, it's really that was kind of one of the first pieces.
Dean: One of the things, when you look at it, when you first heard that creating an index out of that for creating your listing multiplier index. When you look back at the 10 listings previous to having this thought, what would have been your listing multiplier index then? Do you remember doing it or do you remember what it was?
Cyndee: I mean, I think I was like everybody else. It was one or a little bit over just because we are very personable so some of those people we'd help them buy something else. They're selling and they buy something else.
Dean: Yeah, right.
Cyndee: I probably it was like the average agent and a lot of people in our market you hear people go, "Oh, open houses. Why would I waste my time," or "Oh, I'll get a new agent. I'm above that.
Dean: Exactly. You said it right there. There is the word. It's above it.
Cyndee: Yeah.
Dean: That's where I always find that people, if they get into a situation where they pride themselves as being a listing agent that they take pride that they get listings and they sell them quickly, and they sell for pretty close to asking price under the market time, and they kind of have a little bit of pride around that.
I always get a little sad when I hear people say, "Yeah I don't have to do just listed cards or just sold cards," or "I don't have to put an info box file. We price them right and I get him sold in 10 days," and that move on.
That's just like … it's really interesting when you start to put an economic value on the lost opportunity because there's very few situations in real estate today where you have a competition proof opportunity that only you have.
When you have a listing you're the only one who has this assortment of opportunities available to you that nobody else has.
To capitalize on those can really make a difference. If you look at it what's … let's just do some estimated math here. If you're saying that you're in a market where your $500,000 price range kind of thing so, that puts you in the 10, 12, 13, 14, $15,000 per transaction range.
Cyndee: Right.
Dean: If we call it $15,000 that means that a listing multiplier index of one, meaning you got all kind of them sold would equate to $150,000.
When you look at it now, what that means is that you've missed out on an additional $600,000 if you had gotten all of the other opportunities that come with it.
Just in case somebody is jumping into the middle of this like not knowing what the multipliers are that the way we look at it of course is number one, that it gets sold. That's one opportunity. Number two, that you find the buyer is number two. Number three is that you find a buyer who buys another house through meeting them because of the listing that you had.
You get another listing in the neighborhood or you get a referral from the seller or and you got the referral from the seller. That's the way we want to think about it, not or, and.
Those five opportunities they're all are things that are less likely to happen serendipitously than they are to happen strategically. That's where you get these opportunities.
It's not about taking the mindset that I've got this limited, this one commission and by not proactively spending money or doing things. I'm raising my profit margin on that by not wasting money on sending postcards or doing advertising the property or doing all these things. Where really it's the investment in getting that additional $600,000 that makes it difference.
When you look at a few, let's say the average by the way when I do this with people is somewhere between 0.8 as a listing multiplier index for people or/and 1.5 is kind of the highest that I hear when I present this to people for the first time. But typically in the 1 to 1.2 range just like you were describing.
Now, when we focus on it, what's your listing multiplier index now?
Cyndee: It hovers around 3.3.
Dean: Perfect. I mean, when you put the difference on that, when you put the difference on that, the difference between 1 and 3.3 is a lot of money. It's about 30 or $40,000 each listing that …
Cyndee: Right.
Dean: That makes a big, big difference. It's totally worth it to do it. What was …?
Cyndee: Go ahead, I'm sorry.
Dean: No, you were …
Cyndee: I was just going to say the one … again you put five out there kind of as imagine if it were five and that's always sort of I kind of that as my like … I mean, but I always try to think like I don't stop at five it's like what …
Dean: No, exactly. That's like a goal but those are the five category. By the way, we had people that have had like I think Tony Kalsi has had a situation in Toronto where he's gotten sticks from one because he gets multiplier buyers. Yeah.
Cyndee: I wanted to tell you I had one that I got nine.
Dean: I love it, yeah.
Cyndee: It was a $600,000 property, so all those buyers and sellers I took four listings off it, sold it, and picked up four buyers. The ripple effect of it was huge the amount of money. I want to say it was $150,000 on that one listing.
Dean: Yeah.
Cyndee: I think for me the two things that makes me probably more in tuned of what you were saying is one, if you're somebody that has fewer listing you can't squander it, like you're looking at and I'm saying I got to make everyone count to grow that business, and grow my credibility, grow my reach in the neighborhood.
For me each one I got was like gold. You know what I'm saying? How do I just really use this and this. The second is because we've had a background in doing online marketing, investing in our business. I know that when we have buyers it takes three to five years to see that return. It's expensive upfront but it's long term. This is best now business …
Dean: Absolutely.
Cyndee: Right. When people are saying, "Man, we're in a tight market, or this or that," I'm like, "Well, this is where you're going to find everybody that's playing right now."
Dean: That's exactly right. I mean, that's why when we're looking at it that the first question that I will ask people is like when people are coming into GoGoAgent for the first time, the first kind of question that we're asking them is to assess what are the current assets, let's call it, opportunities what they have right now which is, if they got a listing then I want to start immediately with that because literally today we can get an info box and instant open house landing page, setup and start getting leads today.
It's the fastest thing. We're doing some of the calculations that the GoGoAgent Academy when you were down last month. We were kind of putting a price on what is the value of a buyer lead right now.
When people were talking about like through Zillow or through wherever they were getting leads then it can be $40, $50, $60 or more for a buyer lead.
When we look at what would be the value of a boots on the ground lead that was driving through a neighborhood, got out of the car, got the info box flier and then went to a website and left their contact information or texted their contact information that that's … there's some real economic value in that, that that's a real kind of person who's out in the market right now.
We had really great success with doing that as a gathering thing like letting people gather as leads through the week and then sending out an email and asking people if they'd like to come and look at the house this weekend. It's been such a great little system that doesn't … I mean, when you think about, it maybe it cost $5 to print up a hundred info box fliers.
Cyndee: Right.
Dean: Cheap, nothing.
Cyndee: No. Again, I think people lose sight like I said it's really stepping back and looking … when you were speaking the thing that hit me is we have a new listing and we're getting probably three leads a day on it.
Dean: Yeah.
Cyndee: Even when you just look at that and say by the time we're done we probably have a hundred people and you look at that. I never really even thought about that's really six grand on top of the commission they're going to pay me.
Dean: That's exactly right.
Cyndee: They funded by marketing.
Dean: Yes.
Cyndee: They were the feed for being able to be in front of more people looking for the properties I want to sell.
Dean: That's exactly right because they're exactly looking for that kind of property. They're already in that neighborhood and they like it enough that they've got out of the car. People say "Yeah but some of those might be neighbors." Well, absolutely they might be neighbors.
That's part of the whole thing is that isn't it great that we're getting the neighbors into this world into this feed how you actually proactively go about selling their neighbor's house, because those are where the listings are going to come from.
Cyndee: Absolutely. I think the other thing that I've gotten feedback from sellers about is right now we are in a … we're still in a pretty strong sellers' market.
Dean: Yeah.
Cyndee: One of the temptations is for a seller to feel like we didn't really earn our commission. Like wow it moved so fast. This didn't really … what I've experienced is by having this strategy upfront, by letting them know we like to use the analogy of movies which you'll love.
The reality is that you got set the stage, get everything just right, create these photos, create all the … and then you roll up the red carpet in where the reality is the difference between of being a box office hit or dud.
Dean: Yes, that's exactly right.
Cyndee: But part of it is helping them see the value of how we get everybody lined up ready to buy their ticket on the first day when it comes.
I think sometimes as agent, again because we're so busy thinking about the next deal that we forget that the seller is perceiving, "Well, you just put a sign on the ground and it's sold, not probably sold it if it were too cheap."
Really by investing that time saying, "Hey, here are all the things we're doing. We're doing this to make sure we're marketing it, to make sure we have it open, to make sure we created a lot of demand and like a box office hit we're going to have results and you should be excited about that."
Not knowing what the flip side is you're a dud and you're like begging people just like cutting the tickets like, "Okay, it's half price to come see the movie," like who wants that.
Dean: Yeah. By the way a lot of the things … one of the themes that we use in talking to sellers about that is all the stuff that we've done ahead of time like we have to say to people that … listen we started looking for the buyer for your house 180 days ago.
That's really the reality and that's where that you've got this head start that you can now introduce the property to those people and you start to show how that all plays out.
There's so much depth just to taking a really serious approach to your listing multiplier index and what we're seeing is exactly what you're talking about.
By focusing on it people are able to get up into that over three range, so that meaning that every single listing that you take is now worth three or more transactions. I'm just such a big fan of it but a lot of those things have to happen proactively.
What is your listing multiplier process look like? What kinds of things are you doing when you take a new listing right now?
Cyndee: We do work with the seller to craft the message, write a letter …
Dean: Tell their story.
Cyndee: Tell their story, right.
Dean: Yeah.
Cyndee: We have to tell their story. First, we help them decide their story and then we help them tell it because why in every buyer going to want to know that.
Dean: It's almost the first thing that people want to know, isn't it?
Cyndee: It's always the first thing and everybody is looking for an advantage. Again, it's important for us to help them see that they're on the team and this is how we're going to market it and they need to be comfortable with that story.
Dean: Right. Yeah, there's something that … before we even talk about any of the tactical things this side of it can set the tone for everything else that we do.
I mean, I've had so much success in sharing the real story, the truthful story of what's going on with somebody to sell houses quickly, because people want to share a story.
They resonate with the story. Often what happens with sellers is that they get so protective of the truth of their story that they don't want people to … they want to try to put on this facade of … you hear people … I talked about the difference between winning stories and loosing stories.
Most people get married to losing stories. People's attitude of well we don't have to sell. That's a losing story. We don't have to sell or we're not giving it away.
If they want they're going to pay our price for it, or we put a lot of money into this house and we're not going to lose money kind of thing. All of those things are masking what is the real … the transition story. That's what people are really interested in the human element of it. Because there's so much that goes into … I call it really the delicate psychology of a buyer buying a house.
There are so many backseat drivers in that decision that they want … everybody wants to look good. To say to somebody to give the buyer if the story that we're forcing them to tell is they didn't want to sell and we had to pay much higher than what it's actually worth to get it. Who's going to want to tell that story?
It's ridiculous because the stories really don't have anything to do with what the market value is or the price that people pay. But a winning story for a seller is we got a job promotion. I got to be in Atlanta at the end of the month and in order to do that, we need to sell our house to get there.
The buyer can tell the story of … yeah, the last minute they were transferred. They had to sell the house. We got and we were able to swoop in and get it.
Now, it's not that they paid what they paid. They paid market value for the property but they feel like that's a winning story.
They get to protect their ego and look good, because none of it has any effect. It's not like we're selling things that are commodity. It's not like we're selling Honda Civics like in they are 2015 Honda Civic, where there's a market that they're all in that same thing.
People have … there is some emotional involvement in what people decide to pay for something, but they don't have anything to do … that doesn't have anything to do with the story. If you can get sellers to realize that it's in your best interest to create a winning story that gives the buyer the opportunity to feel like they're winning and you're ultimately going to win because of that.
Cyndee: Absolutely.
Dean: The very first time that I did this, I'll share you the root story of how where I started using these stories in selling properties. Gerry Spence, who is an attorney, wrote a book called How to Argue and Win Every Time. This is a classic, classic book.
I mean it shaped so much of who I am as a marketer just knowing this psychology of how people think. One of the things that he says is that telling the truth is the bold thing. It's the winning move, because so often it's the authentic thing too.
When we get to masking things, people … we want to kind of control the people's story but when you're telling the real story, then people kind of rally around that in a way. I don't know how to describe why that happens but there's so many situations that it does.
One of the first two things that I did with it out of the gate, I did an ad with a developer. I had a client, I met with him on Labor Day for lunch and he was disappointed that he had these last six home sites at his development in Muskoka just outside of Toronto that hadn't sold over the summer. He had the … entire He's having a blowout sale. He was running ads with like Starburst and 30% off and all this stuff.
I was saying to him that 30% off of an arbitrary number of what it doesn't make any sense. I had him tell me what was really going on. He had an opportunity to buy another property in the city that he wanted to develop but he had to make a balloon payment in order to do it.
He had an opportunity, he had to do it by November and so that would mean he had to sell these last six lots in order to do it. I said, "Well, that's the story right there. Let's tell that story."
I ask him about the 30% off and he really was offering them for 30% below what their actual appraised value was and he hadn't have them appraised yet but he knew what the other ones were appraised for.
I had him get actual appraisals for the last six lots like current appraisals and we did an ad that had a picture of the lots and said, "I need to sell these last Muskoka home site in the next 30 days and I'm willing to sell them for 33% below their current," and we put right in there September '96 appraised value and went on tell the story of it.
"My name is Don Mailer. I'm a developer. I've been developing property in Muskoka and this property for the last 20 years and here's my dilemma." Those are the word here's my dilemma. I've got this property that I want to buy and I need to make a balloon payment on it. I need to sell these six homes to do it so I'm willing to sell them for … Tell the whole story then and we put that ad in the Toronto Sun at one time, sold all six of the lots the very next weekend by just telling the truth.
Meanwhile, he was shouting trying to make it seem like 30% off and whenever you're trying to convince somebody that you're the 30% off, they're thinking off of what, like off of the inflated arbitrary price that you put on them six months ago and what would you say it's 30% off the current appraised value that made a very different thing.
I fell in love with that format and I started using it in so many different situations. We had a townhouse that clients they found a house in the country that they really was their dream house. They have to put a conditional offer and we needed to sell their house as fast as possible so that somebody wouldn't come in and buy that house from under them.
We so we did the same thing. We put a picture. We had the ad that said, I'm going from memory now, but we need to sell our Kingsmill townhouse this weekend and we're willing to sell it for $5000 below current value and what ended up happening with that we told the whole story and it was real market value is 145 we listed it up 139 and it ended up selling for 147 that week.
Cyndee: Wow.
Dean: Right because of telling now the real story that you get people excited about going there and now they get to tell that winning story that it's these people they needed to sell it. Now, it doesn't matter because nobody in their crew, nobody in the buyer's world is going to then go do a CMA and say, "Wait a minute, they paid $2000 more than they needed to for that property."
They get to tell the story if what happened and then nobody questions it. They think, "Oh these guys were shrewd liars. They got a real opportunity."
Cyndee: With that, I see the meaning of that. It kind of goes counter to what you think that makes a lot of sense.
Dean: That's why we always try and spend some time upfront getting the narrative right. With any buyer, the first thing that they're going to ask is when they start to get really serious about it, you know that that's a kind of the prelude to buying signals is what's the story or what's the sellers story or what's going on with them because if they're not interested in the house, they don't care what the story is.
Cyndee: Right.
Dean: It's only when they're in the house and they like it then they start building the narrative in their mind. What's the situation? What's the story there? They all want to know that.
You can either let them speculate or tell them the puff story that is going to try and make the seller look good or we can craft the story and spread the story that gives the buyer the opportunity to look good. That's really something...
Cyndee: I probably should do a better job in that and that's an interesting concept.
Dean: Well, let's just look at it because this is very valuable. This is very valuable like understanding the house. If you look at it that it's basically losing stories are things like we're not giving it away. We don't have to sell. If it sells it sells. If they want it, they're going to pay our price or the one down the street sold for this or we put a lot of money into this. All those things that are kind of protecting that are puffing up.
Those are all stories that are protecting the seller's ego. Winning stories are things like, listen we found our dream house and we need to sell this one so that we can get that or we were transferred and need to be in Poughkeepsie by the end of the month or we had a great run. We raised our family here. Everybody is gone and we were sad to see it go, but it's time to move on. That's a winning story, like a story like that.
If there is any sort of necessity-type of thing to really tell that story is a win. I think it really comes down to motivation too. Like it wraps around that in a way that the seller's motivation. Like typically if the house is overpriced and expires, it's almost always the seller's married to a bad story.
Cyndee: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: Whereas if you can really understand what's really motivating them and then craft that great story, just like you said about the lady who … the embarrassment of not wanting to ... what are people going to think kind of thing.
That's really when you overcome that if you kind of lean into that let's say yes what are people going to think. I mean let's shape what you think. That is such ripple down things because now it gives the real estate agent a better story to tell their perspective buyer when they're calling them.
Cyndee: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: Not only now. Hey, there's a new listing of the market. I think you might like it but the seller, they're not going to give it away. They don't have to sell.
You're not going to go and tell that story. That's not going to motivate somebody to go but if you are able to tell the other realtors that, "I just listed this house. They were transferred. They need to be in Poughkeepsie at the end of the month." That starts this phone chain of events of them.
Now, the other realtors are calling, "Hey, there's a new one that just came on the market or it's coming on this weekend and they're transferred. They got to get out of there. We need to get over and see it." You create a sense of urgency around it now.
Cyndee: We have a company right now where the sellers have found waterfront home. They had a waterfront. We worked with lenders to creatively they could buy one without selling the other, but they don't have to carry through. They want to get one.
Dean: Right. Yeah and say that. That's a completely reasonable thing. We found this house. We had to buy it. We're paying two mortgages or we're going to be paying two mortgages if we don't sell it by this. Here's what we're willing to do kind of thing.
That's a winning story and not being afraid of it but leaning into it is the winning move. I'm going to bump up to the top like in the GoGoAgent blog in the members of blog, I've got those examples of those story ads. I'm going to bump them up to the top so you can see them because that format, that way of doing it is I think it really fit for you there.
Cyndee: Powerful.
Dean: Yeah.
Cyndee: Yeah. No, I appreciate that. That would be great.
Dean: We've used them as Facebook ads like using that format leading to your instant open house landing page. That's been a really good thing. I'll post that up too. I mean it's such a great conversation around this because there are some really great resources for you there.
Cyndee: Thanks. I think some the other things that you were asking about that we do is we do take advantage in them and work with the seller and ask for trying to get two weeks at least before a listing where to go live to promote it from a coming soon building that and being more of the market maker.
Letting people know, "Hey, this is coming," hitting our database, hitting Facebook, using that instead of how you're going to be notified first kind of thing.
We build that group of people that do want to see it or asking questions or getting that and kind of gazing in and then we also like I said we do the neighborhood open house and usually that's just that for a short time like an hour and then we back in a public open house right to and we want people to see each other.
We want them to see how we're bringing people in, how we're generating excitement. Your neighbors are like wow these people are … we give them our respect to seeing it first but we let them know it's not hanging around that somebody else is coming.
Dean: How do you invite the neighbors? What's your process for that?
Cyndee: We actually write a letter and then hand address an envelope and mail it to them and we just say in there that 25% of homes, oftentimes you know how they get a chance to help pick their next neighbors.
Dean: Yes, exactly right.
Cyndee: If they can't make it, maybe they pass it along to somebody they think would be interested.
Dean: Love it.
Cyndee: We do … Go ahead. I'm sorry.
Dean: How many neighbors do you send that to?
Cyndee: Traditionally we've done a hundred. There's some conversation that says maybe that number goes a little lower. It really depends on the neighborhood.
Dean: Right.
Cyndee: You know some neighborhoods are more homogenous and some are just like 30 people and it would be weird to pass that.
Dean: The whole thing like I look at that too so where I live in the neighborhood. I'm in a gated community of 50 homes and surrounding it, it wouldn't make sense to like if you went like were you're saying like to a hundred homes it's like a completely different neighborhood. It's all happening within the walls here, the 50 homes.
One of the things that I always look at is imagine … you're going to hear me start talking about this a lot about a strategy session with your sellers like once you get all the marketing materials and everything kind of preliminary stuff right after the listing to go in with the seller with the satellite view printout of the neighborhood and look at where you are kind of thing and have the sellers kind of like use a highlighter and kind of pinpoint the ones the neighbors that they actually know by name so that you can have a little bit of a different approach with them.
The sellers getting them involved in this process is really a … there's some things that they can do that you wouldn't otherwise have access to but if you get them kind of involved in the process, a lot of them get excited about being like on the frontline. It feels like it's like the war room kind of thing.
When you start laying out the 11 x 7 team map the satellite view of the closest 50 homes kind of thing and you start showing how this is our strategy for attracting these people.
We're going to invite them to the neighbor open house, but if you know them then we'll have a different approach to it. Then if you don't and then zoom out to this is the context of the neighborhood of who will get there and then showing them how you're going to attract all the other buyers.
You're looking at like a starting at the home itself and working your way out concentrically to defining the things. Like odds are, there's a good chance that somebody right now knows the person that's going to buy this house. Somebody has just been waiting for something to come up in Valhalla that they would love to buy. That happened a lot.
Cyndee: Right.
Dean: To be able to like facilitate that in a personal kind of way by leveraging the relationship that your seller already has with the neighbor that's so much better than just coming out of the blue as you.
Then when you start looking at the other things when you've got the … when you show them the info box flier and how we're going to put that out there and start getting everybody who's already driving around the neighborhood to come that's going to be a nice thing.
We have a digital version like a JPEG version of the info box filers that we can have the seller while we're right there at the strategy session post that up on their Facebook wall to get their friends out sharing and spreading the word as well.
You start to really think through all of the things that are going to address all of the five points that we're trying to get here. The five things we're trying to by addressing the neighbors were lining up the fact that we may get a referral from a neighbor or we may get another listing in that neighborhood right after that because of the way we approached it with the sellers and that getting the seller involved and posting it up on their Facebook wall and sending a Facebook message to the immediate neighbors that they know that live in the neighborhood to let them know or posting up as the seller on their neighborhood … What's that?
Cyndee: Next door or some of those things?
Dean: Next door for them to be able to post up and say, "Hey, we're selling our house. There's the info and our real estate agent, Cyndee," and that is much better received than you posting up in there.
Cyndee: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Dean: You start to think like how we can get the sellers involved in that plus equipping them giving them that JPEG of the info box flier to put in their phone so that whenever they hear somebody talking, they can just text them the info box flier.
How much … like you start to think about all these little things that you can layer now on multiplying your listings. There's so much richness to just this category, just this element of the listing agent lifestyle multiplying your listing.
Cyndee: I think what I've experienced is that, that you just described also helps a seller describe to their friends what you do. It makes a better in reduction because they're like ... well, they don't just put a sign on the ground. Here's what they do, they plan this, we have a strategy session, they did this, da, da, da, da.
Again, my experience has been that the more that they understand, the more they're part of the team, the less issues I have down the road with anything because again as a team we're doing this as a team and they see the values.
That's been again in a seller's market I've experienced people being very happy with the work we do which again I think sometimes we lose sight of.
We think our only job is to get it done and I forget maybe was the GoGo Academy or something where you would talk about top dollar or less time and it's like, "Oh a top dollar isn't always that matters to someone."
Dean: Right. That's exactly …
Cyndee: Less hassle it could be this and that and so sometimes as realtors and I know I can be guilty, we just hear top dollar sells fast and lowest hassle and it's like sometimes we forget to really … I know for me like it is important to listen and to be present to what their situation is the more that we're talking about their situation and how we're customizing it to their situation, why this strategy is for them.
Again it just feels differently to them. There's buying and their support just like you were saying about how the authentic story resonates to buyers. I think that authentic process resonates to a seller.
Dean: Yes.
Cyndee: Where now it's like they lean in to you because they're like they're doing everything. Then when it comes to if the price needs adjustment they don't worry that they didn't get like everything possible to kind of pass that in the market if that's the case.
Dean: Right. Yeah you're so right. I mean now it becomes that there's so much I mean you know yourself now which is like that it just gives you a much more ... you can invest more in what feels like over investing but when you look at it it's really like you know right now just that every time you take a listing it's 3.3 transactions currently and I get the sense that that's on its way up because you're continually layering and focusing on doing new things.
Even just a couple of other things that we've talked about, today just layering those in I mean who knows what's possible. We could get to where each listing is worth four transactions or more.
Cyndee: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Dean: It's worth investing. I see a time where in … because a lot of times people say, well, I'm too busy for that like all that stuff but I see ... it would be a profitable position to have a certified listing multiplier on your team.
Cyndee: Mm-hmm, absolutely.
Dean: The fact somebody's role there are listing multiplier that that's almost like it's your only … I was scared to say to people that if you could get to the point where you think like for sale by owner with a deadline that you're doing everything. What would you do if it was your house then you have to get it, you have to get it sold and maximize it kind of thing using all the things that you have at your disposal.
Cyndee: Well it's funny because just even that concept and if you have so many jobs with the listing multiplier. There's no doubt every day when you wake up with laser focus …
Dean: That's it.
Cyndee: … and it would be things like you see people get creative like maybe we handwrite a thank you to everybody that made the open house. You know what I mean?
Dean: Yeah.
Cyndee: I mean again we all have bandwidth but then you start like you said part of the perspective is go, what is one more listing worth, what is one more going to be worth. Again $10,000 to $15,000 that buys a lot of bandwidth you know in that sense.
Dean: Absolutely it does. Yeah.
Cyndee: It's a great way to think about it.
Dean: Yeah and I think that's like I often look at that I think that the 20-hour a week high level person who maybe was in the workforce and wants to come back into the workforce but doesn't want to go back to like a fulltime position, this would be the kind role that would be the perfect thing for somebody.
Like you can get a ... you get somebody who was in a $67,000 a year position that now they don't want to go back to that fulltime but you can get that level of person and affordable rate. It's higher per hour but worth it in the perspective of it.
Cyndee: Clarity, what their description is, it's just very clear, it's very measurable.
Dean: Yeah.
Cyndee: That's a really exciting thought.
Dean: Yeah.
Cyndee: For me the other value as a listing multiplier and we haven't talked about it is am I really come to appreciate in value working with five start clients.
Dean: Yes.
Cyndee: I've closed some three and four but when it goes through that, I mean as my language skills and communication expands, I have a bigger bandwidth, so I can make those work but there's no joy in it. There is a part of me that you start to feel icky, you're like, "Oh."
You sort of get into that and of course at some point when you've done X amount of work, I'm going to bring at home but it's like that I don't need that in my life.
When I'm working with five star clients, I love what I do. It gives me such joy to be helping them that that's where I want to be. What I found is like attracts like.
If you someone that's willing to take your guidance, willing to be open, willing to share and tell you what they need with selling a house and buying a house.
They typically are going to introduce you to other people that had that same value system. I mean, not always. There are occasions where I get a three or four from someone but I have learned in life that like attracts like.
Dean: Yeah.
Cyndee: To really be able to leverage people that are five star and the joy of what we do and the energy is so much greater that approach it the draining someone that's not on your truth or wanting to do your job for you and I'll take your advice and you're just like you're making it so much harder than it needs to be.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). We've kind of had a deep conversation about that one little element of it where we got talking about just the level of the neighbors. What other things do you do like just the on the checklist of things that you're doing that creates that outcome of 3.3 right now for you. You do the neighbor open house or you do in the info box and the instant open house?
Cyndee: Yeah. A lot of times, via Facebook or something, it gets in front of more people and customizing where it goes with Facebook, a building list of where you want to go in that area and stuff but some of our … we do condos and different things that don't always get assigned. That's just what it is.
Dean: Right.
Cyndee: But we do, again Facebook and the nature of it has kind of created that instant open house and that ability we leverage open houses.
We actually, we had a new listing last weekend and did both days because put us face-to-face with 20 potential people and that's like just if it sells quickly, then that's the other thing people go, "Ah," so quickly you lost to leverage to do that.
It is such a big response that I talk to Jack and I was like let's do it again tomorrow for two hours because the Easter is next weekend and that's just hard a weekend to do it there. But really leaning in to open house as being kind of where you should be working while you have it.
Even if I've got to do office work, take my laptop, I've got Wi-Fi, do my work, if somebody walks in, they'll be prepared to do the open house.
I think also having those conversations with language with the seller who do you know or just thinking about, doing what you're doing or whatever and those things bring up conversations like, "Oh, I was talking to so and so," but I would really say for me kind of the secret sauce has been open houses because what happens is when we're face to face with people, we typically win.
People feel comfortable and so conversations will start like … in Florida have that portability. If somebody says, "Well, I have a house and I'm looking at this but I don't know how the taxes work." Just different questions that come up that start conversations.
Dean: Yeah.
Cyndee: I will tell you that there's a software tool and they have an open house sheet. I actually physically printed out and that's like four questions that are super simple but I get like 98% people fill it out. We have clipboards and pens and papers. You can just ask for them to please give the seller feedback on their house.
Dean: Yeah.
Cyndee: People put their email and they put their phone number. It's like, I think it comes to again how we approach it which is we're just going to help people.
Dean: Just asking them, right.
Cyndee: Yeah. We're being compelling not convincing, right? It's just like, "Hey," it says, "Would you like to follow this home on price changes? Would you like to know of other in the neighborhood?" Are you working with a realtor?" Just the neighbor looking for information about what's going on in the neighborhood. It was just real simple. But my point is then that helps us have a list of people to follow up with.
Dean: Absolutely.
Cyndee: We're not just trying to get them to move towards us, to then move towards convincing if there's an opportunity. Like I said, because of this market, we also find that were in conversation with people that they might want to buy that house or they have one to sell or they're thinking about selling in the next … can you come do a room by room review? Some different offers layer into, well, if you like a pinpoint price analysis, we're happy to do that.
Those kinds of offers help people just have a reason to take that conversation to another level.
Dean: Yeah, absolutely.
Cyndee: Again, I think it's in that realm, all those things put together, being referable is important, how we do the job. Then, following through, doing what we say. We also help with preparation and making sure that our photography is good, that our pictures are good. We also do some Facebook Live stuff from listings and just for personal promotion.
Dean: Yeah.
Cyndee: Putting in front of promotion. Putting it in front of people and seeing the kind of job we do and being an advocate, not overly but just … I might do a quick market rapport, like a 1-minute market rapport. We just did last week, it said, this townhome just came on the market, there's 140 in the neighborhood, 56 are on the water, 14 on more townhomes but only three of them have boat docks where you can bring your boat home like this one.
It just comes up a little more like, "Hey, that's unique and it's the lowest price and it's this." Just try to, again, help be a little more about teeth versus whiskers, right? Just trying out everything that people aren't getting anywhere out, you know.
Dean: Yes. That's so true. I mean it's so … there's so much potential here. I mean we start to really just dig into this. You see how it becomes completely reasonable to think that you could get five transactions from every listing if you're really focused on it.
Cyndee: Absolutely.
Dean: Just even thinking about it from that perspective of if your only job was to be a listing multiplier that there would be so much … if you woke up in the morning, you thinking that kind of thought. What a great position it is for somebody to really have that as their mindset. It's pretty cool.
Cyndee: That's an exciting position.
Dean: Yeah.
Cyndee: I've heard of people having that open house coordinator or whatever, but again, that's such a small piece like not seeing the big picture. I love the thought of really seeing it end to end and thinking about overall how does that … again, like you said, it's a position you could certainly afford to compensate because the results are phenomenal.
Dean: Yes.
Cyndee: Any movement is real money.
Dean: Yup. Absolutely, that's exactly right. That's what we're talking about with the … I'm trying to set up things similar to that with the easy button to be able to say that people listen just at the very least, let's get your info box flier and again it's an open house and fill up the auto responder and send the just listed cards and run a micro targeted Facebook ad. Those things, my team can do all of those things, it's like zero impact on your time.
Cyndee: I'm a huge fan of that because at the end of the day, you can hire and train people with a level of confidence that I can have versus me having to train someone to get in the weeds and then they move on, it's like really, delegating that to you is amazing, yeah.
Dean: Right. That's what we've done essentially. I mean I've trained everybody. It's all there. Did you know about that? About our easy button service or?
Cyndee: I didn't know of that. I wasn't thinking about it like …
Dean: … how it works? Okay.
Cyndee: I mean, yeah, I had reached out to Diane recently to talk about some things about that because I am interested.
Dean: Well, essentially what we do with any of the programs that we do like getting listings, all the listing multipliers, finding buyers, all of the world's most interesting postcard, all of those things that we talk about, we can actually do them for you. We do it on a, like the way the easy button works is as a card that you buy a 10-hour card for $399 and we just deduct from that as work is being done on implementing stuff.
For instance, it might take an hour or an hour and a half to do all of the set up the info box flier, the instant open house, the property PDF, customize the just listed cards. All of that stuff might take 90 minutes and that's what you get billed for. You don't have the waste. There is no downtime. You're only being charged when they're actually doing stuff. That's been a big hit for us.
Cyndee: Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. I'm excited about that. That's one of the things that really help the smaller practice like us who wants to …
Dean: Yeah, especially being able to do things on demand, right? Like if you're not … if you've got a high volume listing bids that's where you're managing 10 plus listings at any given time, that it makes sense to have something in house. But if not, then it makes sense to be able to just push a button and have all of these things get deployed for you and only pay for that service as you need it.
Cyndee: Yeah. I'm not even opposed. I mean, to me, in 10 listings that's like there's something to be said for, I mean, again, I've been slow to the game but there's something to be said for, the more systematized the more time it frees up, the more money, the more peace of mind.
Dean: Yeah.
Cyndee: For me, again, I don't think my natural gift is managing people or I can tell you about that where I get my joy. It doesn't matter where I get my joy. That's not what I want to spend some of my time doing. I just want to delegate and be like it's done, boom, and I go do what I do well and enjoy.
Dean: That's my …
Cyndee: Big feat for us.
Dean: That's the listing agent lifestyle.
Cyndee: That's right.
Dean: Right? You get the listings and then go live your life and let's let other people do all of the other stuff. We don't want to get too tied down to nail this bunch of doing things that other people could do while you could be living your life, you know.
Cyndee: Absolutely, absolutely. I appreciate it. I'm excited that you guys have really made that robust and keep thinking about ways to take stuff off my plate because I need that, so thank you.
Dean: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Well, Cyndee, I have loved this conversation, it was really great. I appreciate you sharing the time with us. I'm looking forward. I want to take it on and let's get your listing multiplier up over four, let's make that push here. You would be the first … it's like the Roger Bannister. You can be the first in the four minute mile. You can be the first 4.0 listing multiplier.
Cyndee: That would be awesome. It's doable. Like I said, when you see stuff happen and you get to nine, you know that it's this time, how do we make that happen consistently, right?
Dean: Absolutely. I love it.
Cyndee: I'm game. Let's do it.
Dean: Awesome.
Cyndee: Thanks for having me Dean and thank you for the wisdom. Seriously, when you wrote that email, like I said, I hope people … You should repost that if they don't but it's just brilliant because I think that's the first start is the mindset. To just really rethink how we … I mean that's the power when you look at everything.
Dean: Yeah. I'm going to post a lot of that stuff that we talked about on the blog to bring it up for everyone. I just want to see like … what I see now with you and with Tony Kalsi, with Ron Reid, with Chuck Dalton, with the people who have focused on this listing multiplier index to see to get up over three that's a very reasonable expectation.
Cyndee: Absolutely.
Dean: Thank you for being a pioneer.
Cyndee: Thank you for giving me something to pioneer.
Dean: That's right. Okay Cyndee, I'll talk to you soon.
Cyndee: I appreciate it. Thanks. Have a great day.
Dean: Thanks, bye.
There we have it. Wow. Where do I start? There's so much depth in that episode there. That conversation that … here's what I really want for you out of this is that I want you to first of all understand, just do the math on what your current listing multiplier index is.
If out of the 10 listings that you have taken last, how many transactions did you do? Just do that math and it's probably in the 10 to 15 range if you're like most people that I present that information to. Do the math then by multiplying what that is in terms of real dollars for you.
If you're in an area where your average commission check is $5,000, that's going to be either 50 or $75,000 is what the last 10 listings have been worth to you.
What would it be if you got 3.3 times every listing that you got? Instead of out of the last the next 10 listings, getting 30 transactions times $5,000 is $150,000. This is absolutely within reach for you. We've seen this happen again and again and again.
First of all, just thinking that thought changes the way that you think about things, right? It changes the way that you approach each listing.
You're not just going to think about, let's get it on the market, let's get it sold fast for a high asking price percentage and celebrate that as a win and keep my unblemished record of 100% of our listings sell within 30 days for 99% of the asking price but losing out on all the other opportunities that come because you haven't really been thinking about it that way.
I've got all of the tools for you to do this. I've been focused on this for 30 years. It's been my primary passion is applying marketing to real estate. We've had a lot of innovations and this is one of them.
I've got all of the tools. Everything that we talked about with Cyndee today, I've got in our GoGo Agent platform for you. I want you to come and check it out. Just go to gogoagent.com. You can come in, take a 30-day trial for free, no credit card required.
You can see what we're up to. You can even just to see all the things that we're talking about that can help you multiply those listings is going to be worth it for you just to see it.
Come on over there, gogoagent.com. This is going to start a whole conversation about this within our members' area. We've got a forum with all the people who are applying all these things, focused on raising their listing multiplier index and I want you to be part of it. Know what an impact this can have for you.
My real goal would be that if you've got a listing right now or you've got more than one listing right now that you come on in and today, we can get your info box flier and your instant open house landing page and your text you get a free text number.
By the way, everything that we … that's full access for the 30 days. There's no limitations. You can use our texting system. You can use all the landing pages. You can use the auto responders. You can use all of the tools to get a result here in these 30 days.
I believe that we can make this investment for you of your 30 days a multiplier and that we can get you more business before the 30 days is even up. Even after that, it's $79 a month.
I mean it's so inexpensive that my goal here is if I can get you going for 30 days that that will be encouraging enough for you to try it for six months. That's $500, less than $500 for six months, 30 weeks.
I know that if we can get you involved for 30 weeks that we can get you multiples of your $500 investment to do that and that you will be with us for 30 years.
I've been in this for 30 years and I'm super excited more than ever about the next 30 years in real estate just because of all the capabilities that you have at your fingertips.
I'm building an amazing community of people who are building a listing-centric life. I want you to be a part of it. Come on over, gogoagent.com and I will see you over there. I'll post up all the things that we talked about in today's episode and I'll look forward to seeing you in the forum. Okay. Have a great day. Bye-bye.