Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast we're talking with Joe Neilson from Las Vegas. Joe is a brand new real estate agent, he's just getting started and we had a really great conversation about how to lay the foundation for a listing-centric business, that's going to allow you to live this Listing Agent Lifestyle.
We talked about all the elements involved here.
We talked about getting listings and how he has everything established already. He's done his first two mailings into the area he's chosen to get listings in. We then talked about laying the foundation for his referral business, and really establishing himself with the top 100 - 150 people who know him, like him and trust him already.
This is really valuable conversation if you're just getting started in real estate, or if you've been a realtor for some time, but you're just getting started with this listing agent lifestyle approach.
We had a really great conversation and you're going to get a lot from it.
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep025
Dean: Joe Nielsen.
Joe: Hey, hey, good morning, Dean.
Dean: How are you?
Joe: I'm real good, thanks, how you doing?
Dean: I'm good, it's my birthday today.
Joe: Nice. Happy birthday.
Dean: There we go. Thank you, sir. I'm excited to talk to you, I love hatching some evil schemes here and seeing what's up.
Joe: Heck yeah, me too.
Dean: What's the Joe Nielsen story, here?
Joe: I'm a new realtor.
Dean: Okay, I love it.
Joe: Yeah, just kind of still getting my feet wet, I suppose. I left a corporate job that was killing me slowly about six months ago. Well, let me see, October 2017, and I joined a Keller Williams team while I studied, and that was not much better, unfortunately. Didn't work out very well. I left before I even got my license, but, I joined another brokerage, and it's been terrific since then. I started listening to Listing Agent Lifestyle, among other info sources, and your material just made ... Speaking my language, you know?
I started putting it into play...
Dean: I love it.
Joe: Maybe about February, started really trying to get it going, and sort of unsuccessfully, by the way, I didn't really figure out how to do anything until I met a magician in Florida named Diane, who was able to help.
Dean: Right.
Joe: Yeah.
Dean: Yes, our go-go girl. That's great, that's funny.
Joe: Yeah, I really want to get ... I got a couple programs running now, and I feel like I'm getting pretty good responses, and I want to do more.
Dean: Awesome, so, this is a great thing, you know? Like, starting out your ... You know, laying the foundation here, right? If we're going to take this approach of building a listing-centric business, that really has to be the foundation of it, right? That we start to think, "What could we do to get some listings for you?" Have you started getting listings program yet?
Joe: Yeah, so, the first mailer went out in April, and then the May mailing just went out seven days ago.
Dean: Okay, perfect, and so tell me about the area that you chose. What are you looking for there?
Joe: The area I focus on is about 3500 houses in an area called the Lakes in Las Vegas, Nevada. Which is where I live, I live in the area, and it's cool. It actually fits perfectly into a lot of the things. Like, you always refer to lakeside homes and stuff like that.
Dean: Yes, exactly, right.
Joe: It automatically speaks to me in that way, because there is sort of a manmade lake here, that was made in the 1980s, before all of the water restrictions here in the desert. You know, there are lakefront homes. They range from ... There is actually rental apartments here, condos, houses, single-family houses between about mid-200s, up to ... There is a listing now for 5.3 that's right on the water.
There is a country club adjacent to us here that I also focus on, and so there is quite a mix of houses. The bulk of them are, probably, average, about 350 to 450, right in that range.
Dean: Okay, great. How many are you mailing to right now in there, and how did you choose the ones that you're mailing?
Joe: I picked an area that was right, just central, right in the middle of it all. It's about 550 houses. There's an elementary school there, and it's adjacent to the water as well. My plan is to just sort of grow out from there.
Dean: Yes, you're doing exactly the right thing. So many things, it's good to have these big aspirations, you know? Like to have high vision for what you want to do, but, when you're just getting started, you know, it can be intimidating, right? To try and think, "Okay, I want to try and take all of this on, especially with the expenses and the things of getting your business started."
The 500 homes, that are what I always recommend for people to start with what you can afford to invest, and really looking at it as a capital investment, rather than an expense, you know? When we look at it, the best mindset that I try and share with people to think about these is if you're sending 550 homes, maybe you're spending, you know, six or $700 to mail those, or less than that. How much does it cost you to mail the 550, it's about 350 or $400, right?
Joe: Yeah, I think it's in that range, 350, 400.
Dean: Yeah, so, you look at that, what I get people to imagine is that you're investing that $400 into a CD that's going to mature in one year, right? Like, to think of it that way. That you're doing that. Because the leads that you generate, the people who respond are starting this gestation period. You know, that not everybody is going to list their house right now.
The long-term, there, you've got an advantage over everybody else who doesn't know what's going on, you know, who doesn't know who is about to sell their house in the Lakes, there. How many responses have you had so far?
Joe: I have, I think, actual form fill-outs on the website, I think there are 11.
Dean: Okay, yeah, so, what we know so far, and that's on track, that what we have right now is you have 11 people who have raised their hand, and are in the process of getting ready to sell their house, right? The reason that the approach that we take with this works so well is because we're not trying to convince them to do something right now. You know, where you come into it, where most realtors most of the time, what we're taught is that you've got to get your name out there, right?
Like, we need to brand you in this area so that everybody knows who you are, right? And that that's the first kind of instinct that people have when they do advertising or promotion or anything like that, is that they're going to ... It's almost like they have a spotlight, and they're choosing to shine the spotlight on them, right?
It would be things like, you know, Joe Nielsen gets the job done, or call Joe and start packing, or you know, Joe Nielsen, the right realtor, you know? Whatever it is, trying to brand yourself, and get your name known in the Lakes, so that people will choose you, right? That's the mindset of it.
Now, the challenge with that is that there's no reason for anybody to call you, right? It doesn't get you any further ahead. If we really begin with the end in mind here, that we're looking at the ultimate thing that we could have, is that we want to know who are the people who are going to sell their house in the Lakes. What's the turnover rate in there?
Joe: About 7%, most of it. The higher-end stuff, it's much lower.
Dean: Okay, so, when we look at this, that means that 7% of the 550, we're looking at maybe 40 homes that are going to sell in the next 12 months. What we're looking for, and that's a perfect example, because we used to do these, you know, big real estate seminars every month, and we'd have six or 800 people in an event, so, you would imagine that size of a room with, let's call it 550 people, and, I would say to people, "I would give you a choice. First of all, let's imagine that this room, imagine a room with 550 people in it, is a 550-home subdivision, and everybody in here owns one of these 550 homes."
Now, the choice that I would give people is I would say, "I am going to give you a choice of coming up on stage, and I'll give you one minute to share with everybody who you are, and get your name out there. I'll give everybody one of your business cards, and I'll help you get your name out there so everybody will know who you are." Then, I offer another choice. I'd say, "Or, you can sit in your seat, anonymously, and I will have somebody bring you an envelope, and in the envelope will be the name and the contact information for the 40 people in this room who are going to sell their house in the next 12 months." What would be more valuable?
Joe: I'll take the envelope.
Dean: You'd take the envelope, I know you would. That's the truth, everybody took the envelope, right? If that's the thing, because we know that 510 of these people are not going to sell their house this year. Trying to convince them to sell their house by sending out things like, "It's a seller's market, prices are up, there has never been a better time to sell, listings are low." You know, all these things like, "Get it sold now before the market crashes." Or whatever, all these things of trying to convince somebody to sell their house, that's not what is reality, right?" People are going to sell for their own reasons. The way that we look at this is that if somebody is going to sell their house, they're not impulsively making that decision. Nobody wakes up and says, "You know what? That's it, we're selling the house. Call a realtor, get a sign in here by the end of the day."
Joe: Right.
Dean: Look at this post card, look at this post card. That's it, honey, we're selling our house. That's not what happens, right? We want to go to the genesis thought of what's going to trigger the chain of events that leads to somebody selling their house. If you think about it, the thing that anybody would want to know, if they're thinking about making any kind of a move, you know, why would people sell? They're going to move to a bigger house, they're going to move to another area, whatever it is, the thought that's going to help them with their planning process is, "Well, I wonder what our house is worth right now? What our house is selling for right now? How is the market doing?"
The fact that we can offer them information that gives them a chance to voyeur in on what's going on in the market, right? We offer them the May 2018 report on the Lakes house prices, that is a thing that they can get, which is market data, which is not subjective. It's not somebody who says, "Give me a call, and I'll tell you what your house is worth." Right? Or get an evaluation, which is an opinion of value. This is something that is offering people the raw data. This is what houses in the Lakes are selling for. That is why people respond for that.
Because it's not committing themselves to selling their house, and they don't want to wrestle with a realtor right now, right? They're just entering the process. The real value that you have now is these 11 people, you know who they are, and nobody else does. Everybody else who's promoting in the Lakes is, at the surface level, you know, getting their name out there, doing their personal promotion cards, or trying to convince them to sell.
Meanwhile, you know, that they're below the surface, percolating, thinking about selling. That goes a long way. You know, did you see the infographic from the case study that we've done with Tony Kalsi?
Joe: Yes, yeah. That was very dramatic for me.
Dean: That's important, what you want to notice about that, what I always point out to people, is that that's ... We're about to have the fifth year added to this results, now, because in September it was four years, so, we'll add the fifth year in September, here, now, but, when we looked at that, you know, the thing that's important is that Tony mailed, for five months, before he did his first transaction, right? He mailed from September to February, and then he did his first transaction, and got a commission that was a multiple of the money that he'd already spent to get that, right?
If you look at it, the equivalent here would be that if you mailed for five months, you will have spent, at the rate you're going right now, $2,000, right? $400 a month times five months would be 2000. You would've invested $2,000 at that point. What's the price range of the homes that you are mailing to right now?
Joe: Right in that little pocket, it's just over 400,000.
Dean: Okay, so that's going to be 10 or $12,000 for you, just on the listing side, commission, right? When you look at that, that you will have had $2,000 invested to yield a $12,000 commission, at least, on the one, just on getting the listing sold, and so you will have a $10,000 ... You know, you'll be ahead by $10,000. At which point, the entire thing will now be self-sustaining. If you look at Tony's chart, there, what happened was as soon as he did that first transaction, he never dipped below that line again, it was all just continue to go up and to the right, and the gap, the multiple became more and more, and more. He ended up with an 11-times multiple of the $50,000 that he spent over the four years.
Joe: Nice.
Dean: Yeah, so when we look at this, the important thing to know is that when you look at that infographic, even though he did his first transaction took five months, what we put on that chart was showing ... We drew the actual transactions, traced them back to when people responded to the post card, so that if you draw a line straight up from February, and look at all of the dots of the people who did transactions, there were 14 people that responded in that first five months, that ultimately sold their house with them. Some of them, three and a half years later.
The asset that you're building is this list of inside knowledge that you have of people who are much higher likelihood to sell their house than the general population. Now, that becomes an advantage. We can take that list right now, and if you've already got them in your Go Go Agent CRM, you can export that data, and create a Google Map overlay that will drop a pin on where the homes are that have responded already. Now you know which ones, where they are, right?
Now, the best thing that you can do is think about, "How can I now find buyers? Find people who are looking for homes in the Lakes?" Without having to have listings.
Joe: Right, no, that was one of the things that I was going to ask you about.
Dean: Yeah, so, it's the same thing, you know, the same approach there. You know, I think that for ... Do you have anybody in your office who has any listings in the Lakes or anybody that you know, or are there any for sale by owners in the Lakes? I would love to see you, you know, really look at how we could turn you into the dominant agent in the Lakes, here, over the next 12 to 24 months.
Joe: Yeah, there is one thing I'm doing. As a matter of fact, you planted the seed a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago, on your podcast, there was mention of ... You were talking about the listing multiplier index, and I'm thinking, "Wow, I don't have any listings, yet. I've got to do this."
You've just made mention of it, planted a seed in my mind of doing it for somebody else.
Dean: That's right.
Joe: That's what I did.
Dean: That's exactly it. Good.
Joe: I do open houses for other agents.
Dean: Love it.
Joe: That's one of the ways I stay afloat. I just reached out to one agent who, the very first one I mentioned it to, I said, "Hey, listen, I want to do an open house here, on your listing, but, I want to take it to the next level. I want to do an instant open house, like an online open house, and I want to manage your info box flyers for you. I'm going to canvas the neighborhood as well, with the listing next door." That's another Tony Kalsi infographic that blew my hair back, so I do that as well.
Dean: Right, right, right.
Joe: She said great. I'm actually doing an open house for her today, and tomorrow in that house, and Diane set up the instant open house for me yesterday.
Dean: I love it.
Joe: It looks awesome, it's badass. What I'm going to do is, that particular house is not in the Lakes, but, I'm just going to, you know, just annoy the crap out of every agent who does have a listing. Especially the vacant ones that set themselves up well for an open house.
Dean: Yeah, absolutely.
Joe: The Lakes, keep going. What I really want to do is get to where I'm mailing all of them as well.
Dean: Yes, of course, and that's where ... That's what happened with Tony, you know what I mean? He started out with a couple of 1,000 homes, and then is now mailing, you know, 25,000 homes, but, it parlayed with reinvesting the profits, you know? You got to start where you are, do what you can afford. It's better to start with these 500 homes, and stick with it, and when the first transaction comes, to then expand to 1,500 homes, or expand to whatever you can do, until you get the next one, and we can go to all 3,000 homes, and then take, just consistently dominate it from there.
Because by then, this all kind of feeds on itself, right? If we get you to a point where we can have you looking for buyers for homes in the Lakes, you'd become a market maker, which is the ultimate thing that we're really looking for.
Joe: Yes. You know what, on that note, something I'm putting together right now, I have a friend helping me with it, it's just very tedious to schedule an open house, you know, get on the phone and make cold calls, basically, to realtors, right? Which is fine, but, I don't know, I was looking for a better way. My friend is making me a video showing everything I do. The whole listing multiplier programs, the instant open house. It shows me doing all of these things and welcoming a guest into an open house and things like this, and then I'm going to start e-mailing it out to realtors instead. I mentioned it to somebody in my office, the sales manager, and she said, "We're going to put that on our Facebook page and Instagram, everybody is going to get it."
I don't know if I want it going out that much, but, it's kind of cool. If it works really well, I'll post something on a forum.
Dean: Perfect, I love it, yeah. Because that's part of the thing, right? Is to see, now, what we can do, really kind of ... You know, we've got the five elements, the business elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle, right? Number one is getting listings. We've got that sort of established and going. Number two is multiplying your listings. You don't have any listings to multiply yet, but, let's see, these vacant homes that you were talking about, does somebody in your office have a vacant home in the Lakes for sale?
Joe: No.
Dean: No, okay. That would be great, you know, to start kind of thinking about that. Here is the thing; the next level of this, right? When we look at this, when we look at what we're trying to accomplish, here, element number three is getting referrals. I like to establish this in order, here, right? With the long-term sustainability of a listing centric business requires that we have a system that's going to continually get you listings, and that's what we've set up. You're and the building stage of that.
When you get those listings, most of the time, when people are coming into your world, they're not necessarily brand new agents, right? The next thing that we want to focus on for them is multiplying the listings that they already have. Since you don't have any of those things yet, we want to move right down, now, to getting referrals. Let's talk a little bit about that, and then we'll talk about the finding the buyers part. What I want to focus on is what we call your after unit, your people, your relationship portfolio. Your top 150. Have you already established who those people are?
Joe: I just barely started adding people, and I actually mailed the world's most interesting post card the first time this month to that little bunch. My plan is to just increase that list each month, I'll just add people, you know, when I can, when I have time.
Dean: How many people did you mail so far?
Joe: Just a handful, I think it was seven or eight.
Dean: Okay, well, there we go, that's a start, yeah.
Joe: Yeah, I could definitely get that number way up, but, it's just that I don't know, for whatever reason ... You know what? You telling me this makes me think I have to stop procrastinating on that one and just make it happen.
Dean: That's the number one thing, that's why I'm saying to you that the only thing stopping you, I'm guessing, is that you don't have that list prepared yet. You know who the people are, but, you haven't really probably thought formally about who they are yet. Let's talk about here, because, literally, by the end of the week, you could have that list of people together. The only thing stopping you from mailing it right now is you don't have to list, right? That's the big obstacle.
Joe: Yeah, that's why I did the seven, because I was, "Oh, here we go, it's the first of May, I haven't done this. I'm going to jot down the first ones that come to mind, I'm going to mail to them, and then I won't have an excuse, I'll have to get that going."
Dean: Right, so, have you lived in Las Vegas for a while? Are you local?
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Dean: Okay, so, you've got relationships, you know 150 people. Maybe if it's even 100 people, initially, right? That this is going to be a foundational thing. Were you on our Go Go Agent call last week or a couple weeks ago when Justina in Canada was sharing how she got her ... She's getting a listing and a sale from the world's most interesting post card from somebody that she wouldn't have normally even thought of mailing to because she knew that they have cousins that are in real estate. Even though she's friends with them, and she knows who they are, you know, on that relationship base, she wouldn't have done it, but, when I was sharing how the most important thing is everything everybody who knows you, you know, that's who we want to be mailing these to. On the postcard, she made a mention of a townhouse that she, you know, had buyers who were looking for a townhouse, and her friend, this person called her up and asked her about that because they have a townhouse.
She ended up, she's listing their townhouse, and they're buying a $1.2 million house. That came from just presenting that to them, right? You never know, that's why I'm saying for you, don't kind of limit yourself on these, right? We mail, and it's interesting and light, and breezy enough that it's not, "Hey, you know, list your house with me, or now is the time." Or try to convince anybody of anything. All we're doing is just staying in touch with them, and creating this pattern of, "Just a quick note in case you hear someone talking about whatever the kind of conversation is." You know?
Joe: That sort of brings up two questions for me. Now that we're talking about this, I'm thinking, you know what's holding me back, at least part of it, anyway, is that I don't have the addresses, the mailing addresses.
Dean: Right, that's exactly it, I know it. Do you have the names and where they live? Diane can get those addresses for you. That's part of what we have set up. The reason that we do the easy ... We joined these people finding databases that we can ... It takes Diane about five hours to get 100 addresses, and then you're done. Like, that's the thing, it's either you sit down, and do it, and find the mailing addresses, and just like, go through it and get it done, or you push the easy button and have it done. The most important thing is that you get those 100 people, that's a foundation, you know?
Joe: Perfect, perfect.
Dean: It's like getting into orbit is what the thing is, right? It's like once we get into orbit, sending the world's most interesting post card every month is easy, because we can set up ... You know, once we get the post card set up, once you get your list set up, it's really very easy to, you know, just continue to mail next month, and next month, and next month. You've just got to expend this fuel to get into orbit. You've got to get out of the atmosphere, here, and that's getting those 100 names setup so that you can mail to them.
Joe: I think it's brilliant, by the way, I grabbed it ... I mailed it the first time just, I don't know a week ago, I got one, the example that comes in the mail addressed to me. I looked at it, and I went, "Oh, okay, there's a lot of stuff on there. I'm going to read that later." Then I noticed a headline or a line grabbed my attention. Then a couple minutes later, I realized I read the whole damn thing, now. I read it all the way through, you know? I had first told myself, "I'm going to get back to that, I'm going to read it later."
Dean: Right.
Joe: I just read the whole thing, and then I caught myself, I was like, "Oh, I read the whole thing."
Dean: Yeah.
Joe: It was brilliant.
Dean: That's kind of cool.
Joe: Do you do anything else? Is that the only referral generator?
Dean: No, not at all. That's the baseline, right? Here's what's going to happen, even if that was all you did, you're going to get more referrals in your direct business with the people who are there, because you're checking all the boxes of what's important, right? You're on their mind, you're in touch with them. There is your contact information every month, and they're like, "Oh, I was just thinking about you, yeah, yeah, I meant to give him a call. Here is the number, I'm going to call him now." Right? Because they may be thinking about that.
They're going to read the things, just a quick note, in case you hear someone talking about this. Then next month, talking about this, talking about this. All of the high probability conversations that are going on. This is why we do it, right? The reason that this works is that it really plays into how referrals actually happen. See, all referrals happen as a result of conversation. Meaning that somebody is talking to somebody. In that conversation, they have to notice that the conversation is about real estate, they have to think about you, and then they have to introduce you to the person that they had the conversation with.
Those three things all have to happen for a referral to take place. Now, it could happen that there are a lot of people who are going through their lives, they're having conversations that are about real estate, but they're not even paying attention to it, or it doesn't trigger anything for them, right? They don't think of you. If they have the conversation, and they think about you, then it's more likely that they may say something, or introduce you to that person, right?
Often, for every referral, this is what I always say to them, for every referral that you get, there are probably five that you don't get, because it didn't fire all the way through, right? They noticed that the conversation was about real estate, they thought about you, but, didn't say anything, or they thought about you, and said to the person, "You should call Joe, he's great, I know he can help you." And left it at that, and you don't know that they've had the conversation until you've run into them at the grocery store 90 days later, and they say, "Oh, hey, how are you doing? Did my friend John ever give you a call? I told him all about you." No, he didn't call me. "Oh, I tell people about you all the time."
They never tell you that they're telling people, right? That's what we really want. What's more valuable is if they tell you about the people they told you about. That's even more important than them telling the people to give you a call. That's why we frame everything with that pattern of just a quick note in case you hear someone talking about buying a bigger house this summer. If you do, give me a call, or text me, and I'll give you a copy of our book, "How to buy a bigger house with all of the money you thought you needed." Or whatever the offer is that you could offer them, right? That's going to make people feel like they're adding value for their friend.
Joe: Good, good.
Dean: Everybody likes to feel like an insider, right? The truth that we're trying to get is that we want them to call you. It's easier to get the person who already knows you, likes you, and trusts you, to give you a call, than it is to get them to tell their friend to call you.
Joe: Now that I'm thinking about it, I got a text with a question from one of the seven that I mailed to, he had that question, and he got a hold of me probably right about the same time he received that post card.
Dean: Yeah, and that's the thing, right? It's not so much about the overt thing that's on the post card. It's not so much that somebody's getting the post card, and saying, "Oh, yeah, I see you're looking for somebody who is thinking about buying a bigger house. I was just talking to somebody who did that, or is thinking about that." It's that after you've mailed three of these post cards, they recognize that there is a pattern here, right?
The first month I mail you, I say, "Hey, just a quick note, in case you see any pink elephants, if you see a pink elephant, give me a call, or text me so I can run over and take a picture for my collection, right?" You know how rare they are. You're out in the street, and you don't see a pink elephant, but you see a blue giraffe, you're going to think about me, because it's adjacent to that, right? It's the same thing.
Even though somebody ... If I, now, the next month, say, you know, "If you see a purple rhinoceros, give me a call, or if you see a yellow wooly mammoth." That you're going to notice that there is a pattern of, "I collect pictures of colorful exotic animals." You're going to be on the lookout, you're going to recognize that any time you see an exotic colored animal, that that's going to trigger this thought about me.
That's the same thing. When we send a post card to somebody three times, and they start out, just a quick note in case you hear of someone talking about buying a bigger house. Just a quick note in case you hear someone talking about selling their house this spring, or just a quick note in case you hear someone talking about buying an investment property. We go month after month after month, with another real estate-related high-probability conversation. They're going to now have that pattern established in their mind. The real thing is, it happens without them consciously even knowing that it's happening.
Joe: I love that.
Dean: I had something happen just recently that was both startling, and amazing at the same time. In our Go Go Agent forum, somebody had posted up, this was months ago, a note that says, "Does anybody have a contact, or know where I could get same-day carpet installed?" We've had a flood before where the carpet needs to be replaced in time for the closing tomorrow.
What was amazing to me was that my brain, without my conscious will, started singing, "800-588-2300, Empire." Do you guys have those in Las Vegas?
Joe: Yeah, yeah, I know that jingle.
Dean: That jingle was smuggled into my brain, against my will, and was living there, rent-free, waiting to be triggered by somebody asking about same-day carpeting.
Joe: It was squatting in your brain.
Dean: It was, it was living there without my knowledge, without my conscious thought.
Joe: That's great.
Dean: Now, it's that same thing. That's what we're doing with that pattern, right? Just a quick note in case you hear someone talking about, and we're installing all these different conversations, right? Whenever they hear someone talking about this, something related to real estate, they're immediately going to think of you, and they're going to remember that the instruction is always, "Give me a call or text me." The number of people that notice the conversation think of you, and give you a call or text you, is going to multiply. It's going to go up.
It only makes sense, right? Like, you're a brand new real estate agent. How many of these 100 people that would be in your top 100, even know for sure that you are in real estate right now?
Joe: That's a terrific question. I bet you it's very small, probably half a dozen.
Dean: Yeah, right. Absolutely, and of those people, even those ones, they may have just a passing, "Oh, Joe's in real estate, now." That got triggered somehow, but then, in the heat of the moment, when those conversations are happening, they might not link you as the top thing in their mind to do with conversations with real estate.
Joe: Wow, you really got me thinking, now, about people that I just did not even consider, that I've got to get them on the list.
Dean: Yes. Anybody who you would recognize by name, and stop and have a conversation with them, if you saw them at the grocery store, that's the person that we want on this list.
Joe: I'm just thinking now, a lot of the, like, I play men's club golf game every Saturday at the club where I play, and a lot of those dudes live in the neighborhoods where I am either mailing now, or will be mailing.
Dean: Yes, perfect, that's what we're talking about. Also, when we get this top 100 here, you asked is that all we do. That's not all we do. That's the baseline, right? That's like, level one. We start every month, that's the baseline campaign, that we're at least going to get that world's most interesting post card out to them. Now, on top of that, then, we're going to take that top 100. I'd love it if you could get it to 150, but that 100, and we're going to export that data, and create a Google Map layer that drops a pin on all of their addresses, so you see where, visually, where your clients live, right?
Joe: Oh, okay.
Dean: Now, we're going to also, focus on being a market maker. The habit that I want to try and ingrain in people is that every Monday, you look at your calendar for the week, and you see, "Who am I showing houses to this week?" Or, "Who am I going to see about selling their house this week?" Not the prospects who might be, the ones who actually are, right? Who you are actually working with right now. Whenever you're showing a house in the Lakes, you look at your map, and your first layer of concern should be, "Let's look at the map of the people who have responded to my getting listings post cards. Let's send them a quick e-mail and tell them that you're showing houses in the Lakes, and you remember looking up their house when you sent them the Lakes report."
I'm not sure what your plans are, but, I thought I'd check in and see if I could tell them about your house. That's a really great e-mail to get. Now, you look at the layer that has your top 150, and let's say, some of these golf buddies that you have that live in the Lakes, that you send them a quick note, and you say, "Hey, John, I'm showing houses in the Lakes this week, these couples looking for a golf villa, or a lakefront home," or whatever it is that they're looking for, that they have the same kind of home as. "Have you heard anybody talking about selling their house? We may be able to match them up with this couple from Seattle," or wherever they're from.
Joe: You reach out in that way, to top 150 people as well that are in that area?
Dean: Individual top 150 people, yes, that's what I was saying, but the two groups are the ones that responded to your getting listing post cards, because you know that those people own homes that they're thinking about potentially selling. Then, the second layer is the top 150 layer. Let's say that, out of those, the 3,000 homes in there, that maybe you've got five or six people, or maybe more, who knows? You've already got five or six people that know, that live in that neighborhood.
Now you're micro-targeting, right? Our goal is, we're sending the world's most interesting post card on a macro level, to all of your top 150. Everybody's getting the same message. Then, what we're doing is now, we're weekly, on a micro-level, reaching out, specifically, with a really high-probability referral opportunity for them. Because it's likely that, you know, if we say that all referrals happen as a result of conversation, where do we have conversations? We have conversations with our family, with our friends, with our neighbors, right? With our coworkers, with our people that we socialize with, recreationally, with the parents of our kids' activities, who are the people that they're talking to? Where are they likely to have conversations? They may be with their neighbor, having a conversation that they know their neighbor is getting transferred.
Now they know that that person, at some point, is going to put their house on the market, but, you've given them an opportunity to help that person out, right?
Joe: Right, right. That's good. Yeah, you've mentioned this, I've heard this before, but, like, it's crystallizing, now, in my brain, now that you're explaining it, that's fantastic.
Dean: That's it. That's important for you, right? Very specifically, especially as a brand new agent. You need to lay these foundational things. We're going down in order, right? That's on the element number three. We've got your getting listed program as one, we don't have any listings to multiply, so we move on to your getting referrals. We want to establish that. Those people, hopefully, if you look at it, of those 150 people, see how I'm like, aspiring you to 150, I want you to get things in that way, right? Of those 150 people, some number of them are personally going to buy or sell homes, right? It would be highly unusual that, out of 150 people, that none of them would move.
Joe: Right, exactly. Yeah.
Dean: We want to be sure that you're the one that they think of, right? The thing is, just by doing this way, even if you didn't ... They're not a client of yours, but, I guarantee you that the odds are so high, that the incumbent realtor in their life, the one that helped them buy the house that they're living in right now, is long gone, and not in any way in contact with them.
Joe: That's a good point.
Dean: Here you are, here is your post card, with your phone number right on it. It's just so much more convenient to call you, and they already know you, like you, and trust you. It just makes sense, right?
Joe: Yes, I can see how this is very valuable. The only deals I've done this year, Dean, is referrals. All of them.
Dean: Of course, let's go with that, and you haven't even done anything to make it happen, imagine if you start trying.
Joe: Yeah. That's awesome. I could see how this would even sort of produce buyers, but, is there anything that ... I've heard people mention placing ads and what not, to get buyers, I get buyers from doing open houses.
Dean: Yep, that's certainly one place.
Joe: I should be doing like, a Zillow campaign I suppose, but, is there anything else that's effective?
Dean: What I would look at for you, another thing that might be a good thing, another map layer, is to go back and look at all of the expired listings that have not relisted in the last two or three years in the Lakes. Just do that research; see all of the homes that were on the market, expired, and didn't relist. Then have another map layer for that, so that you've got that as an opportunity, you know?
Joe: Then again, you would just reach out to them and say, "You know, I've got a buyer, I don't know if you're still thinking about selling, blah, blah, blah."
Dean: Exactly, but, I remember seeing that your house was on the market last year. I thought I'd check in and see if I could tell them about your house. That may be just serendipitously arriving at the right time, you know?
Joe: I haven't heard that one.
Dean: The other training that I would start doing now is looking for category buyers, right? You've got the Lakes as a category. You don't have to have a listing for that. You start advertising the free, May 2018 guide to the Lakes real estate prices.
Joe: Then you're advertising that in print media.
Dean: Yep, on Craigslist.
Joe: Okay, I may do that and try it and see what happens.
Dean: Yeah.
Joe: I really like that expired listings one, too. That's awesome, because the market has changed quite a little bit in seller's favor in the meantime. Basically, in the last couple of years, they probably still have it on their mind.
Dean: Yeah, they probably have it on their mind that they couldn't get the price they were looking for, and now prices have come up, but, maybe the market's come to meet what they need, you know?
Joe: Taking notes. Wow, that one, that's a great idea. I don't think I've mentioned, nothing ... I'm really excited to see if I can get some realtors really interested in essentially being their buyer's agent, you know, with an instant open house program, yeah.
Dean: Are there any for sale by owners in there?
Joe: There may be. I could check. One of the title companies I get info from, they send me a FSBO list.
Dean: Yep. That might be a way to not even trying to convince them to list them, but, you do some of the listing multipliers for it. The instant open house, all these things, that might be a way for you to be able to run a Craigslist advert and do those things. The thing is that for sale by owners are not going to be able to do anything with the buyers who are not interested in their house, specifically, you know?
Joe: Yeah.
Dean: They would be more open to you once you help them generate buyer leads, and have you help the ones who are not going to buy that house, but to buy something else, and help them sell the ones that are, in case they need to sell their house to buy the other house.
Joe: That's a good angle as well. I didn't think about doing it with For Sale By Owners. That's not a bad idea. A lot of them, especially if they've been sitting on that thing.
Dean: You ought to start thinking about the whole thing, and I would start, I would look at doing daily tours of the Lakes. You know, daily house tours, at the Lakes, at 10:00 AM and 1:00 PM, and just get everybody who's thinking about buying a house at the Lakes to hop on a tour, you know? By the way, the private tour, it's just good languaging, right?
Joe: You're placing an ad specifically for the daily tour?
Dean: Yep, I would, you could. That would be a cool thing, you know? Whenever you place an ad in Craigslist, that would be one of the things that I would put on the thing, "Daily tour of, daily house tour at the Lakes, 10:00 AM and 1:00 PM."
Joe: You mentioned Craigslist, now, like three times in the last minute or so.
Dean: I think Craigslist is a good, free source, we've got lots of people, especially when you set up your instant open house, or a landing page to go with it. Even though you can't direct link to something, right? It'd say, "Copy this link." Or you don't even mention it, you just put it there, people know that the browsers now are fully equipped, that if you just highlight that, hold your cursor over that, anything that's ".com," it'll bring up the menu, "Go to that, the landing."
We have people, we get lots of traffic from Craigslist ads to our instant open house landing pages.
Joe: Yeah, okay, I'm going to try that today.
Dean: We have a landing page, we have a full ... We have a landing page model for the daily tour.
Joe: Oh, yeah, I saw that.
Dean: Yep, so there is the thing, put a big hero shot of the Lakes, an overhead shot, or a picture of the gate, or whatever the ... Put a montage picture of all of the different things about the Lakes, the big ... Because it's a full-screen picture. Then the drop-down menu for the daily tour, and people fill out and say, "I want to come on a tour." You know? "Tuesday at 1:00."
Joe: Is there a way to link ... I mean, it's just a contact form, basically, right?
Dean: Yeah.
Joe: The way this landing page is, is there a way to actually send a ... Like, "I am requesting this time?"
Dean: Yeah.
Joe: You know, a customer who wants to ... They want to get the 1:00 PM tour on Wednesday, we could set it up.
Dean: Yeah, that's exactly how we set it up. That's exactly how that landing page is already set up that way. That they fix the date and the time.
Joe: I'm going to give that a shot, especially advertising the instant open house on Craigslist. Especially for certain zip codes, and I know that's probably going to work great here. I know other zip codes, those flyers are probably not going anywhere near Craigslist.
Dean: Right, yeah.
Joe: I know some zip codes, they probably would.
Dean: Yes, absolutely.
Joe: That's awesome.
Dean: I love it. You know, if you want to adopt some listings, a great thing is HUD homes, too. That would be a good thing where you can adopt, because they're always usually vacant, and anybody can advertise them, and that gives you a good head start, too. Do the listing multipliers on a HUD house.
Joe: That's really cool. I'm trying to think of the other questions I had for you. I don't remember now. I'm thinking about referrals.
Dean: Yeah, well, there is the thing. I mean, this is great. I mean, you're adopting, in order, the right things at the right time. Because you know right now you've already got ... Getting listings is already in orbit. You know, we've already setup your landing page, you've already setup all of the initial package stuff, you even got the post cards set up, so, each month it's easy to mail the next one. It doesn't take any real thought, because Diane could do the whole thing.
Then, your world's most interesting post card, I'd say, the moment we hang up, that's got to be the thing that's on your mind, is not stopping doing anything else until you get at least 100, and preferably 150 people, and setup, ready to mail the world's most interesting post card. Then you can move on to the other things, right? We got to prioritize, and do the things that are going to have the highest yield for you.
Joe: Okay, all right, I'll bump that number up. I like the idea of the map layer.
Dean: Yes. Me too.
Joe: Is that self-explanatory on Go Go Agent?
Dean: Yep, we've got a tutorial on it. There is a video. You know, you can search anything in the blog if you go on the homepage of the members’ blog, you can search, like, "Google Map," and it'll bring up the post that is all about that.
Joe: Right, yeah, I was just doing that this morning, in fact, because I've got to mail out my thing.
Dean: There is so much stuff in there, yeah.
Joe: My market watch thing for the getting listings. I just searched for, I don't know what it was, getting listing follow-up, I think it is.
Dean: Yeah.
Joe: In this month's letters that I'm going to print out, and I'm going to head over to the office and print them over there.
Dean: There it is.
Joe: All right, so I've got to get...
Dean: It's all very exciting.
Joe: My referral campaign setup.
Dean: I love it. Well, this was fun. It went fast, didn't it?
Joe: Heck yeah, Dean. How long have we been on the phone?
Dean: An hour.
Joe: An hour. Well, I don't want to soak up any more of your birthday, you've got to go celebrate, right?
Dean: That's exactly right, that's exactly right, but, that was good. I'm excited, I think this is ... I can't wait to watch it all unfold, and see what happens next year on my birthday, to see how the full year has gone, here.
Joe: Yeah, definitely. I appreciate it. Hey, thanks for taking the time, Dean. It's very helpful. I just want to say thanks.
Dean: All right, man. I look forward to meeting you.
Joe: Awesome, I'll talk to you later, then. Thanks, Dean.
Dean: Thanks, Joe. Bye.
Joe: Bye.
Dean: There we have it, another great episode. I think that here is the thing that can really, as I'm listening, in my mind, while we're having these conversations, I'm thinking about the people who are in the same situation where you're just getting started, and how do you get traction without kind of falling into a trap of this hamster wheel prospecting? Where you're out, hammering on doors, or on the phone, or doing all these things. Let's really establish yourself with a lifestyle approach to doing this by getting these elements in place that make it a reality. All of these things that we've been talking about; the getting listings program, the world's most interesting post card. All of these lead generation pieces. The daily tour of homes, the instant open house landing pages. All of that. I've got the whole toolkit for you to build your listing agent lifestyle business.
We have a free trial program where you can come in, experience the whole thing for 30 days, no credit card required. Come in, take a look around, you can see everything that's going on, get to meet the people who are ahead of you, who are doing, and installing all of these programs, and see if we can help you establish yourself with a listing agent business. Just go to gogoagent.com, and come on in, take a look around, see what we're up to. I'd love to have a conversation with you, and see how we can help you build your business. Of course, if you'd like to continue the conversation here, you can go to listingagentlifestyle.com, and download a copy of the Listing Agent Lifestyle book.
If you'd like to be a guest on the podcast, click on the "be a guest," link, and we can spend an hour, hatching a plan for you. Looking at how we can start where you are, and build a very specific plan to implement the Listing Agent Lifestyle elements in your business.
That's it for this week, have a great week, and I will talk to you next time.