Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast, we are in for a treat because we're talking with Tom Storey from Toronto.
One of the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle we always talk about is Getting Referrals and managing your after unit for a 20% annual yield. Well, here we are, we're going to be talking with someone today who's doing just that!
You're going to hear just how possible it is to get a really great yield and high volume of transactions, based on the relationships with a small group of people.
I think this is going to be very motivating. We spent almost the entire podcast talking about his After Unit, and leveraging the things he has going on with his Listing Multiplier opportunities created from the business he's doing.
You'll want to listen closely, and take some notes for this one.
PS: Our 2nd annual Listing Agent Lifestyle real estate mastermind event is coming up in Toronto next month.
We've got an amazing 2 days planned.
On day one we join up with the Archangel Summit and we have Seth Godin, Elisabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) and Todd Herman (author of The Alter Ego effect) and lots of other great speakers...
On the 2nd day, we're doing a real estate only day to focus on the Future Of Real Estate as we enter the 2020's.
We're going to focus the best things we can do now to really capitalize on the opportunities we have right now while everyone in our industry is waiting for the "disruptors" to ruin everything :)
Would you like to join us?
You can check out the details here.
Links:
GoGoAgent.com
Listing Agent Scorecard
Be a Guest
Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep093
Dean: Hello, Tom Storey.
Tom: Dean, how are you?
Dean: I'm so good. How are you?
Tom: I'm doing really, really well.
Dean: I am very excited. We got everything I need. I've got my headset, I've got my bottle of water. I've got Tom Storey for an hour. There you go. We can come up with.
Tom: I'm very excited.
Dean: Yeah, tell me a little bit about the Tom Storey's story.
Tom: Yeah, fair enough. I work in Toronto. Obviously, you're very familiar. In Ontario, Canada. I've been selling real estate for six years, right out of school. It's the only thing I ever know. I think I have no other option now. I got my license in my fourth year of university and this has been it. My whole mindset to real estate is, when I would have summer jobs in the university, I'd wake up in the morning. I'd have that gut feeling like, “Oh my god, I got to get up and go do this.”
Dean: What was the job?
Tom: It was working at a bank. Just your typical nine to five. I would have this gut feeling thinking, “Is this what life after school is?” You just get up, something you don't really want to do and. Then when I got into real estate, even in my first year, I wasn't making big money in my first year, but I would wake up excited. That's when I was like, “Yeah, I got to get so good at this, because I don't want that feeling to go away.”
Dean: Right. Oh, that's so great. I started really young to like, 22. That's true. They say there's no years like your college years, right? Lives those years? Well, if you choose a career like real estate, you literally get to have your whole life be like that. The things you love about it, you've got a flexible schedule. You don't have to fit your work in to certain business hours. It's such a lot of freedom. The trick is to learn how to discipline it.
Tom: That's it. A hundred percent. I think that's the thing. I wasted a year, my first year running around. Then once I kind of figured out the system and got it into place, I run a well-oiled small machine. I'd say I run it and I have two other realtors and then an assistant. I feel like I've got a few things figured out but always trying to figure out a tweak. To live the life that I want to and keep producing and find new ways to get ahead.
Dean: That's awesome. Where specifically are you in Toronto?
Tom: I do an online business in condos in loft downtown. I'm in the King West neighborhood. King West, Waterfront, St. Lawrence Market. I cover the core of the city, but I would do 99% of my business in the 416 area code. When I started just because of my age, I worked with a lot of buyers the first few years. I had that 24 to 34 markets covered helping them buy first grade.
Then their parents would come along to every showing because the parents are sometimes a lot of where the deposit came from. Started getting on good terms of the parents when I started filling the parents’ house. I had nobody aged 35 to 50 but I had everybody below and everybody over so that's what it was the first few years. Now I'm finally seeing the turnover business and the two transaction business. It's really exciting.
Dean: That's great. Tell me about your business run now.
Tom: I'm very systemized in the way that I know the core of my business and the return that I can get on my database is fairly consistent. I've run a specific touch-point system for my database. Everything from we do monthly video updates just for our people. We do big client events. Home show tickets. The whole thing. Every month, they're going to get something. In 2018, I look back when numbers from last year, I only had 187 people in my database, but I wanted them to be good quality people. Of those 187, we are able to produce 44 sales from those 187. My return was about 22%, which is very exciting.
Dean: Over the gold standard. I'll stop there for a second, because I don't want to gloss that over. When we talk about the metric, how we divide, I'm not sure how familiar you are with all of this stuff. Let's talk about that. When we talk about the after unit of your business, which is what you're talking about, we base it on your minimum of your top 150 people. You got 180 which is great, but the fact that what we're looking for from managing that relationship portfolio is a 20% annual yield. Here you are at 22%.
We've had other people on the podcast, who have over that 20%. I think this is a really good example for people to see that they've got those same opportunities. We look at it that everybody knows 150 people. You've got 150 people that if you saw them at the grocery store, you'd recognize them by name, and you'd stop and have a conversation with them. That's your core. Whether you're brand new, or whether you've been in business for 5, 10, 15 years. Whatever it is, you've got those things.
The only difference is, when you're brand new, you don't have clients. They're living in the condo or the house that you helped them sell, or that you helped them buy, but congratulations. That's great. What's the basis of the system that you do?
Tom: Basically is the way I look at it too, is the goal is always if I can get a minimum 20% return. That doesn't mean everyone is buying or selling. They're referring the people. These are the people … Four Seasons made the Golden Rule famous. "Treat people the way we want to be treated." Then I read that book, the Platinum Rule. It was, "Treat people the way they want to be treated."
Dean: Right.
Tom: That's when the light bulb went off, and I was like, “Okay, so we've actually gone as far in our CRM, based on the profiles of our clients, like, who's the analytical? Who's the emotional?" They were trying to really tailor the approach to them. It's so much fun, because these people are people that already through working with me, I know, they like me, I know they trust me, and they're like my army. They're working for me.
When they refer me a friend, when I sit down with them at the table, I don’t have to sell them anything. It's saying, “How can I help?” It's so much fun.
Dean: The great thing is that what you've got right there is that is essentially competition proof. It's essentially your opportunity alone, because you have this unique, distinct relationship with these 180 people that I couldn't come in and you start that. If you're maintaining this relationship, and I've been talking a lot about branding, and that people often say, "You got to establish a brand and stuff." I've never liked any of the definitions that people use to define what a brand is. I've been working on it. Coming with an acronym for brands, which I think really fits what we're actually trying to do. Brand, B-R-A-N-D, a brand that we're trying to establish is buying reflex, affecting now decisions.
When you look at it right there, what we want to establish is that buying reflects that when they say, “We need to sell our condo,” they immediately have a reflexive response to, “We got to call Tom,” or they hear somebody talking about buying a condo. That buying reflex is we need to introduce them to Tom. That we were reflexively getting people to take that kind of action. Are you game to go a little bit deeper into the breakdown of the numbers?
Tom: Absolutely.
Dean: Because I want to see if there's some opportunity here. If I can guide you through it. If we say, of the 44 transactions that you did, how many of them were repeats, or a direct meeting? It was one of the 187 people that were on the list, and they bought another house or sold their house or whatever it was, how many of them were repeat or direct like that?
Tom: Yeah. I actually have this written down. Because my repeat cycle hasn't come around as much, because I'm only just now starting to get that, 15 and 44, we're direct repeat, but they're referrals. Which is actually exciting, because I know if the repeats refer me before they even repeat, I should get the repeat.
Dean: Yeah right. So 15 and 29 referrals, which is fantastic. If I asked you about the referrals. I don't know whether you've heard me talk about the difference between what we call passive referrals, reactive referrals, and orchestrated referrals?
Tom: No, I don't think so.
Dean: Okay. I did this for a long time where I would at the big seminars you do, I would have 10 people stand up and tell me the story of the last referral they got. I was just looking for the short version of it. I would sort of know the name of the person and how it actually happens that you got connected with them. The eight out of 10 of the stories that I would hear would be, someone would stand up and say. I got a call from Jim who said, "I'm a friend of Tom's, your client, who helped them sell his house.” He said, “You could help me sell my house. Can you come over and help us?”
I call that a passive referral, because you didn't know about Jim, or you didn't know about that person until they call you up and say, “Hey, I'm a friend of one of your clients. Can you help me?” I would take a note of that. About eight out of 10 of the stories that I heard were like that. Would you say that of the 29 referrals that you got, can you recall any of them? Just to see if there were any like that?
Tom: I would say most of them are like that. The only other ones that normally come into place is like I have a mortgage broker that refers me a lot of business as well. That's more active, like, “Hey, you're getting pre-approved, you should speak with Tom.” From the core of my database, yeah, definitely passive.
Dean: Okay, and are you counting the mortgage broker in those 29 referrals?
Tom: I'm not. Actually I consider that just my database, and then my moral broker one of my strategic alliances.
Dean: Right, exactly. Okay. Of the remaining stories that I heard, the other story was, they would say, “My client John called me and said, I was talking with my friend Jim, and he's going to be selling his house. I was telling them all about you. You should give him a call.” Which is what I call a reactive referral. The passive is they just call you. Reactive is, your client calls you and tells you, “Hey, you should give them a call.”
That made up the other two out of 10s. About 20% of the time, that was how it happened. What I never heard in doing that, was anybody tell me a story of what I call an orchestrated referral. An orchestrated referral is, let's say that you're showing houses in the condos in Liberty Village. Would you say that any of your top 187 live in Liberty Village?
Tom: They do. Yes.
Dean: Can you recall the name of one of them?
Tom: John, yeah.
Dean: John. Okay. If you're showing condos in Liberty Village, and it's Monday, and you look at your calendar. You're showing houses this week. You've got the appointment booked with the buyer, who's looking for a condo at Liberty Village, and you sent an email to your client, john, and everybody else who you know that lives Liberty Village. You said, “Hey, John, I'm showing condos this week to a couple who were looking for a place in Liberty Village. There's only a few on the market right now or whatever.” Something similar to that and saying, “Have you heard anybody talking about selling their condo? We may be able to match them up with this couple from Scarborough, or whatever.”
Tom: This is like the Market Maker idea, right?
Dean: That's exactly right.
Tom: I actually tried this last week, because I listened to one of your talks about it. I got a listing presentation out of it.
Dean: That's fantastic.
Tom: Not in a specific area, but I got to do more.
Dean: Well, that's the thing. If I can establish in anybody, this habit of Market Maker Monday, where every Monday, you get into this mindset that you stop for a second. So much of the reason that you're getting so many referrals is that you're establishing the environment for people that it cultivates referrals. Where the way that all referrals happen is through conversation. They have to notice these conversations about real estate. They have to think about you. They have to introduce you to the person that they had the conversation with.
What we're doing is just doing that same thing, except we're orchestrating what's already going on. If I can establish in somebody's routine, the habit of every Monday, looking at your calendar, and noticing who you've got in your car this week, or who you're going to see this week about selling their house. Then thinking to yourself, “Who do I know, that lives in Liberty Village or lives in Harbor Front or wherever you're going,” and taking the time to just reach out to them that way, which is a high probability place where they're going to have a conversation.
Tom: I love it because it's a way first of all to reach out. Even if they're not selling or don't know anyone that's selling, you have an awesome way to reach out to either a project or past clients, just to remind them, “Hey, I'm the guy or girl.” You're just reminding them that you're the pro. That's a good idea.
Dean: That's exactly right. That is so amazing when we do that with … we haven't gotten to it yet. Are you running the getting listings program yet or?
Tom: I did. I sent the first one out last week. I've got some pretty cool results already. I don't know if you want to go there yet. Yeah, I have been doing it.
Dean: We'll see. We'll put that on the slide for right now.
Tom: Okay.
Dean: When you imagine, as part of your Market Maker Monday, one of the things we do is link a Google Map to your CRM. We drop a pin where all of your top 180 are and another map layer where everybody who's responded to your get-in listings mailing lives as well so that when you imagine you're in Liberty Village, if you've done a get-in listings mailing in there, in addition to your friend John, you can email to Nancy, who responded to the postcard four months ago, and say, “Hey, Nancy, I'm showing houses, condos this week to a couple from Scarborough. They're looking for a place in Liberty Village. I remember looking at your place online when we sent you the Liberty Village Report. I'm not sure what your plans are, but I thought I'd check in and see if maybe I could tell them about your place. It might be a perfect match for this couple.”
That is such a better way to follow up or to engage with people than to say, “Hey Nancy. Just checking in. Are you getting my newsletters? Are you liking them? Is there anything I can help you with?” That's so weak.
Tom: It's a no go email.
Dean: It really is. What do you have to lose?
Tom: Exactly. Just reminding them you're the pro and connectors I think in any business, become a connector. I think connectors get paid.
Dean: That's exactly right.
Tom: The one that brings people together. I love the thought process behind it. I've only done it a few times, but it's something that I need to build into my system. That on Mondays I sit down and visually look at it and start doing the emails.
Dean: Right now you're doing such a good job. You're over 20% on your return on relationships that you might be in a position to see how high. I imagine if you added the Market Making 50 weeks in a row into this.
Tom: That's what I'm looking at. If I can slowly go, very, very slow about whom I'm adding to this database. If I have 200 people and I can get the same returns, that's business within business. I'm not going out searching for if it's being built within the system I'm already running which is so exciting.
Dean: That's it. You want to be careful where the balance is. Right now, everything about 150 is based on evolutionary psychology of our ability to only have 150 relationships. I think you could go to 200. Beyond that, I think it's a different thing. It requires another level of consciousness to go beyond that, because the whole point of it is that these literally are people that you have a relationship with. That you would recognize if you saw them by name.
Tom: Right. You want to be very clear about who you're putting in there. I could even probably take mine down because I bet you there's 30 people that haven't done anything for me over the past three years, even though I've been spending money on them. Right?
Dean: Yeah. That's part of the thing. Is to put everybody in the right containers. If you look at it, the reality is that those 44 transactions, the $20 referrals, and the 15 direct business, those people all, if you really looked at it would be in your top 150 anyway. It's not those additional 30 that are providing it. The ones who actually are referring you are not typically somebody from out of left field. It's typically the people who you wouldn't know and you would think that they would do that. It's one of those things where the maximum effective dose kind of thing of it is 150 where it doesn't necessarily get better having 204.
Tom: Yeah. I think that's one of those things where I can tweak it, because I know for each person in there, I'm spending roughly just under $200 a year on them, just based on what the system is. Last year, each person, their value to me was about $2500. I was like, “Well, I figured out where I spend my money.”
Then doing it in a specific calculated way where the whole system last year cost me $35,000, including the big events and everything. Grossed over half a million dollars just from my core people. That's why I love your program so much, because it's taking on that, its business building on that and then adding more systems in where I can grow it to another level.
Dean: Yeah, that's awesome. Well, congratulations. What would you say is the core thing that makes the system work for you for what you're doing? What are you doing to get that result right now?
Tom: I've been able to meet a lot of people in the industry since I've started. A lot of people that make seven figures sell a lot of homes, and they're just downright miserable. My whole thought process was, “I want to run an awesome business with awesome people. Whether I sell 50 homes this year, or 200, I still want to like what I'm doing.” The whole thought process behind the people in there is, I just want it to be awesome people that have awesome friends. It's not easy business, but it's a lot easier that other ways to get business. Right?
Dean: Right.
Tom: It's a mix of, “Okay, I'm always staying top of mind, whether they're getting my video updates,” There's always something. Just by treating them so good that they have no choice but to want to refer me to their friends and family. We do the big events, but we do small events. I'm actually doing one in November. It's my second one I've done. It's called manicures and mimosas. My top 25 female clients. It's not just females. Normally, they're the only ones that RSVP. They come and I rented a nail salon and I serve them mimosas and they all get to chat with each other and get their nails done. I've never had people respond to an invite so fast.
Dean: That’s awesome.
Tom: That whole day cost me less than $1000. From the one I did last year, because I tracked it, four direct sales came out of it. It's just working with awesome people. Being likable. I think, obviously in this industry, you have to have the ability. When you get the chance to sit down the kitchen table or whatever the scenario is these days, you got to know what you're talking about. None of it matters if you're not visible to them. My whole thought process has been, “What am I doing in my business to be visible, so that I'm top of mind, so that I can prove to them I have the ability?” I can be awesome at what I do, but if no one knows, why would they call me?
Dean: Yeah, I love it. That's great. Congratulations. You've given me a fun story to follow, to see now what can we do in 2020 with adding and layering Market Making in there?
Tom: Yeah, because I know, the core of my business comes from the routine referral. I have strategic alliances. I do a lot of realtor referrals because I go to conferences. I meet a lot of people from across Canada. At home a piece. Right now on my list, I had been running a farming program for the last year, but it was more of a bragging farmer. I got five listings out of it in a year. The return was there and it was great but it’s like, how do I make the farming and the postcards and all that as well? Because that is where I'm spending the core of my money on my business. How do I bring those numbers up well, retaining the people that are within the core my business already?"
Dean: That's awesome. What have you been doing? Let's talk about you before you. You were saying now you've done your first getting listings mailing. Walk me through that.
Tom: Yeah. I had been farming for specific pockets. King West, Fort York, St. Lawrence Market and King Street East. I kind of had specific things going to those areas for the past year. I just changed it up on the last one. I essentially took the copy of the getting listings postcard that you had and edited it to my market and bought the domain and everything. I sent that out 10 days ago. Probably about 5000 total went out. 13 people have signed up in 10 days.
Dean: Nice. Good for you.
Tom: That's exciting.
Dean: Yeah, that's exciting. I always love the longevity stories of this because we've been for six years now tracking the case study with Tony Kalsi in Scarborough. When we got the numbers out for the sixth year here, we went and revisited year one to see what had actually happened. In year one, he had 160 people reply to the postcards over the whole entire year. What we did was, “Look, take all of those names, and look for the whole six years, how many of them actually sold their house in that six year period?” Out of the 160, there were 44 people who actually sold their house. Tony got 23 of them. Over 50% market share of the ones who actually sold their house that he got 15 days on over 50% conversion.
What was startling was, 23 transactions from people who responded in the first year, just by staying in touch with them every month and sending them the newsletter and the updates of what's going on, so the offset that you're building. I was trying to get people to take capital investment approach the items that you have to add, as opposed to an expense, because what you've just done is you've got 13 people so far in that one area that have raised their hands. You got this asset building that's going to have long term payoff.
Tom: I think if you look at tracking done with Tony, Tony was his name, right?
Dean: Yes.
Tom: Obviously he's been super patient and consistent with it. Now you can look back from the aerial view and be like, “Oh my gosh, it worked.”
Dean: Yeah that's the whole thing. That's exactly right.
Tom: Did you give up early on?
Dean: Yeah. Over a million dollars. 12.2 times ROI on the spend. It's pretty amazing. We always point out that he got his first transaction in five months. After those five months, it's been profitable. He's been ahead of the spend the entire way. All we really needed was the money to get to that first transaction. Here in the same year, Toronto's not an inexpensive area so you've got a lot for your money. As soon as you get one transaction, you're way ahead.
Tom: I think it's such a cool idea where we're talking about people raising their hands. For a year now, we're spending a lot of money, sending things to people, I don't know who's raising their hands. Some people would call me or book an appointment, and I'd walk in and they have my stuff on the table so I know it works. I wasn't targeted, or didn't have a real call to action, or any reason that they would call me unless they really just need to sell it and they called me, which happened a few times, but this is a fun way of doing the same thing. I've 13 people that have raised their hand so far. If I ever have a buyer looking at any of those areas, I would email you.
Dean: It’s not about if you ever have a buyer. Now it is about proactively. This is one of the things is you need to think about appointing yourself the position of being the listing agent for the village of King West. We know that whole area that you are … instead of waiting for some individual person to list their house with you, you go through the process of finding buyers who are looking for a home in King West Village.
You're now attracting the buyers, regardless of whether you have the listing. All the while you've got this secret inventory of people who are thinking about selling their house. Now, when you come across the buyers who want to go and look at homes, you can now orchestrate on your Market Maker Monday with your drop pin, saying, “Here's all the people that have responded.” Easy to send that email to them.
Tom: Yeah. You can do it the opposite way too, right?
Dean: Yes.
Tom: If I get a presentation as a seller, same thing, “Hey, I've got 15 active buyers that nobody else has.”
Dean: You're exactly right. That's the competitive advantage. That is going to be great. When you start to take that category approach, the four areas that you named, are all kind of distinct neighborhoods. You're appointing yourself to be the listing ambassador for that area. That anybody that wants to live in that area, to get with you, all of the things and offering daily tours of King West Village. Now you're starting to have a systematic way to get category buyers without depending on having individual listings.
Tom: Yeah. It's the ultimate way to run a business. You have systems for finding ways to generate leads that are not just … I like how when you send a postcard out, they have to physically get it. Not throw it away. Go to the website, just fill the page. They've gone out of their way to raise their hands, where if I run an easy Facebook ad, where it auto populates all their information they can click, the quality seems to be much lower of at least someone that's really interested in doing something. It's like you made them go through the process where you know even if you're getting less people than that ad, you're running online. These are people that went out of their way, sat down the computer, typed in your domain.
Dean: That's exactly right.
Tom: They're serious, or they really want this information because you cannot wait. Yeah. That's it. They really had to go out of their way. That's what's really cool for me. Obviously only being like a month into running that program. I've got ideas that now how to continuously do this and ramp this up. If I could build big lists on both ends.
Dean: That's the way to think about it is to start now. That's why we’re running the Facebook ads to find the buyers in those areas. That's where you're going to get some good leverage for building your list.
Tom: Yeah, good point.
Dean: Do you do any video type of stuff too?
Tom: A lot. Yeah. It's the core of our business. We put it on YouTube and all the other platforms as well. I started about three and a half years ago. I called it the Storey Report, because why not?
Dean: Right on.
Tom: Me and my gym member Kim, and we sit there for two, three minutes. Talk about what's going on the market. We have fun with them. Our whole thought process was, yeah, we're making this for our core database. Anyone else that sees it is a bonus, but we're talking to our people. The consistency of that's been great. All even sometimes go out to parties or stuff and someone I haven't seen in years is like, "Hey, I watch all your stuff. I'll call you when I'm ready.
They've never liked or commented on anything, but so many people are silently watching or consuming. It's so many times I've had people's reshares buy a place. I'm like, "I haven't talked to you in five years," but I'm showing them like-
Dean: Just watch yourself.
Tom: That's it, right? That's been really neat. Then we do our best on Instagram to stay up to date. We were very active and posting in videos. One thing that I thought was kind of unique about that is I was worried for a while because I would say like half my Instagram followers is probably other realtors. I don't know, I think that happened from going to conferences and doing speaking gigs and things like that which is cool, but then I started thinking like, "Are other realtors just consuming myself not the actual client?"
Then Referrals started coming in from other realtors. It was just like kind of mine like, "Oh, okay. It doesn't matter who's seeing it as long as someone knows you're there.
Dean: That's right.
Tom: Yeah, I'm all in on video. It's already King whether you like it or not. It's what's next. It's what's now.
Dean: One of the things that we've been doing with video and that you can still do this in Canada. In the US that it's been a little or more difficult, but we've been for over a year, we were running, like micro targeted Facebook ads before timing it for when the postcards arrive. We would mail to Cypress wood or to Lake Ashton, which are areas of about 1000 homes, and we would create a micro targeted geographic area on Facebook by choosing the drop a pin in the middle of it, and then with a combination of include this one mile radius, and then exclude this, this, this and this, like surrounding it. So you only get the area that you want.
If it's King West, for instance, that we would do a video in King West, or Diane would do it outside of Lake Ashton, and say, "Hey, it's Diane reporting live from Cypress wood. I've got the October 2019 report on Cypress wood house prices." If you saw this postcard in the mail offering this report like this last month, we had 13 sales and three, one under contract. Whatever the summary of the stuff, you want to get this report, just click right here or visit Cypresswoodhousepricereport.com.
What would happen is we'd get a bump in the responses, because for all the reasons that people would get the card, and they would see it and think, "Oh yeah, I want to get that." Then as they're walking in the house it's time for dinner and homework and the dogs and whatever else and that life gets in the way. Then at 10 o'clock, when they're sitting there watching TV and a commercial comes on, they start scrolling through Facebook, and there's this video right there to remind them, "Oh, yeah, I wanted to get this," and it makes it super easy for them.
Tom: I love that. Yeah.
Dean: That was a really great combination. We'd only run it for 30 hours. We'd start at one evening, like, we'd start at 5PM on a whatever day the postcards are arriving. Then we run it till midnight, the next night kind of thing. That was it.
Tom: I used to do that. That's a great idea. I had done specific areas videos at one point, but I wasn't consistent with it. Also I wasn't running a secondary mailer out. I know, I think that's a great idea, because we already kind of do that. It's how do I now set it up? And moving forward have that when the cards go out, the video goes out. I already know the areas that I target. I already have them all out Facebook. That's a really, really good idea.
Dean: Yeah, and that way, anything you can do about those, like creating video assets of highlighting neighborhoods, or buildings, or complexes, or townhouses or amenities, or all of the things as if you were the listing agent for the neighborhood, that's all going to be valuable stuff.
Tom: It's things that people actually care about and would want more information on, right?
Dean: Right, and it is going to have a life. That's the thing. When you talk about a specific condo complex or condo building or a townhouse complex or a neighborhood, that neighborhood's not going anywhere. It's going to be there for the next five years. So now you've got this growing asset, that timeless. There's some super ninja strategies that we've been doing along that line.
I'll share with you offline, but there's something amazing. This idea of appointing yourself to be the listing ambassador for that neighborhood, it's the key to I think disrupting the disruptors.
Tom: Absolutely, because you're the one with the information. Right?
Dean: Yeah, that's it.
Tom: Even in my market-
Dean: Yeah. Sorry, go on.
Tom: Even in my market, I noticed when the sold data became public, and it was all this big thing? Well, we realized pretty quick. It didn't change anything.
Dean: It's not about the data.
Tom: No, but it was funny for me, because all these sites that for a long time were kind of looked at as the sites that would release it that shouldn't have released it, but when it became public my clients would send me listings, they wanted to see from those specific sites with all the other agents beside it, but they'd be like, "Hey, what's the deal with this?" How they're getting the information, we can never stop that. It's do we provide that, like, what's the value gap? Why would they call me? Well, because I've changed touch with them and show them that I'm the guy and if you're the neighborhood specialist, regardless of all these new things that are going to come in.
Dean: I have a client that does dashboards, like data dashboards for big businesses, and I learned for who is, it's never about the data, it's about the information. What is the information that the data is telling us? That's the most important part. Is that the thing. The raw data is not enough.
Tom: Even just to understand what it is, right? Because you can throw some data down in front of me, but if I don't have the context to understand it's for my specific situation.
Dean: It's worthless to me. The story of the data.
Tom: There you go. Exactly.
Dean: Well, one more thing that I wanted to ask you about, because you're doing such a great job in your after unit. What I wanted to ask was about the ratio listings to buyers, and your listing multiplier index, whether you measure that as you pay pension to?
Tom: Yeah, so only recently kind of as I got more into your teachings, have I kind of focused-
Dean: How did we end up connecting? How did we get connected?
Tom: It's so funny is I signed up for something two years ago, and you got my email. I'm sure you get. Then it was for the listing. I think it was for this podcast, the book when you first started it.
Dean: Yep, the book is a lifestyle book, right?
Tom: Yeah, and I would listen to the podcast, and then on one of the podcasts, you were talking about if a bundle of 100 leads come in, 50% will buy, but it's an 18 month thing. I was like, "Oh my gosh, I probably sign after this like 18 months ago and finally committed." It was like one of those things is like, "Okay, well, there's something to this, right? One thing I want to ask you, and I'll share all my numbers for the listing multiplier index because it'll be interesting to go back and look at previous years, what actually aim. Is there a timeline cap? Like, it's 18 months whether would you cap it for, okay, my score at a five stops at this point? Or does it never stop?
Dean: Well, I look at that we keep an index of your last 10 listings. Why is it still on the board kind of thing? That's really what we're looking for is most of those points are going to come in while the transaction was kind of going on in the 30, 60, 90 days after that kind of thing. That's typically how we do it is it's a real rolling your last 10 listings. When that 10th one falls off, that comes up to give you an indication of what's happening.
Tom: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. This year for my team, we've taken about 35 listings. We're almost 50/50 with buyers. We're going to do about 65 transactions this year. It's almost 50/50, but my role has changed where the goal 100% would be to just handle listings, and my team members are awesome with buyers and they do an amazing job. That's already starting to happen. I would say I still have a handful of buyers that I feel like indebted to in some weird way, but the goal is moving forward is I want to build the business where I do the listings, I figure out ways with the marketing to get the index multiplier of it, which then feeds the team, and everyone's happy. That's the goal.
As of right now team wise, we're probably 50/50, but that's probably the best we've ever been. The whole team we're all under 30. We still got a ton of first time home buyers, which is our bread and butter. We love working with them, they’re awesome. Every year I've gotten closer to getting more listings focus, but the goal is to be heavy listings focus, figure out how to make more buyers from it and go from there.
Dean: Do you calculate the points that you get on your last 10 listings in terms of your last 10 completed listings to give you how many did you get sold, you found a buyer that bought another house, you got another listing or you got a referral?
Tom: I haven't done the calculation yet because this kind of thought process I learned about less than a month ago, but the listings we currently have on the market, we've followed everything from the instant open house postcard. I had never done any of that. We're lucky the market that we work in, we sell almost everything we list.
Dean: That's the thing that you have to really know that, but you have to really do everything you can to seize that opportunity because once it's gone, it's gone. Once that listing is sold, you don't have the opportunities that you had and I know that.
Tom: I get no for sale sign outside of it, right? It's not as much. You can't market it the traditional ways as much as you could with a house.
Dean: One of the things we do for those for condos or townhouse complex is where you can't have signs or gated communities. We've been doing a trip wire sign by setting up a geographic ring around that building. Everybody that passes through that is an audience for our Facebook ad so that way It's like a digital sign.
Tom: Yeah, that's a good idea. Right?
Dean: It's like they're driving by. Truth is, there's a bigger chance that they're going to see it in their newsfeed, then they're going to see it in reality because nobody's looking up. Nobody. They would not see the actual sign because everybody's looking at their phone.
Tom: So you get them on that platform.
Dean: Right. I'm saying every single 100% of the passengers in vehicles, trains, and buses or trolleys are 100% looking at their phone. 75% of the drivers are looking at their phone and not looking up. There's the 25% that are the diligent drivers that are actually looking at the road. They're not sneaking looks at their phone so you're better off to have it show up on their new feed, more likely that they'll see it then see the actual sign.
Tom: Then the information is actually there. They don't have to take the next step. It's like, it's right there. They can click it to get the information.
Dean: That's exactly right.
Tom: This is something that I'm really going to look into for the end of this year and into next year is still a lot of our listings are coming from our database, obviously, but as you start to build out the getting listing system and adding that in. Then if I could just up my multiplier whether it's a half point or a full point that's a smart way. Yeah, like that's leverage business, right? I've already got the thing, which is the listing and for a long time, it was just like, "Okay, well, if I sell it in a day, everybody's happy, my clients happy, that's maybe an opportunity to get a two out of five because maybe they'll refer me to another seller because I did such a good job." I kind of ignored everything else.
We went through a market not so much now, but the last few years. If a condo didn't sell in seven days, it was because it was overpriced. You almost didn't even have time to market your property. In markets that are buyers’ market, those two will be like, "Shut up, Tom." That's great, but it was still like we would come out and it was gone. That was it and you moved on and you want to try to get the next one but didn't leverage it at all.
Dean: That's right. So exciting.
Tom: Yeah, I'm excited to put everything in the place here. I'm a jeweler. I would try and get an idea actually I want to follow through.
Dean: I get that too. Very excited. Glad that we met finally. That's good. But here we are.
Tom: Well, there you go.
Dean: That' so funny. Are you going to join us for the Mastermind on the 19th and 20th. Did you know about that?
Tom: Is that October?
Dean: It's October.
Tom: Yeah, I got the email. I'll sign up for it. Yeah.
Dean: Right, because these are the kinds of things, the future now kind of things that I was talking about some of those ninja strategies that we're going to talk about will be really great. I'm looking forward to it.
Tom: I'll be there.
Dean: Yeah. Tom I really enjoyed our conversation. I can't wait to meet you. I'm very excited to see what's going on with your Market Maker a year from now. If you look in the forum, in GoGo Agents in the members blog. In the forum, there's a thread about market makers, Ron Read just posted something in there. If you look back, there's great examples of what people are doing and just the results from that over the course of the year. Its free money for literally 10 minutes of your time to think that thought. I'm thinking about a simple way to text everybody on Monday, just the Market Maker Monday reminder.
Tom: Well, I think that it's such a good idea. It's so simple, but all good ideas usually are so simple. That you just go like, "Oh, yeah, that makes sense," but then you don't do it because it's so obvious. I think people need that kick, that accountability to do it because I'm going to have my admin give me the kick every Monday to make sure I'm doing it because there is some great opportunity there.
Dean: I love it. Very cool. Okay. Well, I'll see you in a couple of weeks. I'm super excited to hear your story and watch what's going to happen here.
Tom: Yeah, me too. Thank you so much for having me on. It was a lot of fun for me today.
Dean: Thanks. I'll talk to you soon.
Tom: Okay, bye.
Dean: Bye. There we have it. I love to talk with people who are actually getting the results that we talked about, getting the benchmarks. We talked about measuring your after you that results as return on relationship meaning you know 150 people, and some number of those people are going to move this year, or they're going to have a friend who moves this year. What we're looking to do for you, is to get to a point where at least managing that relationship portfolio for a 20% annual yield.
You should be able to generate 30 transactions from that group of people. It's not easy. It'll take a little effort, it takes a focus. It's the most competition proof thing that you have, and I think future proof, which is really important, because as we're going more and more automated, and more and more instant gratification online, the relationship is going to be the thing that saves everything.
You want to kind of focus on that. If you're in the Toronto area, or in the Northeast, or anywhere, really if you want to fly in, in a couple of weeks here October 19, and 20th. We're having and amazing Mastermind in Toronto, that is going to focus on the future of real estate of preparing yourself. We're coming into the '20s now. We're focused on the first proper decade of the millennium here. We want to see what are the things that are available for you right now that are going to prepare you for the future?
I alluded to some of the things that we're talking about on the call on the podcast here. If you can make it on day one, we're joining up with the Archangel Summit, will have Seth Godin will be there and Todd Herman and a whole lot of other amazing speakers, we'll be thousands of people at that event. Then on Sunday will be just a real estate Mastermind where we have small group and we'll focused just on applying all of these future things for the Listing Agent Lifestyle elements. Send me an email Dean@DeanJackson.com and just put Toronto in the subject line and I'll get you all the details. Okay, have a great week. I'll talk to you next time.