Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast we're continuing our journey, looking at the future of real estate, the immediate future, the things that are here today that are going to shape this next decade of the '20s.
So these next few episodes will be some of the sessions from our recent Real Estate Summit in Toronto, talking about the future of getting listings, the future of multiplying our listings, of getting referrals, and of converting leads and finding buyers.
Today we're looking at multiplying our listings, and what are the trends already in motion? The trends that are going to work in our favor and, what are the things that are really going to give us an advantage if we embrace them to move forward on each of the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle.
You're really going to enjoy this as you direct your thinking not just to a new year, but to a new decade. What is it really going to mean to go into the '20s, and how can we equip you to be completely prepared to embrace all of these opportunities.
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep097
Dean: Hello and welcome to the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast. My name's Dean and today we are closing it on the end of the year and not only the end of the year, we are closing in on the end of a decade and the first real decade of the new millennium here, the 20s. So I'm very excited about that. And we had an event in Toronto this October to talk about exactly that, the future of real estate, the immediate future, the things that are here now and the things that are going to shape this decade of the 20s. Where are the moving sidewalks? Where are the things that are trends that are already in motion that are going to work in our favor, and what are the things that are really going to give us an advantage if we embrace them and move forward on each of the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle. So we had a mastermind and I recorded some of the sessions for us.
So these next few episodes will be different sessions that we did talking about getting listings, the future of getting listings. What does that look like? The future of multiplying our listings, of getting referrals, of converting leads and finding buyers. And so I think you're really going to enjoy this as you kind of direct your thinking now, not just to a new year but to a new decade. What's this really going to mean going into the 20s, and how can we equip you to be completely prepared to embrace all these and make things as easy as we can possibly make them so that we're experiencing daily joy and abundant time and financial peace? All of the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle. So I think you're going to enjoy this series and I will let you enjoy it and we will go through all, I think there's four episodes in this series. So here we go.
Okay, so let's transition into multiplying our listings. And we'll set up this idea though around getting listings that I see that the mail service is not going to go anywhere yet. Direct mail is still a huge industry and you don't need any more proof of that than looking how Google and Facebook try and attract you to advertise through direct mail. And it's funny how all of those things, it's still going to be I think the bargain of the century that you can hire a uniformed government employee to deliver a message right to somebody's house for 50 cents is a deal.
And so being in the mail, some physical things make a difference. It's still the control of what we're doing here supplemented by all of the online things that you can do. It'll be interesting to see how it all settles out with Facebook in terms of being able to have that sustainable. Right now Facebook is like it's better than we deserve. It's even still with the not being able to target less than 15 miles, it's still better than anything, being able to for other businesses especially, it's really like an amazing opportunity. But even for real estate, it's still like being able to run digital newspaper ads.
That's really what it's come down to now where you can't... It's like running a newspaper ad that distributed to wherever the newspaper distributed. You just can't only send in the newspaper to specific people, but you totally understand where they're coming from or what the laws are, the laws, right? That you have to work within whatever the parameters are that are available.
And just knowing that this asset that we're developing of people who've raised their hand as homeowners, that they are at some point going to sell their house and if we're there that we've got the best opportunity to be the one that they choose. That we can establish that buying reflects that when it's time to sell their house, they're buying reflex is, let's call Mary and let's call Gina. That's really the thing that we want to establish. Now, this idea of multiplying our listings when we get really fits into how we can enhance the number of listings that we get as well. Because the things that we're doing to set us up to be able to multiply our listings are really going to help us be a market maker and get more listings.
So let's kind of set the table for multiplying our listings by revisiting this idea of our listing multiplier index as the measurement of this. And what I talk about when we're calculating your listing multiplier index is a way to give us a standardized way to compare and look at what we're actually doing and the result that we're getting to so that everybody knows what that means when we're talking with each other. So the standardized metric of it is to look back at the last 10 listings that you've had and to establish how many transactions you did as a result of those 10 listings. So each listing comes with an opportunity to get five additional transactions.
We look at, did you get the listing sold? Did you find the buyer for that house? Did you find a buyer who bought another house but didn't buy that one? Maybe they came to an open house, but you were able to sell them another house or they responded to your infobox flyer and you sold them another house. Did you get another listing in the neighborhood because of the exposure that you got from that listing that you had, and did you get a referral from the seller during the time that you were working to get their house sold? So if we look back and give yourself a score out of 50 possible points on the last 10 listings, that will help us establish what your index is.
Now, when I present that to people for the first time, typically what I find is they're somewhere between eight and 15 points total on that whole of the last 10 listings that they got. Knowing that if you put a listing on the market and it was withdrawn, that you didn't get any points for that, it still counts because it's all to establish what is your current outcome when you list the property. And if two out of 10 times the listing expires or comes off the market, you need to know that and look at your ability to pick the right listings to get or how that's working against you there.
So when we take that number, if it's 15 total points that we then divide it by 10 to get your index. So that means that each, if you had 15 divided by 10, 1.5 Is your listing multiplier index, meaning that with your current system, the current way that you're doing business on the last 10 listings is going to yield 1.5 transactions per new listing that you get. And the goal is to raise that number to get that. Now, our clubhouse leaders, since we've been focusing on this thing are up over three on the listing multiplier index, so that each listing is turning into three or more transactions and that's a huge difference in income.
You get to the point where the person who can spend the most money to get a listing, knowing that instead of $10,000 from every listing that you're getting, 30,000 or $35,000 it makes it so much easier there. But I'd love to hear, has anybody just without prompting or without missing it, does anybody know what their listing multiplier index is or have gone through that exercise at one point and calculate it out? What's your listing multiplier is? Have you-
Speaker: I'm around 1.5 ish. I haven't had that many listings. I've been pretty buyer-centric. But every listing I do have I've either had a referral or I've had several, because I do some Facebook marketing, so I'll do a listing-
Dean: You're generating buyers because of the listing?
Speaker: Yeah, or they call on that house. "Hey, is that one still available?" Well, it's not, but there's several in the area that are like it. And I say that I have not done just listed, I have not done just sold cards. I've done property flyers on two of them. I didn't get anything out of it, but I could be doing way better.
Dean: And part of that thing, part of what I hear that I think are the saddest words that I ever hear are, I don't have to do, just list it and our listings sell. The market's really hot right now. I don't have to do just listeds or open houses or we just price it right, put it up, it's gone within a week. All of our listings sell for 98% of the asking price in seven or 10 days or whatever. And like that's the thing that they're proudest of. But I look at it and I feel like it's just, they're missing out on so much because of it. Has anybody else calculated their listing multiplier index or what's-
Speaker: Yeah, we have one.
Dean: Where are we at the state of the union on that? Marion, did you say you-
Marion: I did a while ago, and I don't remember.
Dean: Oh, you don't? Okay.
Marion: I did that a long time ago. I don't know what my number is.
Dean: Yeah. And it's a really interesting thing that, how about you guys? I know-
Speaker: I think I'm around two, a little bit over two. I don't know the exact number but-.
Speaker: We're doing a lot more double ends because we're just being aware of that don't just end the lesson. See if you have a buyer before or do some pre-marketing. It's really helped that multiplier for us. So when we get the listing seven to 10 days before there's a whole marketing campaign that goes out. It works really well. I mean, especially when there's not much supply. Diane was saying there's no homes for sale in a niche area it works really great. So I would say I think last time I checked it was 2.2 and you remember that listing we had, we had six points and-
Dean: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: The one listening.
Dean: That's the thing, when we first started measuring it, Tony was on fire with the getting that up and we've still Ron Reed has really taken to that over three as well. How about you Chuck? What's your-
Chuck: I was 1.9 the last time we did it. Yeah. But with very little... I mean we have structures in place to get referrals during the process. We make people very aware of that. For example, in our first meeting we would say is that our purpose is to provide a five star experience. And then there's an email that goes out I think somewhere between two and three weeks. And it just says, remember we told you what our goal and our purpose was just checking in to see how we're doing with that. And it's like this. So it's like top of mind that that's what we're trying to deliver. It's the first thing you see on our website.
Dean: Right.
Chuck: Eight. So I would even add another point is that, because sometimes it's like you're asking for a referral they say, "Well I don't know anyone." So a review online for us has been a big thing. So I would almost add another half point or a point for getting a review because that's the public acknowledgement that hey, these guys.
Dean: And I would reframe it and that's something... I think that's something different.
Chuck: Yeah, but it is a result that we track.
Dean: Absolutely.
Chuck: Similar to referrals.
Dean: Yeah. One of the things that I would look at in this is to really get serious about presencing this because it's the thing that you're losing the very most money because of, and it's like, I don't know what I'm really interested in is, is it crystal clear to you how to calculate it. What that number is. Is everybody crystal clear so you understand how to do it? What I'm trying to wrap my mind around is what the friction or resistance or what stops it from happening? Measuring or knowing that number as a metric, key metric that people track. What's your experience with... Is this the first time you've heard those words listing multiplier index score?
Chuck: About a month ago.
Dean: Okay.
Chuck: Yeah. But I was trying to think of what's the step by step for each of them?So selling, listing, that's obvious, right? Finding the buyer for each one of those five, is there something you could specifically do?
Dean: Absolutely there is.
Chuck: Because I know we've been starting it with we'd be using market maker and it's worked really well. Our clients would get our new listings and thing like that. But now we're doing very specific, hey I have a condo coming here, just wanting to let you know if you want to pick your neighbor and we're getting great response from that. It's reminding them that's what we do top of mind. But other than market maker or specifically written the copy of the just sold or the one thing that's worked for us is we send out a postcard to the neighborhood once we sell a condo it says hey neighbor. And it's a handwritten, well it's not handwritten but you cannot tell it's not handwritten.
Really quick blur about just sold a property. Just want to let you know we don't put what it was and just I sign it and put my cell phone number. And we get a lot of calls on that typically from people over the age of 50 because they truly think I hand wrote it to them. I don't know for whatever reason, and that's turned into listing appointments and listing. So that's something that we've done. But I would like to know for each of the five, it would be cool to know what specific strategy can you do to try and get your score higher?
Dean: That's perfect. That's exactly what we're going to focus on is those exact strategies. But what I want to see is it has to come from how do we know what's working if it's not being measured? In a way so I look at it that it's one of those simple things that it's so valuable when you look at... If you just were to raise your listing multiplier index by half of a point over the next 10 listings, how much money is that worth? Just kind of think in your head, what's your average commission? And I got to imagine that there's not anybody in here that that number's not $50,000 or more.
And so then the question comes up is, what would it be worth if you raise it by one or two? I mean it's even it's amazing what that opportunity is. And when we list a property, you're the only one that has this opportunity. It's literally competition proof. You're the only person in the world that has the opportunity to put an infobox in front of that house. You're the only one who's got that relationship with the sellers. You're in that neighborhood. So all of these things that we have so many great things to look forward to.
So I look at it that the gold standard, when we look at what are the things that we could do would be infobox flyer, the instant open house landing page that we've already got set up. Yeah.
Speaker: What is that? What is the instant open house landing page?
Dean: So that's in GoGo, in GoGo Agent, the instant open house landing page is the single property page that we put together for every listing. So we've got the instant open house. You can put a big picture of the house on the thing. It's got for property info details, leave their name and their email address, and come on in on the button. Everything about the infobox flyer just points people to 22greystone.com and when they go there that's all they see. They can put in their name and their email address and we then send a PDF with all the pictures and updates.
Speaker: Okay. That's what I was missing. Okay, so they basically fill in this thing on the instant open house they're just getting a PDF of information about the house.
Dean: Yeah. That's exactly right. And so we look at that as the baseline things, where that is... And there's really no excuse for not doing that because we've even gotten to the point where Diane can do that for us. That's with the easy button just point where the listing is. Send the link here. We got this one and she does everything with the sets up the landing page, sets up the property PDF sets it all up, programs it to send out the messages when people come, flags them in your CRM so that everybody that comes in through that landing page is flagged so that you know it was 22 Greystone that they came from. So they're tagged as a buyer and 22 Graystone specifically and then you're able to send an email.
This is where we do like the first time is start the process and then maybe on the Wednesday after everybody who's come through or whatever, we'll send an email and say, I've got some people coming to look at the house this weekend, would you like to join us? Just the short personal expecting a reply email. And when people say, "Oh yeah, when is it? Or what are the details?" Then you say, "We could go on Saturday at one o'clock." And then you got everybody coming at the same time. Yeah. Let's kind of break it down into the little pieces here. How many people have set up an instant open house landing page or, yeah. So you've done that, you've done that, you've done that. You didn't know about it until now. Okay. And the infobox flyers how many people are using those? Yeah. Are you using them?
Chuck: Condos don't allow it.
Dean: Oh right, okay. Yeah.
Marion: That's what I was going to say. A lot of condos can't do that.
Dean: Right, a lot of condos. Yeah. So what we were doing with the condos, you might be able to do it here is we were ring fencing the condo complex and going across the main street where everybody like if it's on a particular street, go outside of that. But everybody who's driving by to show the ad to those people, it's like a digital sign where you're not allowed to have a sign because it'll show up in their newsfeed. One of the targeting.
Marion: Sorry, what do you mean? What is that?
Dean: So one of the targeting options you can have, you can target people who live here or people who are passing through here. People who their phone goes through that area. So that means anybody who drove through it's like being shown the sign for it. Yeah.
Speaker: I liked what you said, cause we talked about this is that most people are looking down, they're not looking up anyways.
Dean: That's the thing.
Speaker: So the chances of them seeing it is better on their phone than actually the physical signs.
Dean: That's exactly right. That's a bigger chance they're going to see that sign than the real physical sign. You're right. Chuck, what's been the latest stuff with you guys with the infobox five school? I know you were doing them for a while there. Are you back on them or were you off them an hour back or what's your-
Chuck: No, we've been doing them the whole time. The difference with ours is we don't have the leave your name and email. It's just get information about the property and then have a form at the bottom. Just because so much of my stuff was locked behind closed doors, so it was like, okay, let's give you something. Let's make it easy, right or wrong. That was a decision that was made. I'd like to test this though. It's almost like because what we do is we have with each property would be like one, two, three main.com or something. But I'm almost thinking that depending on the medium, because an open, I think someone who walks up to the sign takes the flyer out is more likely to leave a name and email.
I think there's effort. It's like what you were saying, so I'm almost thinking for the infobox flyers, I could have something where it's maybe I'll register one, two, three main S T, like street.com and then those people get a landing page that goes to the one to three main.com. You know what I mean? Like have two URLs that are similar but different. And then maybe the online version is when we do, let's say a launch on our business pages that we'll use the one that doesn't need a landing page so that it's a more friction-free way of doing it. Any value in that?
Dean: Well, I mean I'd look at it that the way that we do it, I just use the infobox flyer as I look again, is what's the mechanical outcome that we want? What's the purpose of it? And the purpose of the infobox flyer is not to sell the house. It's not to convince somebody to buy the house, it's to get more information about it. So the infobox flyers that we use are very simple. There's no extra pictures. It's just this is the house, here's the address and the price. Here's the URL to get all the information. So you go to 22 Greystone, and then what I do is we don't add any new information. I use that as the placeholder to let you know you're in the right place. Here's the picture on the flyer. There's the picture on the website. Oh yeah, we're here.
And it's saying the same thing. Oh, now we just put in our name and email to get the information. It's no different than people who go into a physical open house would expect to sign in. And we've been testing using on an iPad, the instant open house page as the sign in for the open house. So you have those little like the square pads.
Chuck: The display ones, the-.
Dean: Yeah, so on the counter. Yeah, but there's the thing and it's just sign in.
Chuck: Yeah, because some agents use open home pro. And I've always thought well GoGo clients can-
Dean: This is open like that. It's an open house.
Chuck: It's the same thing, but now it's in your marketing-
Dean: That's exactly right.
Chuck: ... system and program and yeah.
Dean: Yeah. So I look at it that there's no, it's not like we're giving them a little bit of information and then to go further oh, you can't go in that room. It's almost like I've always had the things like when you go to certain websites and looks like you're searching properties, but then you click on it to get the info and the bucket of water in the face kind of thing. No, you can't go in there.
Chuck: Yeah, use your phone number as your password.
Dean: Right, exactly. So I just do the thing. We just have it so that it's a place holder and it's crystal clear that you're going to leave your name and your email and it would seem weird for somebody to drive by, get out of their car, grab an infobox, come back, go to the landing page, and then not leave their name and info if they wanted the information.
Chuck: Yeah, makes sense.
Dean: Right, so it's just, it's a placeholder. It's like, yeah, you're in the right place. Come on in.
Chuck: So I'm going to use your language on this. So it's like you're moving them from the physical world to cloud land.
Dean: That's right.
Chuck: Right? It's a seamless transition to cloud land.
Dean: Yes, that's exactly it.
Marion: What's the benefit of the infobox flyer if you could just simply put a writer on the sign with the web address?
Dean: Well you can, but some people like to have something in their hand. It's another thing.
Speaker: We do both.
Dean: Yeah, we do both. Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah. We'll do the writer below the web address and then the flyer as well.
Marion: And on your flyers?
Dean: And I'm back on the QR code wagon now that I loved QR codes. What I thought QR codes were going to be when they first came out, because I thought this is super, but then it was such a hassle because you had to have have an app and nobody had the app and nobody knew what to do with the QR code. And now that phones are just automatically programmed with it, you just have to point your camera at it and it will automatically point that out.
So I'm totally back on that wagon and I've got my guys working on, we're going to do, we'll have the first test in a couple of weeks here, digital variable QR codes where we'll be able to mail postcards with the QR code on it and know who opened the thing. That's going to be so great. But that is so easy now. I could see having a QR code thing on the sign too that somebody can just point the-
Marion: And they're going to the landing page from there?
Dean: Yeah.
Marion: Where they need to give you an email?
Dean: Yes.
Speaker: In his world, yeah. My world they're just getting the information.
Dean: In his world.
Speaker: In the ideal version, yeah.
Dean: Yeah. In the listing multiplier 3.5 world, that's what we're-
Speaker: It wouldn't be too terribly difficult... Sorry. It wouldn't be too terribly difficult to do the retargeting if they opt in, they could immediately be uploaded and.
Dean: See even that's the thing, as soon as they go, there's a pixel. So you've got the opportunity to now you know that they were there whether they opted in or not.
Speaker: Later that day they see such and such house report come through their Facebook feed. They're like what? Of course I want that. I was just looking at a house over there.
Dean: Right. Yeah, so that makes a big... That's why is so much just to look at what I really want is I want to get a list of everybody who's specifically interested in that house and the only way they can get there is with the... I'll know because like Chuck said, your physical URL specifically for the open. I'm a little bit freaked out. I just wanted you guys to know something here.
So Jim Morton on my cell phone here. Jim Morton is the guy that owns Prospects Plus. And I was just talking about how we're testing the QR codes and here's Jim Morton phoning dialing my phone. I just manifested him like that. I mean, isn't that the funniest thing? Okay. Anyway.
Speaker: How often does he call you?
Dean: Well I mean not that frequently, but I mean just the fact that the timing of that, yeah, wild.
Speaker: So I've been fighting this instant landing page for some time, and I'm taking it maybe from a consumer's perspective. So why do I need to give you this information to get that, to get the listing?
Dean: They can go to Zillow. They can go -
Speaker: They can go everywhere to get it.
Dean: ... to Realtor.com, they can do all of that. Absolutely.
Speaker: And so, but then I guess it comes back to having a five star prospect for if they're willing to give you the information then you're willing to get.
Dean: Yeah, so that's the point is this is my point is that if you don't have an opt in page for it that we can be absolutely guaranteed that zero people will opt in. If we send a hundred people to an opt in page, it's also a certainty that some number greater than zero of people will leave their name and their email address.
Speaker: You had mentioned earlier about going to Zillow, you can have potentially and so this is something again, I'm sure several of us are doing, but Michael and I are definitely doing is video home tour. So you could potentially say video home tour not available and Zillow through that so you don't upload the video to or on Zillow, but keep it on that so that if they go there they can actually have the walkthrough video tour.
I'm just speculating here. But that would be a way for that to be something specific that they can get access through that landing page that they can't get anywhere else. They could go to your Facebook page, but then again they're going to your Facebook page to get the video tour. That's just my thought.
Andrew: If you just having them land there, they're not on your universe.
Dean: Right.
Andrew: Just having them on.
Dean: These are these things. That's part of the thing, right? Is just that they landed there. You've got that opportunity now that these are people who have come... They're actively looking, they came there.
Speaker: I was just thinking of what's the tease? What's getting them? And if that's like, well I want to see the inside of the house, but I don't want to contact an agent. But the video tour might be something they're like, oh, I really want to see that.
Dean: Yeah. And well we'll talk about video tours in a second too. But the idea, if we just kind of walk through what are the opportunities? And we're saying the first thing is that we either it's a given. I'm just giving it to you that you've priced the house right. That it shows right that you've got a seller and not a lister and that you've got a five star seller. All those things are there, right? So I'm giving you that level and that now that probably it is going to sell if you just put it in the MLS and somebody's going to bring a buyer and all of that.
But what I'm saying is now we want to proactively look at getting as many of those five things and let's not even think about it as your index, but let's think about it as each individual listing. Let's try and get five points on a perfect listing kind of thing. Let's play Yahtzee or something with these that... Because it might be a more interesting thing to think about the payoff of it being on this one listing, not so much on the Yahtzee.
Speaker: Or six or seven. I mean if you can get two or three referrals, right?
Dean: Oh yeah, absolutely. Five is par. I just look at it that you can get more let's go down to Devel. But I mean, yeah, you can get more, but let's see how many can you get? And it may be do you think that's a better focus if I were selling it to people, and this is the biggest thing that I have to deal with is trying to excite people to do something that I know they could do. But it's like there's some not as many people as I would think would do things like that are doing it.
Speaker: Because it takes real work.
Dean: It does take, it does I guess, but it doesn't, I mean the same thing is you can push this button and it's all done. And still I'm amazed by how many people don't still do this. And so anyway, go ahead.
Marion: I was just curious what suggestions you might have for when you're actually working the open house to try to turn those people into buyers?
Dean: Sure. Perfect. So that's perfect transition because when we look at what we're looking at here, when you get it on the mark we've got I'm assuming that this first point is going to be a given that at some point somebody's going to bring a buyer and it's going to sell and you're going to get one transaction out of that five. Now the next two that we're looking for here are going to be done with the same efforts.
You're going to find a buyer for this house or for another house that maybe is like this one but not specifically that one. So whatever we do to find the buyer is going to put us in contact with buyers. And so also of note is that anything we do before you list the house to find the category buyer is going to be an advantage for you on finding the buyer for the house ahead of time. Not counting, not starting when you list the house, but ahead of time.
If you have a pool of buyers who are looking for condos or looking for townhouses or whatever category or ocean front houses, that that's the big win. That's something that we can do that's going to immediately have payoffs for you, right? Because that's going to help you get the listing and it's also going to help you find the... Have the right buyers for it as well. Yeah.
Speaker: So I have a quick question because I have a lot of colleagues and friends in BC and I know this doesn't help anyone in the room, but I'm just interested. So they're not allowed to double end or it's very, very difficult. Ontario likes to copy BC a few years later after they do things, it's inevitable maybe at some point it comes here. Do we just adjust?
Dean: Yeah. I mean do what you do. If you can't do it you can't. But if you can, you can. And so yeah, absolutely. But the fact is somebody going to facilitate that. I mean they work around it. If you have somebody that wants to buy it, they're going to be facilitated by somebody who can represent them for less than.
Marion: But it's funny on that. It's almost like I actually don't want a double end. And the reason is is because when I list a condo, I'm going into multiple offers situation. I'm setting an offer date. I'm taking offers the next week. So if I double end it, it's going to cause a lot of problems. So I would much rather get a bunch of buyers and sell them something else because to me that's-
Marion: Yeah, and I do do that as well. But that's why I would much prefer to do that versus double ending because if you've got eight offers coming in on a condo and you're going to double end it, it's just-
Chuck: You can have your team double end it.
Dean: Oh yeah.
Marion: And the offers aren't great, so I prefer to just get buyers to sell them something else.
Dean: Yes.
Andrew: Well the first time I thought about them is actually a Dean idea that made me execute it the way I did is when I sold my house I posted a photo of the agents sign with sold, and I had four different agents message being like I wish all my clients did that when we sold. And then Dean was saying we were making something really easy for people. So we've started it and with the group that we have, we've given it to them of things to give your seller to promote on their own social. So give them the social graphics and give them the text to say and how to tag you in it, and you hand it to them but you give it size to the different platforms.
Giving them an Instagram story version, give them a Facebook version with the text of what to say. And they have the instructions on how to tag you and it can really help get in front of their audience that way instead of them sharing your business page.
Dean: A great thing for doing that and that's the next level down is getting a referral. Part of it is getting them involved in the process, right? So I'm a big fan of the idea of a strategy session with your sellers, getting them involved in the process where when the house is listed and it's all the stuff is done the photography, you're coming out to launch the marketing to bring with you to show them all of the things that you've got. But to have the overhead map of the satellite view of the neighborhood with little dots or posted things to have a conversation with the sellers.
Show them these are the just listed cards that we're going to send to everybody in the postal walk here, but I want to do something special for the people that you actually know. So have the map with them and say, check which one of these neighbors do you know? Do you know the names of these people here? And you're putting little labels on them and you've got the things to say, let's send them a little note.
And so while you're there, you're doing it with them, getting them involved in like the war room of it, right? That you're laying these things out on the table and where the buyer's going to come from and you've got that for these little letters that you can send to those people or cards or we're going to hand thing for them. Then talking about you're posting it up on their Facebook wall and saying, "Hey, let's do this and do you have Instagram? Let's put it up there."
And doing it right there with them while you're there, getting them involved in the things, giving them on their phone, the digital version of the infobox flyer to have on their phone so that when they hear someone talking about selling, you've got this and they can text it to the person that they're talking with.
Andrew: I had one idea too that came from I'm not sure [inaudible 00:44:01], it's in Thailand. It's a restaurant where the woman realized that every single time someone came they Instagrammed their food. So she changed all the tables to be recognizable that it was only her restaurant. So even if they didn't tag the restaurant, you knew it was hers because of the table. So I've been trying to think of what could I do with clients listings that would be like that table no matter what they did if they tagged us or not.
So I was wondering if anyone had any ideas of the right way, because I've still been thinking about it. I haven't quite come up with the right thing around that. But that idea of if they're taking a photo or something like that, what's a recognizable piece tagged or not that they're going to know that's Andrew?
Speaker: Yeah. What's the benefit of having the client share as opposed to-
Andrew: So you get better traction on there.
Dean: Yeah. So you want them to get involved in that.
Speaker: Well, I'd rather but having them post it organically rather than share your business page post what's the-
Andrew: Yeah, just that it's going to get you most likely more exposure. Yeah, so basically the way that Facebook works, it's going to in theory get you more exposure. Because like business pages they know, they want you to pay to get it out there to more people. If they're sharing it organically with their friends list, the personal friends list gets way more exposure. So it's just a better way to have it if you can get them to share it. Plus it comes as more authentic from them to their audience than a share.
Speaker: Yeah, I do the same thing with when I do the business interviews. When I. Sorry, a little outside of Dean stuff. But so when I do a business interview and I permit it on Facebook, I'll tell the business, "Hey, I'm going to make it go live." But as soon as I go live either myself, or my team member is going to share the link with you and I need for you and all of your team members to share and comment on the post.
Because if we can get a ton of organic and I'm kind of adopting their audience to a certain degree, then it comes as a organic and Facebook goes, oh man, this is already getting a ton of organic stuff. Let's make sure his ad spend is 20 cents per click rather than a dollar per click. And then I'll have them do it three or four days later and then I do a drawing based off of whatever. But if you can get a ton of organic content to start, your ad spend just goes further.
Dean: Yeah, and get it... I mean part of them, part of it is let's get back to Chuck there. Getting them involved in the process is a cool part of the thing too.
Chuck: I don't know if I'm sensing, but I feel like even for me is you get into this thing where we've just gone over 20 different ideas in 10 minutes kind of thing. And I remember it's like I've had this reaction before where Dean, how am I going to do this? And I remember you said something one time, these are like the Psalms of Dean, right? We're all good vessels. The clown shoes is one of the songs and all the aisles named food. And I'm like I can name off all the songs. But one of the ones is, I remember you said to me, you said, "Don't let the logistics interfere with the logic."
Dean: Right, that's exactly right.
Chuck: Is that it's like the logistics or who am I going to have do this and how am I going to get it done? And there's time and there's money restrictions, but all of this works. The logic you cannot deny, right?
Dean: Right. Imagine what is it costing you right now by not having somebody on your team who's 100% role is to be a certified listing multiplier?
Chuck: Well, if I raised by half a point?
Dean: What is it costing you to not have that person?
Chuck: Half a point is basically gaining me 300,000, so I've lost $300,000 by not getting the absolutely half a point. Not even hitting part.
Dean: That's what I'm saying. So it's one of those things that yeah, it just makes so much sense. This is where welcome to my world. Seeing you having that opportunity and that there's something blocking, but it is that-
Speaker: I'm going to go back to my original question, which was, so what can I do during an open house? Because I realized none of these things actually answered my question.
Dean: So first of all, the most important thing is to get people what you can do at the open house that will be the best thing is to get the most people to the open house. That's the thing that's going to be the biggest win.
Speaker: And I feel like that part's easy, that's a no brainer. So specifically, when people are walking in the door, what should I be saying and doing during the open house?
Dean: So the first thing that I look at is, do you know who they are? All we're looking for is it's in person five star prospects, right? Are they willing to engage in the dialogue? Are they friendly and cooperative? Do they know what they want? Are they ready to get it? Would they like me to help them? All five of those things have to be there. I think that the question that people always lead to is their selfish questions when you're going into it.
That we almost feel like are you working with an agent? Is the thing is are you going to let me help you with this? That's what we're selfishly focused on well, I'm not going to waste my time with you if you're working with an agent. And if people get that vibe, the odds are that they might tell you, yeah, Oh yeah, we're working with an agent so that that ends it right there. But if you're more interested in... It's like what Martin was talking about yesterday. Is being more helpful to them even when it doesn't seem like it's something in it for you.
We're so constantly concerned with getting the harder things first. Are you working with an agent? When are you looking? Are you ready to go? Have you been pre-approved? I mean all these, right? I'm not going to waste my time with you, am I? You're not going to waste my time. Yeah.
Speaker: In your opinion, what are the next best steps after receiving that email address and that name from let's say an infobox?
Dean: So perfect. It's the same thing we send out to people. Here's the information. Then we always have in every email that you're sending, we know that that's probably not going to be the only house for you, but we always say, whenever you're ready, here are three ways we can help you. We do daily tours of homes. We have a home buyer workshop and we do a free home loan report to monitor all the hundreds of different loan programs that are available.
There's the ways and plus, but basically here's all the information on this house. Then the Wednesday before the weekend sending to somebody and saying, "Hey, we're meeting some people at the house on the weekend. Would you like to join us?" And that's short, personal, expecting a reply that all we're trying to see are they willing to engage in a dialogue?
Well, when are you getting together? Yeah, I might like to come and see it or no, we're not interested in that one or whatever it is. All we're doing to see is are they somebody who is willing to engage in a dialogue. And if they are, then we're going to meet on Saturday at two o'clock. And that way everybody, you get the people coming all at the same time. And you don't have to go do an open house unless people are coming.
Speaker: I realize it gets a long term execution.
Dean: Right. And then every week now everybody, every buyer is in your market watch email every week. Here's what's happened this week, here's the new listings, here's what we're looking at. Here's what I saw, here's what's going on. Here's something interesting in the news. Or you don't even have to do that. When we talk about converting leads, Ashley is my exhibit A on, on the minimum thing you could possibly do that still works. You get that super signature in front of people so that whenever it's now they can push the the button. Yeah.
Speaker: If it's okay, I just want to go back to the open house topic.
Dean: Sure.
Speaker: Because I love that topic. One of my missions was always to figure out new ways to get as much as possible. So I remember one time at one of my particular open houses, I went all out. I literally, I had a banner in front of the property, which I created for the property, which just talked about schools, amenities and things like that, which I put out front. It was summer I was able to do it. And then I had a table full of what I call ammunition. So market reports was one of them. But then I had separate ones so townhouse and one guide for touring open houses. So what I found was they loved taking that stuff. Everyone who came loved... And it was more conversation for me.
It was just the longer I could keep them there and the longer I could talk to them and the more they could see credibility or I can demonstrate credibility. And the only reason I know this is because, I mean I've been doing sales since I was 16. My first seven deals in real estate. I did in my first two months of selling from a Walmart kiosk. You look at open houses the same way as I do that kiosk, is just a stage for me to be able to present myself and talk to people that are walking out with groceries or if they're coming into the house, that's even better for me. So I think, I don't know if anyone has other ideas, but giving away stuff really helps and stuff that's relevant to them I found has always led to more conversations.
Andrew: Well I love that. If anyone knows Ralph Sansio so he sells out and yeah, he's got a great open house. Stuff like one of the things I just love that he does is he always has music playing in every open house that's really slow because people walk through slower so they stay longer. And then he also has every song has the word home in it. Yeah, he has a custom curated playlist with the words home and they're all slow because he's like I want them to walk through slow and be thinking home every time they walk through the house. It's pretty funny. He's got a ton of stuff. He also does like he'll give out $5 gas cards to everyone who comes in and like, thanks for taking the time to come here. Let me cover the cost of your gas and for five bucks, it's a great way to build the Goodwill with everyone.
Speaker: Just one last thing too, People are typically going to a few open houses that day. I know Ralph as well literally puts a red carpet going up to the door and and he calls them mega open houses and if you see five properties, but whether you didn't like this house or not, you remembered this house, that guy because he made the experience better.
Dean: Yeah. That's awesome. I mean it's part of that thing is one of those things if you're going to get wet, you may as well go swimming. And that's the thing that there's something about going above and beyond, turning the open house into a real thing. Use other people on your team to have another property or two other properties that are just like that one that you can direct people. We've got two more over here and over here that now it's like an event.
Speaker: What about your coming soon book because Kirk has that about the neighborhood only open house.
Dean: Yeah, I'll repeat what he said. Talking about doing the neighbor open house, having just the neighbors come by as an opportunity because again, part of this thing we're thinking ahead that one of the points that we want to get is the next listing in that neighborhood. So we want to look at... We want to leverage the people that the seller knows by name when we get that map out, when you got the satellite view, if you guys have like an 11 by 17 printer to print the satellite view of the neighborhood, the 2D or 3D view so that you could see almost like looking in on the houses but just zoomed into the immediate neighborhood to have people do who do you know? They go, "Oh yeah, there's the Johnson's and there's the things."
And typically it's all going to be people that you can see from the end of the driveway. That's really who you have a knowledge of, or your kids play with their kids or that kind of a thing. So that's where the conversations are going to be happening. And you want them to have a good conversation about you. And so if they see the infobox, they see you've invited them to pop by for the... If you do it after hours like a pop by at happy hour type of cocktail thing just on a Thursday after work, or that you're doing all of those things that are going to put you into communication, put a name to a face with the neighbors that's all leading to down the line.
Especially when your primary focus is on that they may know somebody who wants to be in that neighborhood. That you're not, "So when are you thinking about selling?" This whole not so it's all your selfish focus. Yeah. Where are we at? Here we go.
Andrew: A friend of mine, Jeff Ham really successful, hundreds of transactions. He actually says that when he runs an open house, he's not looking for buyers, he's looking for sellers. So it's a subtle mind shift that to the point where what he'll do is if he can get... It's almost like everybody wants the email and the phone number, he wants their address, right? He's like, that's the thing that I want, because then I can go into geo warehouse and I can... And what he'll do is he'll actually section time after the open house and he'll run reports to see who... Do you live at that address? Are you the owner? And he'll show up right at their door.
And I mean it's a little bit aggressive in that sense, but here's the thing. Some people are put off but other people are really impressed like the Ralph thing. And if they do kind of go, "Why are you here?" He just says, "Look, I'm here to give value and to contribute and to make things really good for you." So he can kind of save himself from the creepiness by having a good mindset about it. But I mean he's done a lot of business just from that is thinking about every person who walks into this open house likely as a home to sell.
Dean: Yeah.
Andrew: It's a neat way to think.
Andrew: Why not?
Dean: Well where I've got, so I'm going to start doing some testing around for another micro targeting thing. The things that you're able to do now geo-fencing is pretty sophisticated with ways. I've got some friends that do traditional ad buys that for retail stores, you can ring fence a particular address like a restaurant that anybody that goes in that restaurant is now tagged and they're showing your ads to everybody that goes to the other pizza shop kind of thing.
I'm thinking about that same thing for homes that are on the market right now. Then when you start looking at tagging open houses or the things for people coming in that address is pretty stuff kind of opportunity here. I just think the technologies that we're going to have availability to are going to be pretty amazing even if you know what's available now. Have you seen anything like this Andrew of what the-.
Andrew: I think we're going to do it on an open house level for that paper targeting. We've done a lot of... One that we've done with that hyper-targeting where we know people are going to be as like military locations and we'll drop it on all the bases being like did you get posted to see if be Borden. And then it's funny because we get a lot of military members comment and be like, "What do you know that I don't know?" Because we do it. We start running it two weeks before posting season starts and it seems to work pretty well.
Dean: Amazing. Yeah. This digital that's part... So much about once we get into this digital world that even from an infobox flyer that if somebody goes and doesn't put in their name and their email address, the fact that you've got the record that they were there and can now show up in their newsfeed is-
Andrew: Yeah we do a lot of like community events, so the cottage live show for cottage people will target the convention center for the three days of the cottage live show. Different ones that are like if there's a basketball tournament at a gym, especially if the agent's like a parent I'm going to be at the tournament. We run ads with their face and for instance I did that one I sold, I put like the Remax balloon and my face and I'd get parents be like, "Hey, funny, I just saw that you were in real estate." And I would start conversations while I was in the gym between games [inaudible 01:03:12] and stuff like that, but it was just to that building.
Dean: Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, I love stuff like that. That whole when you start thinking about like the main things, when you look at what our objective is, I started out with the purpose of the infobox flyer or the infobox itself is to let people know that there's more information in here. And the purpose of the flyer itself is only to direct them to 22 Greystone. And the only purpose of that is to get them to the right place where now they can leave their name and their email address to get it.
And even the PDF that we have is just the pictures and the basic information because it's not about convincing them to buy the house, it's to give them enough information that they want to come and see the house. I did an interesting outcome, and I'm going to do it again this year, but I saw a study online that said that homes with professional pictures sell faster and for more money. And I started reading the study, I go, "That's valuable information." But then I looked at it that it was sponsored by Redfin and oh, and by the way, Redfin gives professional photographs to everybody that lists their house with Redfin. So I thought immediately it's immediately tainted the information.
Dean: Exactly. But it's got me thinking, well I wonder what the reality is of that? And I wanted to put together a study that was just the quantitative things, do what actually makes houses sell faster and for more money because the only two outcomes you can effect are how long did it take to sell, and how much money did they get? Relative to the original asking price. And so I took a swath of the middle of the bell curve in winter Haven and we set up some parameters for the study.
So whenever you're reading any kind of study like that, you want to look at what are the study parameters. So you see how it was actually conducted. And so we took, we quantiled the results, right? So divided them into five areas and we picked what we called... Thanks Richard. A winning group and a losing group. So the top 20% thanks would be the winning group. And the bottom 20% would be the losing group. So the ones that sold for the top 20% of the fastest times on the market and the bottom 20 the ones that took the longest. And then the same thing with the percentage of asking price, top 20% bottom 20%.
And we measured specific things. I wanted to get really quantitative study. In our MLS you can put 25 pictures is the max number of pictures that we did. So not everybody puts 25 pictures, some people just put a couple. And so with the thing that we did was one of the things that we tested was do more photos affect whether you sell faster or for more money? So we marked each of the listings as we put them as max photos or that was all we were looking for was do the maximum number of photos max.
So we did that and we counted 22 photos and above as max. So we went through, and we just put a Mark or registered each one of the listings that had that. And then we sorted against the days on the market and look, well first of all we had to calculate the natural occurrence within the set. So if there were 30% of the listings had maximum photos, so you would expect that three out of 10 would be in any group. The general population is 30% of that have it.
So then we would take the number of the fastest selling homes, offset it with the ones that had the... Looked for the correlation between the ones that had maximum photos, and the ones in the losing group that had the things. And sure enough, the ones that had more photos sold faster and for more money than the bottom group just the general population. Then we did the same thing for the presence of a video or not the presence of a video or virtual tour like that, whether it had it or didn't have it. And not the quality of it or anything like that. Whether it was like a feature film one or just what do you call it? A slide show type of one but a video.
And when we did that, the presence of video actually was more in the losing group than in the winning group. Having a video was more likely to get you in the bottom 20% than the top 20% which was fascinating. And we start to think like I wonder if part of that is because more people, they see something and they go, "Oh no, that's not..." They feel like oh, I saw that one, it's too small or it's too this or it's too whatever. But I thought that was an interesting outcome.
Then the other thing was we looked at the photos, the only qualitative things we did were I had three people look at each of the photos and we raked all the photos neutral by default. And we were just looking at them, not whether they were professional photos with a high pixel camera or anything like that, but whether they would deem them that those are nice pictures versus bad pictures. So the only things that they would put, these are nice, these are bad. And if they were just okay, they're just okay. They're just remarkably nice or remarkably bad.
And the nice photos got you in the higher group than the bad photos did, which was an interesting thing. And then staging the same thing that if it looked like... Not that it was a professional stager but that the house was presented for sale. We had literally, there were some pictures where the difference would be the dining room was the table with a nice center piece and something was there. It was lit and everything versus there were literally pictures where there was open cans and a pizza box and you can literally see like if it was a live photo on the thing, it would literally, "Hey Charlie, get out of the way. We've got to take a picture for the realtor."
They backed away and they took the picture, and then he goes right back to the pizza after the guy leaves. But that made a difference too. But I've just found it interesting that what are the things that can make a difference? Pricing it right was the one too. The ones that are priced at the original price, the ones that got the highest percentage were the fastest were priced right too.
Dean: Does it make the boat go faster?
Speaker: It's just in our market pricing it right means doing an offer date. So some. cases it's not doing an offer date but in terms of-.
Dean: And we've been spoiled in that way that I don't know if you know this, but the rest of the world is not like that.
Speaker: I do know that.
Dean: And there might be a time when that is not true.
Speaker: That's true. But I do know that when I bought my first house in 2005 for $465,000 I had to fight off 11 other people to buy it. And so when my clients say, "Oh, these bidding wars." I'm like, "Yeah, but this was happening in 2005."
Dean: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: It's 2019 right now and it's still happening. And sure, it's not happening everywhere. But what I've noticed is that the lower I price something, the more offers I get and the higher the prices. So if you price something too close-
Dean: I think there's something to that in the reasonable realm too, I think you've seen some times where they price it just ridiculously low. That's not even-
Speaker: On purpose.
Dean: On purpose. It's like for that purpose it's not like-
Speaker: a dollar.
Speaker: But it works. I consider that to be a marketing price. So some people are really offended by pricing it low, but I do it and it works really well for my sellers. And I consider it to be, if you're going to stage a property and take nice pictures that are professional, that's all part of marketing. So I view the price also as part of marketing. So that's why you price it low.
Dean: When you say low, what is low?
Speaker: So for example, I had a recent condo listing where I priced it at 599. And then I had eight offers and the condo sold for 775.
Dean: Yeah, that's fine. But that's not-
Speaker: That condo would never-
Dean: That's not like $1,000.
Speaker: No, but that condo would've never sold. It had tenants in it and it looked like shit because there were tenants in there who didn't stage it. So that condo should have probably sold for 699 or $700,000. But because I dropped the price to 599 it's sold for far higher than anyone would have reasonably thought it could have.
Dean: Yeah. Thank God for irrationality. I mean our market depends on irrationality. Yeah.
Speaker: People seem to want things that they can't have. It's as simple as like when emotions take over and-
Dean: You get triggered into it.
Speaker: And I want to make sure I say this correct, but you can't under list a property because the market gets to decide. You can certainly under sell a property, but I don't think you can under list it because the market gets it aside. Doesn't matter what you think or your seller thinks. You try to do your best job to present it, cross your fingers and see what happens.
Dean: Yeah. What if we price it too low Chuck? It's never happened.
Speaker: Well, I mean, in my neighborhood right now, there's a house priced at a dollar. Now I think that's too much. They're trying to do the same thing, but-
Dean: It's just a marketing price.
Speaker: It is.
Dean: Don't get upset. Don't hate the player, that's it, it's just a marketing price. It's funny, but I think anything that's less than. I think part of the listing strategy of pricing it low is getting like if you're at a dollar, nobody is searching in that price range right below it is even going to see it. But if you're $100,000 less than what it's actually going to sell for the person who's looking for something 100,000 less might see that and think, that's what we really want. And then it ends up it's $100,000 more and they love it. Now they got to have it. That's I think a more... You kind of price adjust almost like think about those things as what you would price at a reserve bid kind of thing. You would say, okay, it's got to at least you'd buy it for this price. Yeah. That's part of the things, these strategies with the eye buyers, what's happening in Canada with open door or any of the... Is anybody doing that?
Andrew: There was one [inaudible 01:16:17] here but there's others that are starting to come. There's one out in Calgary, but I haven't heard anything about them doing any real business yet.
Andrew: Yeah. But nothing's so far, at least from people I've talked to as it hasn't generated really anything like they have in the U S where they're actually selling properties.
Dean: Yeah, there are venture funded in the US that's what's happening is that everybody see that big commission the $80 billion in commissions and everybody wants to disrupt that.
Andrew: Well, I was talking to Lindell in Minnesota who does 3000 deals a year with his team there. And so they became the Zillow eye buyer agent. And right now, it was only three months in, but 80% of people ask in Zillow to buy their home ended up just listing with them for sale and doing the traditional route.
Dean: Yeah. Well, that's the thing is I at that as what they're really saying is I think it's setting the ceiling or the floor now of allowing you to see what's really going guarantees and having things where you can offer guarantees to people knowing that your floor is what the eye buyer will do. That you're not going to get stuck with something, but I just think that's the opportunity is helping people maximize the amount of money that they get because-
Andrew: I think that's why there's a little switching in some markets to taking a percentage of the commission instead of the monthly is if they're generating all these listings for Chris, they want a piece of the commission that way instead of actually through the buying the house way. There's just like a backdoor way to get the commission.
Dean: Yes. Yeah. It's interesting and I think that's really... We're at a point right now where there's so many opportunities to set that up for yourself in a way there's nothing stopping any of us from thinking that way of supporting yourself with a totally scalable workforce. It can only get logistically difficult to manage something that starts to scale. If you're getting all these listings to be able to have instantly scalable access to only pay for the amount of money that it takes to just do these actual tasks and not have to have somebody on staff to do stuff like that.
When you look at it, it's thinking like a real business person now, looking at cost of goods and looking at what it costs you to deliver the thing. I think there's never been a better situation where if you look at everything about... If you want to think about as the realtor, people are going to fall into two categories. You either want to just do the real estate stuff and have everything else be done for you, or you just want to do the other stuff and not do any of the real estate yourself that there's room for both of those models to thrive. You don't have to do anything. I mean it's, yeah, it's pretty cool.
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