Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast we're finishing up 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.
This is the forth sessions from our recent Real Estate Summit in Toronto, talking about the future of getting listings, and today we're looking at the future of converting leads and finding buyers, and the trends already in motion, that are going to work in our favor and really 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 Ep099
Dean: Hello. Welcome to Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcast. My name is Dean Jackson and today we are closing in on the end of the year. 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. 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?
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. I think you're really going to enjoy this as you 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, abundant time, and financial peace? All of the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle. 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.
Home stretch. Now, one of the things is we talked about getting listings. We talked about multiplying your listings. We talked about getting referrals and now we want to talk about finding and converting buyer leads. This is where I think we're going to have the best opportunity to support your listing centric model here, by focusing on finding buyers in a category, not looking for individual buyers for a particular house. We're going to get those opportunities when we're doing, when you've got listings, but the best thing that we could do is to kind of circularly tie this all back together that everything we're doing on the buyer's side is in support of getting us the listings.
When we pick categories, that's why I'm so adamant, I talk about it all the time, of picking categories that are things that you can own. Things like when we talk about any market townhouses or condos or golf course homes or whatever... If you kind of take that cat scan perspective of your community, there are those opportunities. Some of them are surface level things that are easy to find like townhouses, condos, detached homes, luxury homes, whatever it is.
Then there are other things that are going to be more qualitative things that are going to be more difficult to get but are going to be valuable to you. I talk about the lake front homes in Winter Haven as an example, because they're the most expensive homes. There's lots of lakes, but it's not easy to get the list of all of the lakefront home owners, so we had to climb over some obstacles to get that, to find the visible prospects, which was the sellers. But to triangulate that with now running homes and land magazine ads and Facebook ads and Craigslist ads for lakefront homes offering people the guide to lakefront house prices in Winter Haven. The Winter Haven Lakefront House Prices Guide.
That, for somebody looking for a lakefront home, is going to be like the gold mine. We've seen it now, we've done it with oceanfront homes in Cape Anne. Did you see the ad ever that we did?
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Dean: Beautiful iconic view of the lakefront, or oceanfront homes. Same thing with South Beach, the oceanfront condos. Zack has been doing it with the high rises in Atlanta. You can look for those qualitative things and you can picture the idealized version of it because so often, people, when they're looking at it... We never, we didn't put a picture of the actual house, but the view from the house, when we were doing the lakefront ones. It's a view over the dock and the lake, which is what people want in the lakefront or from the ocean front condos in South Beach, from the patio looking out over the ocean, or in Cape Anne, the dunes.
When you're looking at... This is the one you did -. Oh, okay, nice. Oh, look at you. And you got yourself in there.
Speaker: It's not me. That's a service that-
Dean: Oh! I got you.
Speaker: It gives you like 100 things to choose from.
Dean: Oh sorry.
Speaker: It's stock images.
Dean: Oh, I see. Somebody is ...
Speaker: It's not even the real guide, it's just a picture.
Dean: I gotcha. Just the picture of the cover of the guide.
Speaker: Just a picture of the cover of the guide.
Dean: The guide, I love it. There's the Oceanfront Directory.
Speaker: Someone looks like they're reading this guide.
Dean: Perfect. That whole thing, when you're looking for category buyers, you start to think about how would they describe what they're looking for. I was doing a Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcast the other day with someone in Colorado and we were talking about mountain view homes. Right? That's something that somebody would really love. Not all homes have the mountain views, but some of them have these really great things.
The same thing in Phoenix, in Scottsdale, in Paradise Valley, there's view homes looking off the mountain into the valley with all the lights. When you think about the Phoenix view type of things, you're looking either with the mountain view or looking from the mountain down and that's the one that's like the prestige one, the one that people want, that's looking over the valley. Not all the houses have that. In Encinitas or California, Joe Stump used to live in Cardiff, out by the sea and he had what they call a white water view where you could see the breaking waves on the ocean. A white water view is worth more than two rows down on the same hill you get the long water view, but you don't see the beach and the thing, which, it's ocean view, but it's not the same as being up here with the white water view.
The subtleties of that, though, are something that somebody looking for that would want. When you look at that it takes a little bit of effort to go and do the looking, like there may be in Georgetown, I think about ravine lots. I don't know if you have that in Milton, but escarpment views or something like that. You know, when you start parked views like was talking about. When you pick the category that you're looking for, you're pretty much able to attract the buyers without having to have a listing. They're specifically looking for something that you are running the getting listings program, finding this pool of potential sellers that you're able to match up.
I use the Molson Beer ads as an example. They used to run ads in Cosmo Magazine. They would have a picture of this dreamy looking Cosmo guy in a sweater with puppies in a field. The ad would just be this dreamy guy with the copy that said you know, his address: the intersection of masculinity and sensitivity; his beer: Molson Canadian. And it had the logo there. They didn't even care whether anybody saw that because their audience was not women, they were running that ad so that they could run an ad in men's magazines that said hundreds of thousands of women pre-programmed for your convenience. It would say while you're reading this ad, women are reading a completely different ad, that's scientifically designed to increase the attraction they feel for men who drink Molson. It had a picture of the ad and the little illustration of her seeing, you know, the illustration with the eyes looking at the bottle, looking at you, and the attraction center in her brain going off because you're associated with the beer.
You think about that same thing is that our... Somebody who's looking for an oceanfront house, their attraction center has this idealized vision of looking out at the ocean or looking out at the water or looking up at the mountains or looking out at the city or over the valley, whatever the thing is. I'll show you. There's the one they were running in Cosmo magazine. Yeah? You might recognize Ashley in that, those younger days. There's the women's magazine ad that they would have with the ... I mean, just so ridiculous, right?
When we do that that's exactly how we did it. Took that model here of saying ... Oh no, but now it's gotten. What, are you saying that ad wouldn't fly today? You know what just happened? You know who's doing it now is Coors. Coors Light has just anointed themselves the official beer of drinking in the shower. And the official beer of Saturday morning. And the official beer of being done with wearing a bra. They show the scenario and it's so brilliant how they paint these scenarios. Somebody is coming home, there's a young woman coming home. She puts her purse on the counter, off with the shoes, looks at the mail, goes to the fridge, gets a beer, cracks it open and goes to the couch, takes the bra off and sits back down and drinks on the couch and that's the official beer of that moment, you know?
And they're really just going it's Saturday morning with you guys waking up at noon and fixing breakfast and getting ready for college football. And the guy's got the two beers in their robe to hand them out. Or the official beer of playing golf just to drink beer. The guys are out golfing, holding the beer, but just swinging with one hand. They don't care about the game they're just out drinking the beer. Talk about knowing your customer, right? What's the dream scenario for them? I'm going to show you the...
Here's the examples. This is the ocean front condos in South Beach that we do. There's the ones for Cape Anne. You know, we were saying that thing, if you're looking for an amazing waterfront home on Cape Anne, read this. That's really the ... What's that?Right, but when you start to think about whatever the idealized version... See, you don't have to worry about not having a listing like that because you're talking about the category. I think we were mentioning, I think I mentioned to you and we can talk about this here that this, I think, is an amazing opportunity to appoint yourself to be the official listing agent of a category and constantly be recruiting people who are looking for that category of thing by organizing the group of it. There's nobody to stop you from any of that.
Speaker: I was going to say, that's something I've had to kind of get over. I think partially, again, only being in two and a half years I think I really ... When we first met you were like well why aren't you going after ... If it costs the same to mail to a $200,000 house as a $2,000,000 house, Dan, why aren't you mailing to $2,000,000 houses?
Dean: Exactly.
Speaker: It was like... oh I've never done that before. It's like, well, just appoint yourself. How do I do that? Well you just do. Well how do you do that? Well, Dan, you just do.
Dean: You just do!
Speaker: You appoint yourself. You are the mayor of this and over time, you become that.
Dean: And that's the thing, when you look at it. All of a sudden, in 18 months will be the King of the Waterfront. You know? That's really how that all happens.
Speaker: I should mention, we actually did a test, we made the Insider's Guide to Buying a Home in Portland, Maine and we Facebook ad-ed it, which is a generic one. We actually got, I got somehow on Barabara Corkerin's list. She had the Insider's Guide to Buying a Home in New York and it looked pretty cool, so I gave it to my partner. He just basically R&D'ed it. We were about to duplicate
And then we did this one, the Casco Bay Waterfront Coastal Home Guide and I run these side by side on Facebook to the same target, this one pulls 3:1.
Dean: You know why?
Speaker: It's getting...
Dean: Some great examples, so now we've got bona fide-able data.
Speaker 2: And I get Facebook leads, I could pull up on my account right now, $3-$4 a request, and we screen all of them. About 10% are realtors or so, we pull out, but still, we pull up some of the people that we the locations in and it's all looks good. We've gotten two emails back from this.
Dean: Yeah.
Speaker: Again, I'm looking for this one or two million dollars in this range.
Dean: And this just starts because every week you're sending them the Casco Bay Market Watch.
Speaker: Then they follow up with
Dean: That's the whole thing is that every week that Casco Bay Market Watch.
Speaker: that's the main. It took a half to put together, it's not that complicated to put together. This one is just the Insider's Guide to Buying a Home in Portland, Maine.
Dean: Now, there's a different thing too, that this is future pacing as well, that there's a difference between... I mentioned about getting a quote and the price list, right? Or this is about the data of what I'm looking for. I want this information because I'm looking for this, but when you're saying this The Insider's Guide to Buying a Home is trying to do convincing. It's like I'm... It's not about information, it's about buying a home. I'm committed to this thing, you know? I'm not surprised by the result.
Whenever you can, especially on the finding buyers, we want to separate, what I call the "compelling" from the "convincing." The compelling is about just making it exactly what somebody is looking for, so they feel like, oh I'm looking for a waterfront home, I'll get this. This is for me. It's the information that we're getting, and then we can educate them and motivate them about the process. Then, along with the guide, you can include the Insider's Guide to Buying a Home and the update. Now, in addition to this, I'm going to educate you on the process and that has much more thing, but you get three times more leads by focusing on just the compelling instead of trying to add the convincing in it.
Speaker: I got 30 leads inside of a month, just doing that. For $3 or $4 a lead.
Dean: Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker: - a listing.
Speaker: - what's even a buyer.
Dean: That's so great. Very nice. I like that. These are great. Who does the- Do you have the-
Speaker: That's where those- in the office. Very inexpensive.
Dean: Nice. Very cool. Oh, let's go down. Give her the...
Speaker: Thanks, I just found the answer I was looking for all day.
Dean: What's that?
Speaker: So, I'm trying to figure out what kind of guide I would do for seniors and it's to retirement homes in the area.
Dean: Of course. Yes.
Speaker: Which, I have that information and I've done events centered around that, but I've never had a followup system. I didn't know what I was going to be able to provide after, but I've also now, recently have access to availability in those homes.
Speaker: Oh wow.
Speaker: So I can then send emails, weekly, monthly updates on what's available.
Dean: I think monthly feels like the right frequency for something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, so that would be worth, to me, it's weight in gold to hear today.
Dean: Oh, that's great.
Speaker: And yeah, there are adult communities. So, they are few and far between, around. What are they. That would be more like, the Guide to these types of communities. And I do have a senior's guide, which would follow up.
Dean: That's so great. And you think about that as a category, when you start thinking about categories as age groups too. Right now, we're in a situation where there's 10,000 people a day turning 65 and that's going to happen through the entire decade of the 20s. It's also going to be the 10,000 Millennials are turning 40 for the entire decade of the 20s. And you start to think that age group, they've been demonstrably later in life, getting married and buying homes, but they're following along now. They're still doing it. At that level, 40 is going to be a good, probably 40 is the new 30 just in general. What's that Chuck?- Yeah, 40 is the new 30, yeah.
So really this one-two, the rhythm of this, this is really the simplest of things, a system of find the category. We can run that, homes and land or lifestyle magazines or Dwell Magazine or North Shore Magazine in Boston that you can run those print ads and just set it and forget it and not worry about managing the bids or if they're getting priced out of the market or something weird is happening with it. You don't have to do anything, you just do it and it's there and the leads come in. If you can find something like that, it's like a an annuity. By the way, even on the seller side, we've still got people who run every single week, the ad for how to sell your house for top dollar, fast book and make 10 or 12 to 1 ROI, just on that offering the book. Do you still do that Chuck? You hear me talk about it.
Speaker: In the newspaper? We ran it for a month and just decided we'd rather spend money online, but Ivan is still running one.
Dean: I'll have to check with Ivan. But Ivan was one of the first ones who did it for an entire year. Spent $10,000 for the year, to run $200 a week for the half page in the newspaper.
Speaker: It was in the newspaper. The Georgetown Free Press or something.
Dean: But measured it out, spend $10,000, made $85,000 in the first year then stopped running the ad, but made an additional $70,000 from people who responded in year one, after that. I'm a big fan of any of those things where you can set it and forget it, just kind of get those things rolling and I look at just the ROI. I think the categories are the things that you can do that with. Yeah.
Speaker: He just ran the how to sell your house for top dollar...
Dean: We have an ad for it that's if you're selling your house in the next 6-12 months what you do right now can make a difference of thousands of dollars.
Speaker: This is the how to sell your house for top dollar. I have that book at the house. I think I have 100 copies.
Dean: Nice.
Speaker: He ran it in the newspaper, is that right? Do we have a- okay. I mean, 15 times ROI is 15 times ROI.
Dean: That's exactly my point, yeah.
Speaker: I don't care where it's coming from.
Dean: Right! That's exactly right. I think when you start to look at those kind of categories. I've offered this to people, I still have my reverse mortgage client that we run at 14 times ROI this can you spot the $127,000 difference in these identical homes. And this is for the -. This is the thing is that any one of you could run this reverse mortgage situation is like - a big thing. What's the reverse mortgage situation in Canada right now?
Speaker: It's not that hot.
Dean: Not that hot. Not that popular or -
Speaker: It is a big business in Canada, there's lots of advertising, lots of promotions, again cause of the senior population and because of seniors being house-rich, cash-poor, being able to finance other people's needs, their kids' needs, their...
Dean: Do they have the situation where you can use a reverse mortgage for purchase.
Speake: Yes.
Dean: Yes, so that's what we're...
Speaker: And lots of other...
Dean: Yeah, that's what we're talking about here so that the ad that we run is, and how old do you have to be here?
Speaker: 55.
Dean: 55!? And how much...
Speaker: Minimum 55, up to 80. Up to 55% or maybe more depending on the value of your home, depending on your age, sale-ability.
Dean: What could you do? When is it that it's 50%?
Speaker: Oh you'd have to be like 90.
Dean: No 50% wouldn't be the maximum.
Speaker: Oh, 50% of the maximum value of your home?
Dean: Uh-huh.
Speaker: You could get up to 55% of the value of your home. But to get up to 55% you would need to be fairly elderly and very sale-able home.
Dean: In the US, you can get up to 70%.
Speaker: Yeah, you can't get that much.
Dean: But at 62, you can get 50%. So when you're 62, that's when we run these ads there, that's the thing we take, that that house is a $250,000 house and we just run that ad, can you spot the $127,000 difference between these identical houses.
Speaker: And what do you do with that?
Dean: This is with a reverse mortgage client, they do the reverse mortgages. We've done that as a postcard as well, a big size postcard. And I'm telling you, when you get the right category, it's just like an oil well that just keeps pumping. My first kind of inkling into that was when I discovered, and arbitrage things. When I was in Georgetown, there were certain bungalow models like, you could have Prince Charles bungalow, Chuck, if you know what I'm talking about, the bungalow from the 60s, the brick-raised bungalow. That same house was available in Georgetown but, it'd also be available in Akton and Erin and Hillsberg, you couldn't tell where it was from, right?
But if you had a listing in Hillsberg that was a brick bungalow like that and you put it in the paper, with the price you had it listed for in Hillsberg, your phone would ring off the hook. We had this calculation where, if you were willing, in Georgetown for every minute that you were willing to drive North, you could save $1,000. Because you could get the same house in Akton, 10 minutes further for $10,000 less. You could get it for $15,000 less than Erin and $20,000 less in Hillsberg. Tony and I did the math on the subway stops from the center of the city and it was way more than that even.
Speaker: It was $35,000 per subway stop.
Dean: $35,000 per subway stop that you had that. Tom Cook and I did this really elaborate thing for the subway condos. We had maps that had where the condos were that were within walking distance of the subway line at each stop. What they were worth. But all these kind of things that I'm talking about taking a little bit of effort to set up, but it's effort that is going to contextually be valid for a long, long time. I can resurrect the very first thing I did outside of Halton Hills. I did my Guide to Halton Hills Real Estate prices, but I did a guide called Toronto and Beyond. It was 40 great places to live within an hour of the city. There were 40 communities from Hamilton to Pickering to Barry and all the places surrounding that and I licensed that system to one agent in each of those areas. I could easily resurrect something like that right now, because those 40 places are still those 40 places. It's still exactly the same. It's evergreen. Yeah.
It's funny. Matter of fact, Brad Lamb still uses the loft and condo guide. It's funny, but it's still valid, that kind of category approach. What comes up for you guys around...What do you think it going to be the magic or the big opportunity in this next decade with buyers? Do you think that it's still going to be a valid thing? Are buyers going to use real estate agents to buy homes? I still think so. As far as individual listing data, they've got complete access to, but this kind of category stuff, information for people is really the things you can't algorithim.
Speaker: Have you seen the latest realtor, I saw it on TV last night. It shows they're singing a song and there's three different buyers. One is like, "I wish I would have known there's a sewage plant being built." "I wish I'd known construction was going on for the next three years." Yeah, I saw it on last night and I was like, that's the algorithim right there. That's the type of thing that a Zestimate can't tell you.
Dean: Right! I remember that, Chuck was doing your videos and I remember the one... Whenever there was a house that seemed too good to be true, Chuck would just zoom in and go, "Let's flip the street view this way."
Speaker: Show power lines or something like that?
Dean: Yeah. If you like porn, this is your spot here or whatever.-Adult video. You want to be really convenient to tattoos and sex shops, this is the one for you.
Speaker: It's Friday night. Honey, what do you feel like doing tonight? You know, across the road
Dean: Exactly.
Speaker : I just immediately think anything that is going to be extremely difficult to algorithim, we basically have the ability to tune it down or take advantage of. The same thing of getting listings that you've mentioned before is if you can go in and take some effort to create the list, then you automatically have an advantage.
Dean: I agree 100% I guess that's why, because I said that before. It's good that I 100% agree with myself. As I've said.
Speaker: I think, to your point about finding a niche and really focusing on it, one of the things I think you know, with the Millennial generation that are more going to be buying houses right now. There's less of a sense of obligation to work for somebody they know or at least in our market, that's going away slowly, which is a good thing. But I think that a lot of them don't know how to find a realtor, especially if they live in the city and they're looking to move outside, maybe to a suburb or to get a home. They don't actually know how to go about finding an agent that they can trust and they do see the value in working with somebody who is a specialist, not a generalist. So there's definitely an opportunity there to position yourself like that.
Dean: Well, who would be in a better position than the person who put together the whole category guide and then you're immediately rolling them into your follow-up program where every week there's a video or you are sending them the newsletter with all the updates. And whenever you're ready, join us for a daily tour of condos. We do a daily tour of oceanfront houses or we do a daily tour of whatever category it is or come to a home-buyer workshop.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: I can't remember where I saw the study, but it was breaking down the different Millennials and Boomers and that type of thing. Millennials were actually the most likely to take someone by referral and to be more brand loyal on top of any other category. So I think there's a huge opportunity with Millennials to... They want to know who is the go-to person. And if you can create that consistency with them over time, they're the most likely to stay loyal to you or to a friend for a referral.
Dean: I'll say what I've noticed in the last two years that's been growing, a lot of people will search for homes and browse when they're not necessarily ready to do it. With apps and websites getting better and better, it's more of a pleasurable experience. Even some people will look hundreds of times and they have no idea or plan of buying, but when it comes down to buying a home, they still use an agent. Right? People inquiring now from 2016, 2015. It's just, maybe 10 or 12 years ago when I was doing ads to get business, there was so few places for people to search. It was so easy to pluck out those people and do deals where now you just need to nurture the online marketing and the online leads longer because they're still going to use an agent, they're still going to want to go see homes. They're still maybe going to have a fiance or a wife or they need to throw ideas back and forth. They're still going to lose offers and need to be coached to do another offer.
If you're looking in Ontario, everybody is still using an agent that's buying a home, nothing has changed, it's just everybody always searches, whether or not they're looking for a place.
Speaker: When you look at it, the situation has changed in the favor of buyers as far as information, the very most over the last 30 years. They have access to all of the information, but still what it comes down to is they got to find a house that they love and then they need to know how to buy it and there's only buying one house. Having access to all of these choices and stuff doesn't really add anything to the number of units that are being sold or the time or anything. They still have to find a house they love. When you look at it, essentially, that level goes from where we going to be, is it Milton? And once they know Milton, then it's well what neighborhoods in Milton and what type of a home, is it townhouse, what complexes? Then the outside of the units. And then the inside is like the last thing, but all of those other things have to click before they ever get to the inside. Right? Then it's about the deal. But, you can get them when they're coming at the decision level of Milton, all the way down to the townhouse level or the condo level or whatever it is.
Speaker: I think that's really important to take home because we were having a discussion in our office about our local RAIN or real estate office, the MLS was trying to decide how they were going to improve the system. So the question comes up, "How do we compete with Zillow?" Right? And I think that's the wrong mindset, because it's going to be very difficult to beat them on - and the beauty of the app and how easy it is to scroll. But you can beat them on the nuance of the guides and the nuance of the information. So, stop trying to compete.
Seth Godin calls it "the race to the bottom." Right? If you're going to be the cheapest, you're just racing to the bottom. But if you race to the top is how do I become the best in a particular or most nuanced information in a specific area, then it's very, very difficult to beat.
Dean: That's where being a market maker is going to be the advantage.
Speaker: Preach.
Dean: In conjunction with running the ads to gather all of the buyers, you're running the ad, the postcards, the getting listings program to find the sellers and you've got this pool of unlisted potential sellers that are there and you've got this pool of buyers, that's information that nobody else in this world has. Right? You've got that. Nobody else has that information but you.
I remember calling Chuck when it happened with Julie, the day that somebody called the office from Stuart and had sold their house in Stuart and they'd been on the lakefront buyer list. And they were looking... They've now sold their house, they're now ready, they've told Lily and everything that they were looking for, this is the price range. Then, literally within an hour of that happening, got an email from somebody who was on the seller list who had been getting the lakefront house price reports and said, "We've been getting your newsletters for three or four months now and we're ready to put our house on the market. We've got this and this and it should be worth about this." Which was the same $375,375 and you couldn't have scripted it any better.
That was where I came up with the market maker email. That was the first one we did of sending to everybody that I'm showing houses, I just got off the phone with someone who is looking for this. I remember looking up your house when we sent you the lakefront report. There were 32 people that had responded in January. They'd been getting it for 90 days. We sent it out and had responses from 27 of the people and 2 listings within 30 hours of sending out the email saying, I'm not sure what your plans are, but I thought I'd check in and see if we could tell them. We're ready to get our house on the market now. This triangulation is really where the big opportunity is. What I was interested in actually is this, your data now on the activities of people who download your app. I know at some point, and I don't know the latest numbers, but at one point I was saying can we take the class of one year ago that month and see what actually happened with them in terms of how many of them sold their house or whatever.
Speaker: The most recent surge we did, we took three months in, I think it was April 2016, the spring months. Because of this whole thing everybody is like internet leads, some people do really well, some people don't do well. Some people think that nobody buys. One of my main reasons for this was how many people download the app and are actually doing transactions or buying or selling. 2.5% sold the home that they lived in since 2016. It was like 3% of those people bought a home ora second home. Then it was about 4% were first time home buyers. So 10% of the people who searched did a transaction within two and a half years.
Dean: Wow. And are you taking those numbers out of everybody or could it be...
Speaker: Yeah. Everybody who downloaded the app. If I did, but remember we were doing a similar stat like that on the - confirmed home owners like the ones that you were able to identify.
Dean: If somebody, let's say in 2017 went as far as filling out a home valuation form, it was like 17% of them sell their home in two years. But just know, the general users like 12%, out of people who fill out forms to do something, it was much, much higher.
Speaker: Yeah, that's amazing. When you look at the weekly email that Ashley sends out, it's literally just the simplest thing you could ever imagine, just the article curated.
Dean: Yeah, well it's your super signature
Speaker: Just one thing, here's what to do next.
Dean: One of the things I went even further on. I'm sure you do Chuck, but what's your home worth, home valuations. I put sell your house .
Speaker: What happened with that? I saw you did that.
Dean: Like 99% of the people who fill out the form are about to sell their home within the month. A lot of them sometimes have agents or they've maybe already put it on. But they're all ready to sell.
Speaker: Wow.
Dean: So, conversion, it's hard to tell whether they have an agent or not, but their intent is to sell right away.
Speaker: That's amazing. It would be a really cool market maker layer for you to be able to have buyers be able to see all the listings, but if they register or have another level, they can see everybody who wants to... the secret layer or whatever. The silent market.
Dean: Oh, I see. Secret listings, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, why beat around the bush? If you want to know what your home's worth, just say, "Hey, do you want to sell your home?"
Speaker: with a Zestimate they just go ahead and provide...
Dean: The value. But this is different, right? I'm not saying, "Do you want to know what your home is worth." I'm saying, "Click here to sell your home."
Speaker: Yeah. Oh, okay.
Dean: Instead of beating around the whole bush if we're going to give you an evaluation, you can see just, click here if you want to sell your home. You get a lot less clicks, but those clicks are magical, right?
Speaker: Magical. They're magical.
Speaker: What I said was there's value in treating them like they're now until they prove otherwise, to give them that option. At any minute, you can pull the chute, right?
Dean: Yeah, I love that. That's the whole thing that when I get into this idea, again, people are amazed that I'm never talking about making any outbound phone calls to people that are not initiated by someone saying call me or asking you to give them a call. Because we're focused 100% on adding value, we're treating them like they're five star prospects until they prove that they're not versus treating them like they're not five star prospects and making them jump through hoops to prove that they are. It's amazing.
That's why having thing like being able to anticipate what's going to trigger somebody into taking that next step. We know that somebody who asks for the oceanfront guide in Maine is looking for oceanfront homes, right? But if we just, now continue to serve them all of the oceanfront homes as they come on the market, but then just have the simplest of things and say, whenever you're ready, here are three ways we can help you.
Speaker: Chuck, I'd be curious to hear more about what touches are you doing with... because you've been doing gay buyers for a long time. How many touches. What are you sending them?
Speaker: So, the history on this was, I was back in the money-making website days and we would accumulate emails. So the first page was a landing page, it was just your name and email. Then after that they were offered a buffet of options. You can sign up to get daily listings or get the home loan report or come to a buyer class and so on. We got their email first, that was objective one and then objective two was to see if, like they were a prospect and then they were a lead if they filled in the other stuff. That was the way it was set up, which was of course, brilliant, right?
But, the bottom line from that is we ended up having so many requests for people asking for stuff that that's where the idea of this update to the whole list. Because what we used to do was to qualify people and say, "Are you five star or not?" And I said, "Dean, I can't keep up." And he said, "Well, just treat them all like they're five star."
Dean: Yeah! That was the revelation. That was really it.
Speaker: That was the moment.
Dean: Because you had a stack of people piling up that you couldn't get to.
Speaker: It was just unfulfilled requests, knowing there's business there. It was very frustrating to see that pile of papers.
Speaker: So you were sending out an -
Speaker: Well, the first idea was, what if we just gave them all the information we can. So, the first idea that Dean had, was why don't you go out every morning and film the properties that came on the market? And I thought that. Right? Logistically that was tough, but what I could do realistically was integrate into my schedule because when you look at the new listings in Toronto or wherever you are or in a certain area, because Toronto is huge.
But in Milton we were getting about 5-20 listings a day, nice size. So it was just putting record on and me speaking about what's going on in my head. Well, that one's overpriced, that one's close to the train tracks. And that became an episode that we did for almost 10 years. It was five days a week, a video posted and it was like, "Welcome to Milton Daily Homes. Let's talk about today's listings." Now that exists as a five day a week email, but I've stopped the video part of it because the videos were 5-10 minutes long. I have a belief. Dean has questioned me on this. I think the appetite for watching a 5-10 minute video every day is down. It still doesn't align with the whole idea of Joe Rogan's podcast being three hours a day. But the truth is, part of me just got kind of sick of doing the videos.
Dean: Nothing wrong with that! That's a valid thing too. I still think there would be a big appetite for people with a live video seeing the things, but logistically, where's the balance of it. Even sending the email.
Speaker: Or something like a Snapchat where it disappears and the scarcity effect. I've had all these brainstorms of how to make that current and fun for 2020, but that's it. I like the Jeffery Lane philosophy, he said, "Only make calls or send emails on days you want to make sales." [crosstalk 00:53:22] It's like, my five day a week is going to beat your once a week. But I think part of it is looking at your audience and saying, "How much do they want?" When you call something Milton Daily Homes, you're kind of expecting that to come every day, right?"
Speaker: Was it- who was talking about long form content and was like, well I hit one page, then I did three page, then I did five. I couldn't figure out where the end was on how many pages I could add before it stopped doing better.
Dean: We were working on the W Dating stuff. Some of those news articles you were sending were 30 pages. 30 pages. But the mechanism that made it work was it was Q&A, it was like people would send in questions and he would tell stories and answer them. There was a never ending appetite for stuff like that because it was valuable.
Speaker: So, if you were passionate about a hobby. Like, you like surfing, right Ashley? Do you have a surfing daily update? That would be great, you would open it because... What did you say Dean? You said something earlier like it's not a problem with deliverability.
Dean: Right, it's interest! That's exactly it.
Speaker: It's a problem with interest. So if your dream come true is getting Milton listings and being the smartest person in the room at the party when they start talking about real estate, then I'm going to give you the world's most interesting postcard version of that's the one that's the really hot listing today.
Dean: But it's the polarities right? The thing that makes it work is that it always and only makes sense to lean towards serving the five star prospects who want the service at the highest level. The very best prospects, what would they want? If somebody is thinking they're ready to get a house, they would definitely want access to your insight on those things. And that's played out exactly the way that we hypothesized it would.
Speaker: Even in the beginning, if you remember, we lost 20% of our lists.
Dean: That's what I'm saying! The polarity...
Speaker: It's like you had to piss off the 20% that really didn't matter, but we also got a bunch of love letters saying, "This is the coolest thing ever. I love it."
Speaker: That's what I'm trying to mentally walk through is, Joe has talked about doing three emails a week- .
Dean: Where do you think he got that idea? That's the whole thing with his super signature. That rhythm of either once a week, if you're going to do something at minimum once a week. Three times a week is better. And daily is, you can't punch any holes in it. If it fits then it's something that is valuable. What you don't get is the attention, you know?
Speaker: But, be prepared that you're going to have people who resist and then you go, "It's cool. It's all good because I'm going after those people." Because the truth is anyone of us, all you need is 100 people a year to really have a great life. We forget these numbers, right?
Speaker: That's what I've been thinking is, if I get nothing, but a referral, I'll be happy. I want to grow bigger, because I'm getting my Facebook leads anywhere between 3-10 a day. But I'm doing specific waterfront homes lists, historic homes lists. That type of thing. It's just an opt-in to that list. My thought was, how often is too much now, to contact these people? If I'm giving them a new updated lists, buyer tips, how to fix your credit, all these types of things that are arguably valuable. Of course you're going to have a certain amount of attrition. But for the people that do maintain they're going to be like, "This is great."
Dean: I think you attach the tips on, like the mice wants the cheese, right? Buyers want homes. The information is now ubiquitous. It's no longer unique or special, but what is is the interpretation. Somebody saying, that's a good deal because the one down the street just -.
Speaker: I've noticed that we've got this guy, we did a book with, David Wadkins. I've been monitoring this now. He started in February doing a weekly email on Sunday mornings. He owns a men's clothing store in North Carolina. Weekly it goes out.From the desk of David Watkins, Founder & Gentleman. Then he just talks about one idea of what is business casual anyways or what is smart casual. He just kind of educates people on the thing, but he did a 90 minute book on creating presence. I'm noticing that I'm aware that this is coming. A weekly thing that is done well like that, Jeff Walker does a weekly video on Sunday mornings. You get in this rhythm. does a weekly Q&A Tuesday. You know, for years we did market watch email and I did Marketing Monday. That weekly rhythm, you can make that and establish that as a thing.
I haven't done anything where I go every day. I've gotten to three times a week and it's just a perfect rhythm for me, for what we're doing.
Speaker: In things he says, "Watch your own..."
Dean: There's another thing, Tim's Five Bullet Fridays.
Speaker: Which I love.
Dean: Yes! Once a week.
Speaker: Tim talks about watching your own behavior. Every time for a week or so, I'm watching myself how I'm going through my email. So, let's take yours, and Dean's, and Frank Kearns', and a couple of other people. Occasionally, I would engage. Every now and then, I wouldn't, but that felt like once every other week, I'm reading the entire email.
Dean: Yes.
Speaker: I was like, "Dang it. They're doing it right." Because they just send it out, consistent.
Dean: That's the thing. That's really the key is picking the category with some durability. When you look at it, if I'm going in to the next 20 years, would it make sense, wouldn't it be great over the next 20 years, we dominated the lakefront homes in Winter Haven or the oceanfront homes in Maine or all the condos in Milton. They're not going anywhere. Those condos are going to be here in 10 years, and it's a durable category. There's just something to it, setting up those durable advantages that you can do.
We've seen now that getting listings has legs. We're talking about, since 2005, 15 years, the same thing, people are still going to want to know: What are the prices of my homes there? They're still going to want to figure out what to do to get it for sale and how much they can get. If you've got somebody for them. I think that makes such a big difference. You know? Cool.
It's 5:30 by the way. The time went so fast. I've loved having these conversations, but I'd love to have just a final thought, takeaway from the day or the thing that you've decided now will be the thing that you'll do. Let's start with you, Chuck, since you got the mic right there. And we'll just kind of go around, and we'll wrap up.
Speaker: There's a lot. I'm going to need a half a day...
Dean: We're going to need a bigger boat.
Speaker:...to uncompact my thoughts on this. I keep coming back to the whole Kylie Jenner, seven people to a billion; J.K. Rowling, seven books to a million. You think about what's the-?
Dean: You know I have that picture of J.K. Rowling. I bought the box set of the books just to keep on my desk as a reference for what a billion dollars looks like. Because a box set of the Harry Potter books is about like that and it's a billion dollars that came from her brain, through her pencil, into the world, and created a billion dollars. Amazing.
Speaker: I think what I know I'm going to do right away, as a first step, and we've talked about this for a long time, I section off time to write Milton Daily Homes, to do the condo stuff, is just to take an hour, just market baking presence. I feel like, once you set the time aside, good things happen. So that's what I'm...
Dean: And I think you're going to find it doesn't even take an hour. You get into that habit-.
Speaker: That's the time and if I can figure it out in ten minutes, then the rest of the time, I'll just think about.
Dean: My best advice would be to anchor it in something that's already happening.
Speaker: Yeah, that's how I do with my-. I try to block things to where they're connected with each other. They're not islands in the middle of an open...
Dean: Right. That's exactly right.
Speaker: I think, for me, I need a whiteboard the size of that wall to dump these 20 pages onto and everything in my head. Got me thinking a lot about the lifetime value of a client. And how to orchestrate repeating referrals and treat them the way they deserve to be treated. There's so much to takeaway from today, but it's got the hamster going-. about that.
Dean: Awesome.
Speaker: For me it's a little different. What I'm thinking of is how can I set up these systems for our clients so that they don't actually have to worry about it anymore. What could we take care of whether its from doing it or the reminder to be the market maker. You were talking about that you'd love to get a text every day. That's not hard to set up. That's actually a really easy thing to set up: an automated text that would go out. I pay a developer a couple bucks and it would go every week. I'm trying to think of the right way to set that up for my clients. To make it as easy as possible for them.
Dean: Awesome.
Speaker: Also, a little bit different for me, but honestly, lots and lots of takeaways. It's the first time I've ever actually been to one of your events like this. For me, because I go out there and I do trainings and speaking, I'm hearing a lot of things, of course this group is a little different, because everybody in this group is already doing a lot of the right things, they're executing on them, and they're seeing the results. Along the lines of what Andrew said is how to showcase the value of doing this to agents through what I do as well and how to convince them. Because oftentimes, as soon as there's effort involved, they see the logic, they see how it would help them, there's that barrier. How do I help the industry, because that's what I do is, how do I help them overcome that barrier to actually invest that time and effort into doing some of those things that are going to help them with their business and devise systems. That's really my key takeaway and a lot to think about.
Dean: Awesome. Thank you.
Speaker: Mine would be to orchestrate more referrals so I'm getting a good return, but I'm not actively trying to-. They're doing it because I'm nice, but not because I'm...
Dean: You've maximized your niceness.
Speaker: I can't remember who told me this, but one of my first years in real estate, they told me, "The most available buyers/sellers are other people's past clients." Which is kind of funny, right? But my clients too. So, if I sold them their first house, but for the last five years, they've been getting flyers from the area expert, I have to be better the second time around. The first time, they didn't know what to expect and it was... So, just focusing on that. Then at the conference yesterday, they kept saying, "2020: The Year of Vision" because perfect vision is 20/20. Just being so clear on what this looks like, it isn't a job for any of us, it's a career, it's what we want to do. So being clear on it and doing it.
Dean: That's it. Awesome.
Speaker: My one big takeaway on this is I need buyers. I want to create the Markham Village Guide to executive homes, generous lots, better value than downtown, and hopefully stimulate buying or buyers who will subscribe and do the triangulation. I've got 90 people I'd love to ring up and say, "I was just thinking about you when you signed up. I noticed you had a house listed."- someone I'm helping.
Dean: Very cool.
Speaker: help you a lot on that. If that overwhelms you, how to get all that stuff done, she's really good at that.
Speaker: One of my new products is inside the app. It's a branded version for real estate agents. It's like they're own app, but it's inside ours so you get all the features. First of all, everything we've learned here can be used on another business. I'm really going to focus on the buyers and sellers through the app and just having them refer their agent to use the app so that they're connected directly, as opposed to going after and looking for agents, I'm just going to use the data base that I have of the people searching. Say, "Hey, do you want your agent connected directly to you." If they say, "Yes," then it's pretty much a done deal.
Dean: That's great.
Speaker: So, this is my second event that I've been with, almost coming up on a year, being with Dean's stuff. I think I've said every time, I just feel very, very grateful. I think I said it last time we were together, I just hope, as much as I love you Dean, I don't want anybody to discover you. I don't want my competition to discover you. At least in that area. So thank you again, I feel very grateful to be a part of what you've created. I think again, for me, doubling down, I've heard it twice is there's so much undervalue on the people who already know and trust you.
Gary V talks about this all the time. You even mentioned the free mosquito service. We're huge with mosquitoes. We literally have the great dismal swamp right next to us. It would be so cheap to do a bulk package with mosquito authority, who is actually pretty big in our area. To call them up and just say, "Hey, can I get 20 of these for a reduced price" and then just send them out to my clients as a thank you.
Dean: They will give you them to give to people.
Speaker: I just think that's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
Dean: Because for them, they know the lifetime value of a new client. Once somebody has the mosquitoes.
Speaker: I preach that. The businesses that I do interviews with, I try to get them to think outside of just $100 gift card. Do something that creates an experience. What if this person comes back to your restaurant once a month for the next four years? What's that worth to you? Coffee, carpet cleaning, I'm going down that list. The other one I think continues to be for me, getting outside of the 'how' and more into the 'who.' The how pies.
Dean: And you're already doing a pretty good job of that.
Speaker: I'm very self-critical so I just think I'm not that great at implementation. I love ideas. I love creating and figuring stuff out. But if it comes to daily implementation, I want to claw my eyeballs out. I just can't stand.
Dean: If we were doing a two day event, one of the things we would be talking about is getting yourself in the position where everything is supported around you. If you think about it, if you're going to be the lead real estate agent, really all you should be able to get it down to listing appointments and negotiating contracts. And everything else being done by other people. Really, it's possible that way. You know?
Speaker: The last thing would just be erring on the side of more relevant content rather than feeling like you're imposing and being okay with that attrition rate and just realize it's either now or it's not now. And then treating everybody like five stars.
Dean: That's it. Very good.
Speaker: Thank you very much again, Dean.
Dean: You're welcome.
Speaker: Also very grateful for being here and meeting everyone here. As a newer agent, for me it's definitely been a challenge to focus and do less in a lot of ways. Being a podcast junkie and learning all things out there. I got three or four systems and a fair amount of money invested in other programs and I think it's pushing a lot to the side and focusing on really essentials. Everything we covered here today is the basis for a huge business. Right? It's about putting all that into play, not the shiny object or chasing the squirrels.
Dean: Each one of these things we talked about is a division of your business basically. You've got huge potential.
Speaker: Yeah, it's running the ground game, getting the basics down. I think the standout thing is what you mentioned at one point, I've heard you say it once before, your new definition of B.R.A.N.D. is great: buying reflects affecting now decisions. You just need to establish the brand with the people that are most likely to need you very soon, when they need you. You don't need to establish a brand with the entire city or entire community. That was very valuable.
Dean: Absolutely. Very cool.
Speaker: Thank you again.
Dean: I'm so glad you got to come!
Speaker: For me, in 2013, I shared with you I started with, "Oh, I don't want to do a lot of work" and stuff like that. I had, I think 30 people in my database of 150 and I focused on them. Prior to that, during the downturn, we started to invest in rental property, me and my husband. I said, "If I could duplicate what we're doing, to these 30 people, I will always have somebody I'm going to sell a home to." And so, now I have, out of those 30 people, I now have 50 investors that I created from that thought. So, my big takeaway right now, is if I could double that, you know. But the way I'm going to do it is I'm going to get back the listing. There is one subdivision I really focus on in this town and most of my clients bought in that subdivision.
Dean: What town are you... What's the primary area where you are?
Speaker 4: It's a Northwest suburb, 45 minutes from Chicago. I just focus on that. I don't even want to get out of Burning Hills, that's all I want to do, because it's ten minutes from my house and stuff like that. If I could just do marketing, the getting listing program, in that subdivision, that would find deals that you could get out of one transaction, that would be cool, because the number of hours I'm still going to put is not going to be that much. Yeah, all I have to do is you know, hire a part-time assistant to do the background and just concentrate on that number.
Dean: I love it.
Speaker: Thanks from me as well. First time being with your group. I'm an information junkie and I've spent a lot of time on your website and I've read about this and that and the other and all the programs. And I've understood them, but this is the first time I've had an opportunity to put all five beside each other and understand and then be in a better position to develop my game plan. So, that's been very helpful.
Dean: Oh that's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah. So I would like to do that. Probably two biggest takeaways is the world's most interesting postcard, which I've been looking at putting on my back burner forever. And then the guides. For sure. Thank you.
Dean: You're welcome.
Speaker: I don't know. Let me try and see here. Everything was so good. Yeah, before from getting listings and the game changer for me really helped me open up my brokerages, I told you, giving me now, that leverage. The after unit is one of the weaker sides and that's the big takeaway I had. I like the 1:1 future, the home service system is still really the golden ticket. I just got some ideas. I have a lot of investors I work with who do flips and stuff. They have these really good teams that can come in your home in six hours, emergency stuff. They have a hundred properties with a group of investors and when I hear that kind of stuff, I put two and two together today. I said maybe I can leverage that because they ask me sometimes, "Do you need services?" And their guys are really good. I met some of them. So I think that's somewhere I can connect the dots. Be the hub.
Dean: That's awesome.
Speaker: For my Top 150.
Dean: That's be great. I think for everybody, my take on the opportunities, certainly if we break it down, we've set things up in a way that to win at these things that we're talking about are very minimal, core things that you need to do. To win at getting listings is about choosing an area, mailing the postcards, mailing the newsletters every month. That's really it. And we can do most of that for you, you know.
Then, in terms of the multiplying year listings, you're just even thinking that way, first off. You know, we did the math for you guys, everybody in here, if you look at what a half a point difference on your listing multiplier index would mean in terms of dollars and why there isn't already one person who is responsible for that. We're in this age of micro-specialization. Now that you've got access to execution on a micro level, whatever you need can be done by someone else. But you start to think what would that be worth? If I could raise my listing multiplier index by a full point, by one? There's something to it.
I'd just love to see, imagine someone enthusiastically committed to just that one task. Imagine somebody in a division of your business whose only role is to multiply your listings. What would be able to be done. It's crazy, right, when you start to think about it like that. Just the intensity of that really helps and getting referrals, the simplest thing, the world's most interesting postcard, market maker Monday, those two things guaranteed an improvement in the number of referrals that you get.
But then, if you really want to go all the way, start thinking about your relationship with those people as a completely different thing. What would it look like to have a complete concierge service for people managed home ownership? That's a big opportunity, I really recommend the 1:1 future to read, just to stimulate stuff for you. Then, finding buyers and converting them is really the opportunity and finding a category that you can set and forget, that you're just consistently generating leads, generating leads, generating leads, sending the weekly market watch, sending the weekly market watch. Then watch it all unfold. You know?
Such a fun business when you really look at all the opportunities. It sounds much simpler when we sum it up like that, but really, to realize it pretty much is that simple. If you can get tools that can help, rather than getting caught up in, 'how am I going to find time to do all this?'
So I really enjoyed that. We're going to be in February in Orlando, February 28th and 29th in Orlando and I'll look forward to seeing a lot of you then.
And there you have it! Another great episode. If you'd like to continue the conversation, you can go to listingagentlifestyle.com. You can download a copy of the Listing Agent Lifestyle book, the manifesto that shares everything that we're talking about here. And you can be a guest on the show if you'd like to talk about how we can build a listing agent lifestyle plan for your business, just click on the "Be a Guest" link at listingagentlifestyle.com. And if you'd like to join our community of people who are applying all of the things we talk about in the Listing Agent Lifestyle, come on over to gogoagent.com. It's where we've got all the programs, all the tools, everything you need to get listings, multiply listings, get referrals, convert leads, and find buyers. You can get a free, truly free, no credit card required trial for 30 days at gogoagent.com. So come on over and we'll see you there!