Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast, we're talking with Tom Lipinski from Michigan.
This is a great conversation talking about Getting Listings, and the longevity there is for you in finding the right area, the right method to engage those people, and the right attitude to have when you think about the area so you can continue to generate results for years to come.
But of course, there is also a huge opportunity in nurturing the lifetime relationships of people in your 'after unit', and in orchestrating referrals with people who already know you, like you and trust you.
We had a great conversation about both of these. The time went by fast, and I think you're going to really enjoy this episode.
Links:
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep105
Dean: Hello, Tom Lipinski.
Tom: That is I. You have a familiar voice.
Dean: How are you today?
Tom: I'm good. Thank you.
Dean: A familiar voice. A friendly voice in the wilderness.
Tom: I've heard it many times.
Dean: There we go. Well, welcome aboard. I'm excited to brainstorm with you. We've got the whole hour.
Tom: Yup.
Dean: Where are you calling from?
Tom: I am in Shelby Township, Michigan, and I'm actually in a phone booth that our office has for privacy, so I'm actually calling you from a phone booth in Shelby Township, Michigan, in my office.
Dean: Okay, perfect. Shelby Township, is that north of Detroit? Is that where Shelby is?
Tom: Yeah. About a half hour north of Detroit. Yeah.
Dean: Okay.
Tom: It's part of a big Metropolitan area, so there's four to five million people in this Metro area.
Dean: Nice. What are the major markets in Shelby Township, which cities?
Tom: Well, Shelby Township is 36 square miles large. Townships here in Michigan are six miles by six miles. It's just really a bedroom community. There's a road called Hall Road, which has got every single shopping store you can imagine on it.
Dean: Gotcha, okay.
Tom: Other than that, it's all residential. It's condos and homes, and the high ones are, there's certainly a million dollar ones in there. For the most part, the luxury market would be like four to eight.
Dean: Okay, perfect.
Tom: 400 to 800. That's not just my only market. We go, there's about 20 other cities around here that we would market to.
Dean: Gotcha, gotcha. Okay. That's interesting. I didn't know that about the Townships are all six miles by six miles. I didn't know that. That's interesting. That's very uniformly laid out, I guess. I mean, the big famous thing you know about Detroit is Eight Mile Road, or how they have all the roads by miles, so everything's laid out like that for a purpose.
Tom: Yeah, actually. Yeah, it's all part of a geo, whatever the geo system of mapping out the country, and like Eight Mile is actually also called Baseline Road, as you get out of Detroit, so it's the baseline. Then, if you go near Lansing, Michigan, there's a road called Meridian, which was there, so Baseline and the Meridian crossed. I don't know what the significance of it was, but all the subdividing is based off of the roads going back, I'm going to say, 200 years.
Dean: Wow, that's amazing. Well, there you go. What is the Tom Lipinski story so far?
Tom: So far, well, I've been doing this for 28 years. I had my own business in the middle of it. Well, I guess, as a real estate agent, you have your own business all the time. I had my own brokerage. It worked, it was successful, but I did merge it in with another company. Then since that time, I've left that other company. I've been with Keller Williams for six years now, and I have a small team here.
We're six people, six, seven. It's been as high as 10 or 11. It's hovering around the six, seven. We do about 23 million in sales in our markets. Excuse me. We're one of the higher sales. There's somebody doing 70 million, and then there's another one doing about 40 million, and then we're doing 23 million. Then below that is everything.
Dean: Yes, of course. Very cool. Then, so how did we get connected? How did we-
Tom: Excuse me. This goes back about 10 years, I'm going to say. It's back before you had GoGoAgent. It was Getting Listings is what it was.
Dean: Okay, perfect. Yup.
Tom: Basically, it seems like GoGoAgent is the CRM added onto the Getting Listings product. Is that what we say it is?
Dean: That's right. Yeah, so basically, we took all of our programs and put them all within the CRM. We've got the Getting Listings and Finding Buyers, then our World's Most Interesting Postcard, and all that, Listing Multipliers, everything that we do all in the GoGoAgent platform, so yeah. We used to have the individual programs like Getting Listings-
Tom: Yeah, it was basically a landing page and the process. The oil well, right?
Dean: That's right.
Tom: Yeah, I did that for years. Then, I don't know if I stepped away from it, but when I came back to do it, it was called GoGoAgent.
Dean: And here we are.
Tom: And here we are. I got to say this, the product, I mean, I don't go to a lot of trade shows, mostly Keller Williams stuff, but it's flying under the radar a little bit. I know that you prefer not to, but I think it's one of the best things out there. I mean-
Dean: Yeah, that's awesome, mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tom: As far as print, when I do a print ad, this is always my best return.
Dean: Oh, that's great. Very cool.
Tom: Excuse me.
Dean: What are you hoping to brainstorm today? What do you see as the big opportunity for you? You've got a lot of things figured out, doing 23 million as a team. Do you break that down and look at, if we were to take the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle that we talk about, the getting listings and multiplying your listings, and getting referrals, and converting leads and finding buyers-
Tom: Yeah, what we're-
Dean: Where would you say your strength is?
Tom: Well, my team, everybody on the team is a well-rounded agent. They do listings and buyers, so it's like I'm not just the seller agent and everybody's a buyer agent. I'm really busy with the real estate team, but I'm also a coach for Keller Williams, so I coach agents around the country.
Dean: Oh, nice.
Tom: Yeah. Because of that, I have to be successful through others. Last week, we actually turned over Getting Listings, that's what we call it, GoGoAgent, Getting Listings, turned it over to two team members, Tracy and Hal, and we've already met a couple of times, and we got an ad campaign going out on the 26th of this month, and we expect to get 100 good leads from it.
They're going to take it over. I'm going to spend the money, and I'll provide any kind of guidance that's necessary. Those two are going to manage the process, they're going to use the CRM, which we do use. They're going to split the leads between the two of them.
Dean: Yeah, that's awesome. How did you go about choosing the area that you're going to cover?
Tom: We have some really hot cities here. One is called Sterling Heights, and it's sizzling. You list something there, you put it on at the right price, it doesn't take too long to get it sold. I mean, sometimes in a weekend. Then there's another city, Saint Clair Shores, which is sizzling also. On the 26th, we're going to put a sticky note, we have a little spinal column type newspaper here that covers just about the entire Metro Detroit area in smaller, like the one, I forget.
The Saint Clair Shores one. It's called the Sentinel. I live in Sterling Heights, I don't even know the name of it, but I get the little paper on Wednesday. It's kind of like a spinal column with some ads, and some local stuff about schools, and local crime. The things that would never be in a big paper.
Dean: Right, exactly. Yeah.
Tom: For the most part, the papers aren't even read anymore, but this little one has some shelf life. It comes to the house, and people will throw it on their coffee table, and it'll sit there for a week until the next one comes. We've been putting sticky notes on the front of them, and on there is the actual message that would be on a postcard.
Dean: You're doing the Getting Listings postcard as a sticky note on the newspaper.
Tom: As a sticky note.
Dean: Yep, That's a great idea.
Tom: Yeah, we won't even do the entire city of Sterling Heights. We're going to do two zip codes in there. I want to say it's about 15,000 homes is what it is.
Dean: Nice.
Tom: They all get the newspaper, they'll all get my sticky note. It'll go out on the 26th, and that day, we'll start getting people calling the 800 number. Get a little bit of the older crowd will call the 800 number. Then everybody now, even the older folks, will still use the web dial. It'll go to SterlingHeightsHousePrices.com.
Dean: Yes, perfect.
Tom: They'll go there, they'll fill out the form. See, that'll go out on Wednesday. By Saturday, we'll have about 80 people raise their hand. Then over the next couple of days, there'll be another 20 to 40 trickle in, so I expect to have at least 100 leads out of that.
Dean: Yes, that's perfect. Then this is what is the amazing thing that we've been tracking and following here, is the longevity of viability of those leads. Now, we've been tracking with Tony Kalsi a six-year case study on what happens with the leads that come in. You're saying about 100 leads. As an example there, I look at those 100 leads now as an asset that you've invested in, that is going to yield over the next 12 months, 24 months, 36 months.
We've been, like I said, been tracking for six years. This year, we went back and we looked at what happened with Tony's leads in the first year. He generated 160 leads in the first year, mailing postcards to a neighborhood. When we looked, did the analysis over the five years after that, 44 of the people who responded to the postcard actually sold their house in this first five year period, and he got 23 of them.
Tom: Nice.
Dean: He got over 50%, 50% market share of the people who actually sold their house, and 15% overall, 15% conversion of everybody. If you look at, you generate 100 and we can extrapolate over the next three to five years, a 15% conversion rate, there's 15 transactions at a 4 to 600,000 range, then what you're talking about is $150,000 probably, and just on the listing side.
Tom: Dean, you could really say it's priceless too. Because what's the value of one client? You do a good job for them, they tell another person. You do a good job for them, and then it's so geometric. It's priceless, really.
Dean: Yeah, because that doesn't even include then the listing multipliers. If you look at, that's just assuming that you just get the listings sold. That's not including-
Tom: Exactly. You've been really good about all of that in your blogs and in your training over the years of the listing multiplier. Right?
Dean: Yeah.
Tom: We as agents, we tend to just put our head down and just go, go, go, go, go. It's GoGoAgent, right?
Dean: Yeah, "Got that one sold, got that one sold." Yup.
Tom: I do a lot of tracking. I can't say I've necessarily tracked GoGoAgent. I mean, I keep track of it, and I just haven't really paid attention to it, but here's what I expect. I'm going to get 120 to 140 from this post-it note, the sticky note. Then there's going to be two or three pieces of now business in there, that will be in there.
Dean: Yes, of course.
Tom: Then the rest of it those people I mean, you used to have the, I don't know, maybe it's still there, but where the houses would glow a different color. Was that in your-
Dean: Yes, exactly. That's what you've got. Now you've got, yeah. What we've been doing is creating a Google Map layer, where we take the data of the people who replied to the postcards, and we create a Google Map layer that drops a pin where those homes are, so that whenever you are, or your buyers' agents are showing homes in a particular neighborhood, you can also see who in those neighborhoods has responded to the postcards, and you get a chance to be a Market Maker and target them-
Tom: Yeah, love that.
Dean: Yeah, you send a message to them saying, "Hey, I was showing houses this weekend to a couple from Grand Rapids. They're looking for a house in this neighborhood. I remember looking up your house online when I sent you the report, the Sterling Heights report. Thought I'd just check-in and see if maybe I could tell them about your house." That's a very valuable thing.
Tom: Yeah, that's granular. That's totally something that we're going to do. A lot of agents door knock. You hear that all the time. We door knock. I send out new agent’s door knocking, and it's just very random. What if we door knocked all the pins? Those would be high value targets.
Dean: Right, right. Part of the thing is that we look at the continuing to mail the newsletters to the people every month. We can't underestimate the value of that physical mounting evidence that you are going out of your way for them. You're acting as their advocate. The truth is you're in better contact with them than the incumbent realtor, if there is an incumbent that got the now.
Now it makes sense that if it's been six months or 12 months and every month, without fail, you've been sending them information on market activity along with valuable information to help them get the most when they sell, plus stories are helping people on the move, inserts to show people the different types of people that you're helping, and your new listings in the neighborhood. All of that, it wouldn't seem right to call anybody else but you when the time comes.
Tom: Pretty simple, isn't it?
Dean: It really is. I just love the fact that we've got such a long track record of that now. I started this in 2006 we did the first one in December. Well, December of 2005 we did the first Getting Listings class. Yeah, it's been amazing.
Tom: Yeah, I think that's about when we first became aware of the product. It's always our best print. It's actually our best campaign. I slap myself for not doing enough of it, but we're back at it hot and heavy right now.
Dean: That's perfect. I love it.
Tom: We're going to run at least four campaigns. We're going to run, two weeks after that, we're doing one in Saint Clair Shores, that other community.
Dean: Awesome.
Tom: Just talking with you right now. We do send out the newsletter, but it's like other things too-
Dean: Saint Clair Shores sounds familiar. Is that where Floyd Wickman lives, in Saint Clair Shores?
Tom: You know what? Floyd Wickman is from here, and I know Floyd Wickman. I am a Sweathog, and he is somewhere around here. It might have been Grosse Pointe, night have been Saint Clair Shores. I think he had a home right on Lake Saint Clair.
Dean: Yeah, yeah. Perfect.
Tom: He's local here, yep.
Dean: That's funny. Tell me about your team, and this idea of the listing multiplier index. Do you measure anything like that?
Tom: Yeah, what we do-
Dean: Or do you focus on anything like that?
Tom: Can't say. I mean, I'm aware of the listing multiplier, and I believe in the growth potential. What we do is our team, Monday through Friday we're in the office. We practice scripts from 8:30 to 9:00 in the morning. Today, a new agent did her listing presentation for us. I'm going to do it on Monday just to stay on top of my game. Then on Friday, she's going to do it again. Then from 9:00 to 11:00, we are on the phones, and we're calling our sphere of influence. We're calling for sale by owners; we're calling the Getting Listings GoGoAgent clients. We're just calling everybody and anyone. We keep track of our success rates.
Each agent knows how many contacts it takes for them to get a lead, and each agent knows how many leads turn into an appointment, and each agent knows how many appointments it takes to get a closing. We're all aware of those numbers, but the listing multiplier's it. That's why I said, you could say one sale, if you work it right, it's priceless because it's going to keep feeding you for years to come.
Dean: Well, that's the thing. That's what we look at is the game. You're trying to gamify it into how many transactions can you turn that one listing into before the listing closes? Looking at, what can we do to find the buyer for that house? Or to find a buyer that buys another house, or to get the next listing in the neighborhood? Or to get a referral from the seller? All those things require a strategy. You got to have a proactive way of thinking about it, and a measurement system.
I always find when we have people go through the exercise of figuring out what their listing multiplier index is, typically, it's somewhere around .8 to 1.2 is typically what we find people are at. Meaning, out of the last 10 listings that they had that completed, they got 8 to 12 transactions out of that group of 10 listings. What's really exciting is that in GoGoAgent, our top, our Clubhouse leaders sort of thing, are at a 3.5 listing multiplier index-
Tom: Wow.
Dean: Meaning every listing turns into three and a half transactions. We've got a lot of tools for doing that kind of thing, like looking at maximizing the value. If you're running a team, it's really, it's one of the things we can help the individual agents with because it's kind of a unique opportunity they have when you get a listing, where you're the only one that can do it.
Tom: We look at our database as we're going to get 10% of it, if we work it right, every year either through a referral from the database, or they try us again or use us again. We're going to get about 10% out of there.
Dean: Nice.
Tom: Our business right now is 75% referral, so we only have to claw and scratch for 25% of it. There are agents that I'm aware of in the Keller Williams organization that are 100%.
Dean: Well, of course. Yeah, absolutely. The thing that we look at, when you look at your after unit, that's what we would call that. The part of your business that's dealing with your past clients, your sphere of influence, the relationship side of the business. If you measure what we call a return on relationship there, how many clients do you have that you're communicating with in that group?
Tom: Of the database, what are we communicating with?
Dean: Yeah, mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tom: Well, I mean, every agent, we want to touch four times per year by a phone call, every percent of our database. It's a lion's share of our lead generation, so like I said-
Dean: I gotcha.
Tom: We're two to three hours per day making phone calls, and most of it is to people who know, like and trust us. Yeah, it's the lion's share of what we do to generate business. Getting Listings-
Dean: One of the things that-
Tom: Getting Listings shines the light, it shines the light.
Dean: Ah, there you go. Right, right, right. Well, one of things that I would look at with this is that each of your agents has a group of 150 people that, if they saw them at the grocery store, they'd recognize them by name and they'd stop and have a conversation with them. That group of that sphere is a core foundation of it. Even if it's not a client or somebody that they've helped with a real estate transaction in the past, it could be someone that they golf with, or someone that goes to church with them, or one of their neighbors, or their family or extended family or friends.
That 150 people, it's pretty fascinating, because there's an evolutionary psychologist in Oxford called Robin Dunbar, that shows all the research of our ability to really have the ability to manage about 150 relationships. Meaning, just the way I described it, that if you saw them at the grocery store, you'd recognize them by name without prompting or having to cheat. You know who they are, and you've got enough of a relationship that you'd stop and have a conversation, that you know your position in their life.
We take that as the core group of the after unit, and our intention is, and the gold standard of what we do is to manage that relationship portfolio for a 20% annual yield. Meaning that we should be able to generate 30 transactions from that group of 150 people.
Tom: Yeah, if you work that group right, you're set for life.
Dean: Yes, and so we look at it, putting that kind of a metric on it gives a standardized way for us to compare what we're doing with what someone else is doing. Like when you say, "75% of our business comes from referral," if you say that and somebody else in another part of the country says, "Well, 80% of our business comes from referral," what that doesn't show, there's no standardization of that metric.
Like you may be doing far more transactions than somebody, but if they're doing 10 transactions and eight of them came from repeat or referral, it's true that 80% of their business comes from referral, but that doesn't equal what you're doing if you're doing 100 transactions and 75 of them are coming from repeat and referral. We try to get a standardized metric that it uses at its core, this 150 people that each individual on a team has, so that we're managing that personal relationship portfolio for a 20% annual yield.
If you listen back on some of the Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcasts that we've done, like I said, with Chuck Charlton and Tom Storey. Tom Storey particularly, where that's the core of their business, we've got people who are in that 20, 25, 30% range that are very backend loaded kind of thing on that, but that's the core of their business.
There's lots of opportunity when you're showing John on the team and Sally on the team, if John's return on relationship is 8%, that's different than Sally, who may be at 18%, but it's a relative number, so you know that whatever Sally's doing is creating a better result than what John's doing. You know?
Tom: Right, yeah, exactly. The fact that we're having this conversation is getting me excited about what can I do, I looked at my database right now and that 75% of my business really was only about 5% of my database.
Dean: Wow.
Tom: What if we bumped it up to 10? We'd double our business, and if we got it to 30, that'd be incredible, so yeah, I'm going to do this.
Dean: Right, that's the point. How many people do you have? How many people are you talking about?
Tom: On the team?
Dean: No, not on the team. Well, yes, on the team, but in your-
Tom: Oh, on the database. 1,800.
Dean: Okay, so here's the thing, this is where-
Tom: 1,800, but they're not all people that group that you said where if I see them in the grocery store-
Dean: Right, right. That's what I'm talking about, that we want to separate. I imagine with 1,800, you're treating the database as everybody, which could divide new business into the before unit, the during unit, and the after unit. The after unit would be people that you already, that you know and that you've done business with in the past.
The before unit are the people who would have responded to postcards, or ads, or come to an open house, or inquired on your website. All of those things that are prospects that you haven't yet done business with, so we want to separate those two and treat them differently. The top 150. It's funny that you say 1,800, because-
Tom: Well, that's just in one database too. We have other ones.
Dean: Yeah, I got it, okay. If you look at your personal database, you may have 1,800, that what we're looking for this exact exercise with a very successful agent in Toronto, they had 1,800 people. That's why I think it's funny. He had a printout of it in a binder. You probably have that, like a spreadsheet printout.
Tom: Printed it out the other day.
Dean: Okay. Here's the exercise for you. Do you have it right there in front of you?
Tom: I do not. It's in another room, but we could talk about it.
Dean: Here's the exercise. What I did is, we sat in his boardroom and I gave him a pink highlighter and a black pen. I said, "Here's what I want you to do. First of all, I want you start at page one. Let's start going down the list and when you come to a name, that if you saw them at the grocery store, you'd recognize them by name and have a conversation with them, I want you to highlight them in pink."
He started looking down the list. Then about three-quarters of the way down the list, he started laughing because he wouldn't recognize anybody yet. Then he found one that he would recognize, and he took that. Then I said, "I want you to take the black pen and if when you come across a name that if you saw them at the grocery store, you'd run and hide from them, then scratch that person off your list right now."
There's the fun thing of making the point that a database isn't relationships, and so we want to separate in your after unit the relationships that you have. When we get down to the top 150, that's the ones where we have the best opportunity to create advocates. What we would hope, is that this top 150 certainly would be the people that you're the incumbent realtor, who they're living in the house that you helped them get. You are defacto, still their real estate agent. You want to maintain that relationship. Then the people that, even though you haven't done a real estate transaction with them yet, you would hope that if they ever did have a real estate need, that you would be the first thought that they have. Right?
Tom: Correct.
Dean: We want to adopt and treat those people like they're often people that you wouldn't think of, I'm using air quotes, marketing to. You might think about your next-door neighbor or the people that you see all the time, you kind of take that for granted, your friends and your extended family, but you might not market to them. What I'm talking about is going to be something that's different than traditional kind of marketing to them. We use a tool-
Tom: Well, invite them to a guest event. Those ones too are the ones-
Dean: Well, there's that too, absolutely.
Tom: Yeah. I mean-
Dean: Primarily-
Tom: Go ahead, I'm sorry.
Dean: I was just going to say that primarily, what we want to do is we want to encourage them to refer more. What that means is that we want to be on their mind when they have conversations that could be a referral opportunity for you. We say, just in the broad scope of it, that all referrals happen as a result of conversation.
In those conversations, three things have to take place. They have to, number one, notice that the conversation's about real estate. They have to think about you, and then they have to introduce you to the person that they had the conversation with. All three of those things have to fire in order for a referral to take place.
Tom: Correct.
Dean: Now, what often happens is that some of those things are happening, but not all of them. It's often that they're in conversations about real estate all the time, but they don't even notice it, or they don't notice it as anything special, or they don't think about you. Or they think about you, but they don't say anything. Or they think about you, and they tell their friends, "You should call Tom," but then they don't call you if they have this conversation.
Tom: They don't call me.
Dean: You run into them at the grocery store 90 days later and they say, "Hey, did my friend Sally ever give you a call? She was going to be selling her home." You go, "No, never heard from her." They go, "Oh, man. Well, I tell people about you all the time." That's it, they'll say, "I tell people about you all the time."
Tom: Oh, yeah.
Dean: Yeah. What you want to do is we want to program it so it's not that they tell other people, that they just tell other people, we want them to tell you that they told somebody about you. We came up with a tool that we use called The World's Most Interesting Postcard, and that's all in GoGoAgent. I'm not sure if you've seen it yet.
Tom: I have seen it. I haven't done anything with it.
Dean: Well, the whole purpose of it is to program your clients, without them even really knowing what's happening, to notice conversations about real estate and think of you. We look at it that we do something like it's deep awareness programing. I tell a story that I had something both fascinating and scary happen at the same time.
A couple of years ago, somebody in the GoGoAgent forum had said on a forum post, "Does anybody know where I can get carpet replaced in one day? Because we've got a closing tomorrow and the painters just spilled paint all over the carpet." My brain immediately started singing the Empire Flooring jingle, and my mind started going, "800-588-2300 Empire."
Tom: Wow.
Dean: You know your brain has been embedded with that too. I realized what had happened is for 20 years, that jingle has been smuggled into my brain and was laying there just waiting for somebody to trigger it by asking, "Where can I get same-day carpet?" "Same-day carpet? 800-588 5555" I mean, like triggered in my mind. I started realizing what we really, what we have the opportunity to do is with this World's Most Interesting Postcard, we've got a way of being in touch with our top 150 in a fun, easy way, and also programing them to pay attention to when they're hearing conversation.
Tom: Correct.
Dean: We use things like, the pattern that we have is we'll say, "Tom, just a quick note in case you hear someone talking about buying their first home this month." We'll say, "January's the time of year when everybody's making New Year's resolutions. Perhaps the biggest New Year's resolution is that, 'This is the year we're going to buy a house,' so if you hear someone talking about it, give me a call or text me and I'll get you a copy of our Six Steps to Home Ownership book to give them. It educates them on the whole process of buying a new home."
That kind of thing where each month we've used that same pattern, but we use a different awareness. We'll say, "Just a quick note. In case you hear someone talking about selling their house this spring, give me a call or text me, and I'll give you this to give to them." That's the pattern that we're establishing each month. You put these postcards into action and you notice, all of a sudden, your referrals go up.
Tom: Go up, yeah. These are going to the top 150, right?
Dean: That's it. To the top 150. You look at the cost of it as $1,200, let's say, to go to the whole year for your top 150. We had Dylan Kennelly on the podcast just a few weeks ago, and he was talking about how sending out his first issue of The World's Most Interesting Postcard, and got a call two days later from one of his friends on the list who is getting married and is going to sell their house, and their fiancée’s house, and they're going to buy a house together, so three transactions from one thing.
Tom: Trifecta.
Dean: Exactly, yeah, yeah.
Tom: I'm on the website. Where is The World's Most Interesting Postcard campaign here? I mean, I'm on the postcard page. Might as well say where that is since we're talking about it, right?
Dean: Yes, exactly. The top of the blog, if you go to the home of GoGoAgent, at the top, there's you see, "Getting Referrals"?
Tom: I'm on the dashboard.
Dean: Okay, so on your dashboard up in the upper left-hand corner, there's the Member Blog.
Tom: Yup. Oh, yeah.
Dean: Click on that.
Tom: Yep, I did.
Dean: There you go. Then at the top, you'll see Finding Buyers, Getting Listings, Referrals.
Tom: Yup.
Dean: That's it. Click on the Getting Referrals and that's your everything that's about that.
Tom: Yeah, let me see. Yeah, I'm aware of some National Association of Realtors statistics, what are they. I think the last one I saw was 87% of the people said they would use their real estate agent a second time, when in fact, only about 10% do.
Dean: That's right.
Tom: This, I've got, what have we got? Five agents on the team, including me. Everybody's got their top 150, so right there, that's what? 750 people that will get postcards, and will get this grocery store attention and re-programing.
Dean: Part of the thing when you look at that. Getting a 20% yield on your relationship portfolio doesn't happen lightly. It's not just magically going to happen. There's a lot of things that go into that, and this is one of them. Like laying that foundational thing where every month, they're getting something that's programming about referrals.
It's also an easy thing that's got your contact information on it, so they're never more than 30 days away from a physical touchpoint with your picture and your contact information on it. It's like repeat and direct business insurance, that you're always right there. Right?
Tom: Yeah.
Dean: Then on top of that, if we start layering, you take that top 150 and you create a Google Map layer on that, where you've got a pin dropped on the map where your top 150 is. You can see that these map layers, if you look at it as creating a map layer of your collective top 150, your top 150, your team members' top 150, and you're getting listing respondees, the people who have responded that they want the report on the house prices, and another layer.
All different colored pins are all different layers of this. All the expired listings from the last two years that have been on the market but didn't re-list. All of that creates the raw material. This works brilliantly as a team, something we call Market Maker Monday. You may have seen in the forums, we have a post called Market Maker Monday.
Tom: Yep.
Dean: Ron Reed, one of our GoGoAgents, has been kind of like the guy who's really embraced that the most. I try and instill this routine, this habit in everybody to either individually or as a group, think about and just notice all the people that you are showing houses to this week. I'm not talking about your list of people that you're potentially working with that you're kind of looking for a property for. I'm talking about I'm showing houses to John and Sandy on Wednesday. Right?
Tom: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: Your active, in the car, looking right now clients. Wherever you're showing homes, whatever homes you've chosen to show them, you now go and look at your map layer and find all the matches on the same street, or in the same neighborhood, or the same townhouse complex or condo building, or whatever it is that would be the closest match. Then you're able to send a note to them and say exactly when we talked about earlier, saying, "Tom, I'm showing houses this week to a couple from Grand Rapids."
That is, when you say to your clients, you're not saying, "Are you thinking of selling?" You say to your client, "I'm showing houses in River Run this week, and there's only a couple for sale. Have you heard anybody talking about selling their house? We may be able to match them up with this couple from Grand Rapids." Now that is a very proactive orchestrated referral strategy, and if you first collectively-
Tom: Very high value.
Dean: If you think about the value of that little, let's call it a 10 minute conversation with your team, "Everybody, what are we showing this week?" Everybody looking, and say, it's a way to stimulate referrals. If you got seven people on the team and everybody made it a point to reach out to one, two, three people a week with a Market Maker opportunity like that, you're talking about 1,000 potential outreach things like that in the course of a year, 20 a week for 50 weeks.
Tom: Yeah, I love this.
Dean: That's a really high probability way of raising your return on relationship.
Tom: Yeah, absolutely. It's being a business professional is what it is.
Dean: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
Tom: I mean, here's what I get from this conversation. I've been a client for a long time, and you invited me on. The big thing I'm getting is this was a coaching session right now. I am so grateful for these tips here. It just got me, I'm looking all over the website while we're talking here, and it's like all these great tools that I'm going to start using.
I'm committing to up our game in this area. I mean, my team is going to be talking about this Monday and Tuesday, heavy duty, next week. I'm going to take our database and we're going to tag, we're going to do the pink highlighter and then they're going to get tagged 150. Yeah, we're going to play the game the way you're talking about it because it makes too much sense.
Dean: Yeah. That's great. Then that's the kind of thing where then, those top 150, that's where you start doing, then you layer on top. You do a birthday card, you do an annual anniversary review of their, "Here's what's going on around your, " Because you think about it, you're the steward kind of thing of the biggest asset that they own, which is their house. It's invaluable for them to know, "What's the value of our house?"
It's a great transition into a conversation of, "Is this the year, are you going to do something with this? Are you going to maybe use the equity in your house to tap into some of that equity and buy an investment property?" Or to start thinking about what other sort of business could be developed with people. Then maybe you do a client event, like what you were talking about. Invite them, maybe once or twice a year you have a client appreciation event. We've had lots of people-
Tom: Yeah, twice a year. We have a little club, Dean, called, we call it our Winners' Club. Anybody who's done business with us or anybody who has referred us business is in the club as a bronze level member.
Dean: Nice.
Tom: Every month we raffle off, if they reply to an email, a really nice prize. Like for February, it's going to be a dozen roses, cupcakes and chocolate.
Dean: Nice.
Tom: They'll come in and pick it up. Then if they refer us some business, we take them up to another level, the silver level, and that's where they get a $10 Starbucks card for six straight months.
Dean: Wow.
Tom: Then the level after that is the gold level, and that's where this 150 could come into play, because that's the events, where they get invited to events. I don't know that I could take 750 people to an event, but I certainly could take the cream of the crop of that top 150, 200 folks.
Dean: Well, the thing though is you would invite them, but not everybody would come.
Tom: Exactly.
Dean: One of the great things that some of our members do is, like a bowling party where they'll rent out the bowling alley and have everybody bring the kids and have a family bowling night or a family bowling morning on a Saturday or Sunday, and then do the same thing with a movie premiere. That a new movie's coming out and you rent out the whole theater on a Saturday morning and invite your clients to come. They're really fun things that people bond with. They get to dress up in the character costumes, where we have photo opportunities, or fun things, make it a fun morning event.
Those kind of things are very valuable in the overall thing. You've got to have those nice things that are what I call it either the things that are being nice to people and getting those good feelings, but then you also have this pragmatic, orchestrating referral strategy that it's not just being nice to people. Because a lot of times, people confuse being nice to people with an orchestrated referral system. Right?
Tom: Right.
Dean: Now, an orchestrated referral system works better and gets amplified if you're also being nice to people. You know?
Tom: Exactly.
Dean: Yeah, yeah. If you just do the economics, you do the math on it, if you're seven people were all managing their top 150 for a 20% yield, you're talking about 200 transactions there, as what's possible.
Tom: Yeah, that would be our best year.
Dean: It would be awesome.
Tom: Yeah, yeah. You know what? None of this is hard, that's the thing.
Dean: You got it.
Tom: It takes a little engineering, not much though. It takes a little engineering using the product the way it's designed. This, for me, I'll tell you, I'm educational-based and just being on this podcast with you, I thought I'd bring something. I'm getting like 10 times what I thought I would get, so I really appreciate that.
Dean: Oh, no problem.
Tom: Birthday cards, you mentioned that earlier. Just sending out a birthday card's a big deal, and when you send it to the top 150, it's going to have a different thing. "Oh, I got a birthday card from Tom." No.
Dean: No.
Tom: It's going to be, "Tom really cares."
Dean: Yes, and that's part of the thing is sending a real birthday card, not like a one that feels like every corporate, you got a bunch of them. It's sending real birthday cards and picking something that's fun for people. You know?
Tom: Yeah, hand-addressed, handwritten, not computer generated.
Dean: Right. That's exactly right.
Tom: When you got 150 people, it's only a few a day, if that. There's going to be some days when you don't even have to send one, so all makes complete sense. There are so many things that we're doing already to touch our database, but it's still, it's 5%. When I hear you say 20%, it's like, I'm not even going to brag about 5% anymore. It's like I need to get to that 20% level. When I do that, I want you to have me back on here so I can relay personal experiences.
Dean: Yeah, of course. Yeah, that's the whole point is that we kind of light the fire-
Tom: Yeah, I'll stay in touch.
Dean: Light the fire, and then come back and let you share what's happened.
Tom: Yup. Yup, yup.
Dean: That's going to be fun. We have our GoGoAgent Academy at the end of the month here in Orlando if you're able to make it down, the last weekend-
Tom: What are the dates?
Dean: It's the 28th and 29th, Friday and Saturday. We do it at Disney, at Bonnet Creek, so there's a conference center. Then on each side, there's a Hilton or the Waldorf Astoria, so you get to choose whatever hotel level you'd like and come. We spend, going through all the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle. That's where-
Tom: Yeah, I'm looking at it on your website.
Dean: Yeah, that's where the fun thing is.
Tom: Looking at it on your website, and very affordable for what you're going to be offering.
Dean: Yes, exactly. It's just a member event. The fun thing is to get to be in a room where everybody's doing the same thing, and you get to see and touch people or share, exchange notes with people that have a 3.5 with the multiplier index, or are managing their relationship portfolio for 20% annual yield.
We do it as a Mastermind so that the whole thing is best practices, discussion, state of the union of all of the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle. Each year, it kind of evolves with the core elements of what's working right now, what's the best practices and things that are available for getting listings, and for multiplying your listings and all of that.
Tom: I don't know how many people are going to go to it Dean, but that's your 150.
Dean: That's exactly right. That's exactly right, yeah.
Tom: I love that. I'm looking it up. I'm going to take a look at my calendar and see if I can make that.
Dean: Okay. That would be great. Better weather than Michigan, for sure.
Tom: Yeah. Got about six inches of snow out there right now.
Dean: That's funny. Well, Tom, it's been delightful.
Tom: Where am I talking to you? Where are you at?
Dean: I'm in Florida. I'm in Winter Haven.
Tom: You're in Winter Haven. That's what I thought, okay.
Dean: Yeah, yeah. What's your biggest takeaway, if you reflect on this? What's your big action item here?
Tom: To go way beyond what I'm doing. Just the sticky notes on the paper, and then get 100 to 125 leads is nothing. It's what we do with those.
Dean: Exactly.
Tom: I like the layering with the Google Map. What it's going to do, the first thing I'm going to do is on Monday with my team and on Tuesday at our meeting, we're going to go through and everybody's going to find their 150. If all they got is 50 right now, great. Then they're going to have 50.
Dean: That's right.
Tom: Right?
Dean: Yes.
Tom: Then they're all going to have what they have, and then we're going to work it right.
Dean: That's right.
Tom: I'm going to brush-up on the multiplier, because I do believe in that. I can't really quote too much right now having, talking to you about it. Then you talked about a guy with a three, what was it, 3.5?
Dean: 3.5, yeah.
Tom: Yeah, so we're going to learn about that. Like I said, have me back in a year when we've got this thing working on all cylinders because right now-
Dean: That's awesome.
Tom: We're doing pieces of it, but not all of it. The first step, the first thing is conversation, find that top whatever, everybody on the team, and then I like The World's Greatest Postcard. We're doing a lot of good things, this will just enhance to it, or at least it will make it way better.
Dean: Absolutely. That's exactly right. Very good. Well, I enjoyed that, Tom. This was great. It was a pleasure to talk with you. Great stuff.
Tom: Yeah, fantastic for me. Like I said, this was a coaching session. This was very valuable for me, so I really appreciate that, Dean.
Dean: Awesome. Thanks, Tom. I will talk to you soon.
Tom: All right. Yep, adios.
Dean: Bye.
There we have it. Another great episode. If you'd like to continue the conversation, you can go to ListeningAgentLifestyle.com. You can download a copy of the Listening 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.
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. That's where we got all the programs, all the tools, everything you need to get listings, to multiply your listings, to get referrals, convert leads, and to find buyers. You can get a free, truly free no credit card required trial for 30 days at GoGoAgent.com. Come on over, and I will see you there.