Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast, we're talking with Crystal Swearingen from Lawrence, Kansas.
This is a really interesting conversation because Crystal is in a situation where Lawrence, Kansas is an adjacent market to Kansas City, and one of the questions people often have when they're adjacent to a bigger market is, should I straddle into that market and try and get a bigger piece of the pie.
The adjacent bigger market is very alluring, so we talked about the idea of raising the intensity in an individual market to really try and optimize what you have and dominate, before deciding to spread out to other markets.
We've talked a lot about this idea of approaching your business like Proctor & Gamble would approach their business by creating individual pillars or individual brands.
Proctor & Gamble does it in a way where they have 23 individual brands that do over $1 billion in sales, so it is possible to have multiple markets, but I like to encourage people to maximize one market at a time, and over time, build out the portfolio, rather than trying to get a little bit of a lot of markets.
We can take that same lesson and apply it here, and you'll hear how we walk through the mindsets of dominating each market.
This is a great episode if you're thinking about expanding your business.
Links:
GoGoAgent.com
Listing Agent Scorecard
Be a Guest
Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep107
Dean: Hello. Welcome to the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast. My name is Dean Jackson, and today we're talking with Crystal Swearingen from Lawrence, Kansas. We had a really great conversation, because she's in the situation where Lawrence, Kansas is an adjacent market to Kansas City. One of the questions that often people have when they're adjacent to a bigger market is should I straddle and try and get a bigger piece of that bigger pie? We always get the adjacent bigger market is very alluring. We had a really great conversation about the idea of raising the intensity in a more limited market to really try and optimize what you've got going in each individual market before trying to layer out to other markets. We talked a lot about this idea of approaching your business like Procter & Gamble would approach the business, looking at creating individual pillars or individual brands. Procter & Gamble does it in a way that they've got 23 individual brands that do over a billion dollars, so it is possible to have multiple markets.
But I always like to encourage people to maximize one market at a time. Go deep. Even Procter & Gamble, when they're going into a market their number one thing is plan to dominate. That's their leading thought when they're going into it. They're not trying to, let's try to get a little bit of a lot of markets. They're going into each market with a plan to 100% focus on dominating that market, so each team is responsible for each of those individual brands. I think that we can take that same lesson and apply it here, and you'll hear how we walk through the mindsets. I hope that this will be helpful for you if you're thinking about how do I expand my business? Here we go. Crystal.
Crystal: Yes. Good morning, Dean. How are you doing?
Dean: I'm so good. How are you?
Crystal: I'm doing wonderful.
Dean: Crystal, how-
Crystal: Very excited to be on the call today.
Dean: Oh, I'm excited to talk to you. How do I say your last name?
Crystal: Swearingen.
Dean: Swearingen? Okay. Great.
Crystal: Perfect.
Dean: Where are you calling in from today?
Crystal: I'm in Lawrence, Kansas.
Dean: Nice. Was it a white Christmas for you?
Crystal: No. It was actually high 60s.
Dean: Oh, my goodness.
Crystal: It's wonderful.
Dean: - here. I'm in Florida. We're having a little cold front, so there you go. Well, I'm looking forward to our time. We've got the whole hour to brainstorm and talk all about you. I'd love to hear the Crystal story and where we're at so far, and maybe what you're hoping we can work on today.
Crystal: Okay. Great. I have my business consultant, John, with me as well because we'll both probably have a few questions as we go on.
Dean: Oh, perfect. Hey, John.
John: Hey, Dean.
Crystal: Okay. I've been licensed for 12 years. I've done real estate for a while. 12 years is a long time in this industry. This past year, I opened my own brokerage, so now I'm a broker/owner.
Dean: Congratulations.
Crystal: I also own two other businesses. Thank you. Over the last 18 months, I opened a lounge called Crystal's Spot, and I launched a women-centric business magazine called The Spot Mag. I've been very busy creating new businesses and also starting my own brokerage. What I'm really looking to do now is to really get the brokerage out so people know that it exists and kind of relaunch my real estate career, so I'm very excited to get some tips or ideas on how to do that using the program.
Dean: Awesome. When you say relaunch, did you take some time off? Or are you meaning relaunching as your own brokerage?
Crystal: As my own broker/owner. Yes.
Dean: Okay. Got you. What's your model going to be like? What's your vision for your company?
Crystal: Well, we're a boutique brokerage. We specialize in residential at this point. And then I work with quite a few investors. I have three realtors at the company. This past year just with everything going on with the other businesses, I just really haven't gotten the word out as much as I wanted to. And then to throw something else in there, I also am licensed in California and have a license with a real estate company in Beverly Hills where I'm also working.
Dean: Oh, look at you. Okay. Now, is that a big hotbed pipeline from Beverly Hills to Lawrence, Kansas? Is there some secret migration that we're not aware of?
Crystal: No. I've been working with investor clients from LA and Houston over the past couple years, and the ones in LA wanted me to be able to help them there, so I'm doing a little bit of both.
Dean: Look at you. Okay. How did we come into contact? What's your awareness level of the things that we talk about, or experience with that so far?
Crystal: Well, John brought you to my attention because he's been listening to your podcast and learning about the program, and that's how I got introduced to the program.
Dean: Okay. One of the things that we've talked about is looking at a listing-centric approach to the business that allows us to focus on creating a great lifestyle as well. That's why we are focused, Listing Agent Lifestyle. Now, one of the things that is the primary focus here is we break it down into the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle, looking at having a systematic way to address the things that are going to make any real estate business thrive. We've got to have a system for getting listings. If you're going to have a listing-centric business, you got to have a way to get listings. We talk about getting a system for multiplying your listings, turning each listing that you get into multiple transactions. We talk about getting referrals, meaning your relationships and the people that know you, like you and trust you. If you've been in the business now 12 or 13 years, you've got a lot of equity in the relationships and reputation that you have built up, so we want to look at capitalizing on that, maximizing what you can do there.
When we talk about converting leads, because so often the real estate world is focused on the immediacy of generating a lead right now, getting somebody in the car and getting them into a house without really taking a longer term approach to things, nurturing relationships. Which, if you can figure that out, it's such an amazing advantage that you have over all of the other people in real estate. And then of course finding buyers and putting it all together. If you've got listings, if we can find buyers, to become sort of a market maker, that's a wonderful advantage. And then we talk about the lifestyle elements of daily joy and abundant time and financial peace. I want to maybe get an overlay on your business right now and see where we might be able to have the biggest leverage. If you don't mind, I'll ask you some questions and take some notes here and get a lay of the land for us and see where maybe we can go from there. Is that okay?
Crystal: Okay. That sounds great. Thank you.
Dean: Okay. Would you consider yourself a listing agent or a buyer? What side of the business is more attractive to you? You mentioned you work with a lot of investors, so what's your primary focus or desire?
Crystal: Over the last probably five or six years I've been more buyer-centric. I've worked with more buyers than listings. I kind of wanted to angle the business where I become more listing-centric, because I had a real estate team before I opened my own brokerage and they were kind of buyers agents, but I've been very good at working and finding buyers these last couple of years.
Dean: That's awesome. How many listings do you have now? Do you have listings? Or are you only starting back up again kind of thing?
Crystal: I have one listing right now, and I've got the instant open house set up on it, and I've done the three steps that Diane set me up with to promote that listing. I have one listing at this time.
Dean: Okay. Perfect. What about your systems for getting listings? How do you get listings right now? Have you got kind of a reliable system that you could say, this is how I get listings?
Crystal: Well, that's why we're signing up with you, because I really want to implement some system for me.
Dean: Okay.
Crystal: My business probably has been referral based, which has been great. I've been able to do a really steady business with referrals, but I wanted to elevate that to the next level, plus owning my own company really getting out there a little bit differently and launching in the California market as well.
Dean: Yeah.
Crystal: That's why I'm really excited about these farming options you guys have and just the tools to get in front of more people and see who raises their hand.
Dean: Yeah. I am too. That's the desire. We'll swing back and we'll talk about getting listings. You got one listing right now that you're in the process of multiplying.
Crystal: Yes.
Dean: You mentioned that a lot of your business right now is coming from referral, or a lot of your business comes from referral. Let's talk about that because one of the things that we do that helps everybody understand where they are relative to everybody else is we have some standardized metrics that we look at. One of those metrics is what we call your return on relationship. That's the percentage of the business that you do that comes from referral and repeat, or direct business, like from your sphere. Our goal is that you have established your top 150, the people who know you, like you, trust you. That's the core that we're looking for here. Tell me about what happens with your referral business right now. How much of your business comes from referrals and what kind of transaction volume stuff are you doing?
Crystal: Well this past year, like I said, I've been doing the other businesses, so I haven't done as much in the real estate, but I would say probably 60% of the business I received this year was referrals, so a very large portion of it.
Dean: Okay. Great. Okay. How many transactions would that have been?
Crystal: Probably seven transactions.
Dean: Okay, okay. This is what's interesting, is this is one of those things where you'll see now how this standardized metric helps, because for you to say... and this is when most people are looking at gauging their business. They say, "Well, 60% of my business comes from referrals," but that doesn't really tell us anything. What that means is that 7 of the 11 transactions that you did came from referrals. What we're looking for that gives you a really good barometer is your return on relationship relative to the 150 people in Lawrence that know you, like you and trust you, and would consider you to be their real estate agent if they had a need. Right?
Crystal: Uh-huh (affirmative).
Dean: Do you have a list of these people or your sphere? Do you have any way of identifying who these people are?
Crystal: Yeah. I sent out the first postcard, the world's most interesting, so I mailed out my first round of those just the other day and just received mine. I do have a list. My world is so broad, so it's not just Lawrence. Even though I'm located in Lawrence, I do a lot of work in Kansas City. And then because of my national committee involvement with NAR, the National Association of Realtors, I get referrals from agents in Boston and Chicago, all different areas.
Dean: Yes, of course.
Crystal: I didn't know, like when I do the 150, do I just try to geographically locate it where I'm at? Or do I do to anybody who knows me, likes me and trusts me that I want to-
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, they're different things. The core of this is going to be the people in Lawrence that are ... Do you live in Lawrence? Is that where you're-
Crystal: Yes, I do.
Dean: That's what you would call your primary area, right?
Crystal: Yeah.
Dean: If we were going to focus? Okay. Let's focus on your primary area. Here's who should be in your top 150. These are the people that if you saw them at the grocery store you would recognize them by name without prompting and you would stop and have a conversation with them. That's the core group that we're talking about there. Now, that would include hopefully all the people that are living in the house that you helped them get. All of those people would be the core group there. Then there would be all the people that you know that are your friends, the people you hang out with, your neighbors, your family or extended family, or the people you have a relationship with that's not business related.
Crystal: Okay.
Dean: Yeah. What we're looking to do is get to that core group of 150. Our standard metric, our standard goal for this is to manage that relationship portfolio for a 20% annual yield. Our target should be that we can generate 30 transactions from that group of 150 people.
Crystal: Okay.
Dean: Yeah. I don't know how many of the podcasts that you've listened to, but you'll hear that there are people... Tom Storey comes to my mind, Chuck Charles, that their primary focus has been developing that after unit, and they all get up over that 20% annual yield. That's where I would focus on this. How many people did we send the world's most interesting postcard to?
Crystal: I did 77 this time. I've had a really difficult time defining my top 150, because I've had past clients, but then I'm on the chamber board, so I have those relationships. I could probably have 400 people, so I'm trying to whittle it down and then-
Dean: Yeah. That's good. It doesn't require that you've had a business relationship with them. The test would be aside from do you really know them, we want the ones that are ... that's why we call it your top 150, the ones that you definitely would know, you definitely would know them, not that they're an acquaintance that you know their name because they're in the chamber with or something like that. We want people you know, and that includes people like your friends and your family and the people that you wouldn't otherwise think of ... and I'm using air quotes here, "marketing to" because it's not about marketing to them. It's about creating an environment where something very specific happens. All of our referral situation, for every one of the seven referrals that you got last year, they all began as a conversation with somebody that would've been in your top 150. Somebody who is on that list, somebody who refers you, means that they were in a conversation and three very specific things happened.
They noticed that the conversation was about real estate, they thought about you, and then they introduced you to the person that they were having that conversation with. That's the essence of how referrals happen. Our goal with your after unit, with everything we're doing, is to make sure that happens more often. We want to make sure that that is the thing. When we take your top 150, just if you look at it, just purely out of the 150, some of them are actually going to move in the next 12 months, or buy an investment property, or buy a vacation property, or sell their house. Directly, some number of those 150 are going to do something themselves. The main thing that we need to do is to be on their mind when that happens, when it's time for them to sell. Here comes Crystal. Oh, there she is. There she is. Oh yeah, oh that reminds me I need to call Crystal because we got to get our house on the market.
Way, way more than if they're thinking about it and they don't have an easy way to be reminded about you proactively that you could slip into this, that somebody else may have sent them something. You know?
Crystal: Right.
Dean: Or that yeah, they're in a conversation with somebody else and it just all of a sudden happen, they walk into an open house or something. They hadn't been in contact with you, so they don't feel like it would be disappointing to you if they did something like that. Right?
Crystal: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: They think that that's okay. Being in front of them every month is going to pay dividends in itself, just those top 150 just with the direct business that they're getting. But the thing that we want to program for them is that when they hear conversations about real estate, that they think about you and they introduce you to the conversation. Each month on that postcard, what we send is a reminder or a presencing kind of message about the kinds of conversations that they might be hearing right now. We're coming into the new year, and we talk about first time buyers. Just a quick note in case you hear someone talking about buying their first home. That will increase the number of times that they'll notice those conversations. Plus, we get to present all the different types of people that you actually help. Right?
Crystal: Yes.
Dean: Because if we're talking about first time buyers or we're talking about, you work with a lot of investors so you talk about investing in real estate, that all of these things that they know that these are the kinds of people that you work with, that's going to amplify whenever they hear somebody talking about those things. I'm very excited about that. I think that right now if we just did the math on your current return on relationship is at ... 7 by 150, it's about 4.6% right now. My goal for this would be that when we talk about this next year, a year from now, that that number is significantly improved. That we're talking about 15% or 10% at least that because of this, we're increasing the number of referrals that you get.
Crystal: Okay.
Dean: Yeah. That's kind of a cool thing that's really sort of low effort, set it and forget it baseline type of thing. You know now, now we've got your list. You definitely want to add to it though. The way we've been describing those things is that it just takes a little bit of effort to get the list together. Do you think you know more than 77 people in Lawrence?
Crystal: Yes, I do, I just don't know what kind relationship I would define them as because I don't have many family here, so most of my relationships are going to be business relationships. Yeah, I could probably add some more people to it.
Dean: Yeah, definitely.
Crystal: What I did is I sent it to everyone I work with, and a lot of my clients don't live in Lawrence so I send them to them as well.
Dean: Okay. That's great.
Crystal: Yeah, I'll work on that because while I live in Lawrence, over the last four years, more of my business has been done in the Kansas City area. We sell about 1100 homes a year here in Lawrence whereas in Kansas City, they're at about 14,000 to 15,000. I see a lot more opportunities as an independent broker to work in that market and kind of ease into it a lot more seamlessly. Even though I live here, because there's 400 realtors here and 1100 homes.
Dean: Yes.
Crystal: It's a-
Dean: What's the population of Lawrence?
Crystal: It's about, I think 75,000 when the students aren't here.
Dean: Oh, wow, that's big. That's plenty sized. Listen, the reality is, Crystal, that we're talking about what's the most number of transactions that you've done in a year, in the 12 years?
Crystal: 37 transactions.
Dean: Okay. That's not unusual. Part of the thing that we look at is this taking comfort or feeling like this bigger pie down in Kansas that all I need is this smaller piece of this bigger pie, feels comforting. It feels like, oh I should be able to get more out there. But listen, with seven transactions last year at a max of 37, we're not in danger of getting you saturated in the Lawrence market. There's plenty of runway for you. If you did 50 transactions, that's not even 5% of the market. I think that what I would love to see and inspire you for is to think about raising the intensity in Lawrence first off to get to that level at least, with a goal to get to 50 transactions. I'm Lawrence, they're certainly there and there's nobody stopping it. I think that it would be easier to make that impact than it would to make that impact by spreading yourself out thinner.
Crystal’: Oh, that kind of goes into my question because what I have found to be more successful for me is working in the Kansas City market, but I was looking at-
Dean: How far away is Kansas City?
Crystal: About 20 minutes. 20 to 30 to where I have done business at. But I was wondering what your take would be on doing multiple farm areas because they would be in different cities.
Dean: Oh, I love that.
Crystal: What would you recommend-
Dean: No, I do love. This is where everything that I am about is layering. What I look for is, yes, you can have multiple. But we take an approach like Procter & Gamble that each one is its own individual collectives. Because Procter & Gamble as a big company has 23 individual billion dollar brands.
Crystal: Wow.
Dean: Yeah. You can have all of these, you can have multiple markets. But, we go into one and we plan to dominate that one. And then from there, build out another. You know?
Crystal: Okay.
Dean: It's like the whole thing is, I say this to people getting started that you will definitely make more money ... if your real estate license limited you to only being allowed to sell in Lawrence, Kansas, you would make more money than this temptation of being able to go everywhere. Because you get seduced into this belief that there's a bigger opportunity in Kansas. I think we want to layer your foundation. Where do you want to live? Is Lawrence the place you love? What's your vision for where you're headed kind of thing?
Crystal: Well, I've been here 23 years and raised my children here. My goal is to spend my winters where it's warm.
Dean: Ah, I like what I'm hearing.
Crystal: And then spend the rest of my time here. That's been my vision since I got my real estate license 12 years ago, then my kids grew up. That's why the California life came into play, and then the connection to California just grew. Two of my realtors that are in my company are in Lawrence, and one's in Kansas City. She primarily does Kansas City area.
Dean: I gotcha.
Crystal: I like the idea of what you're saying is dominating to market, the more as primary, and then building out these. Because I really need to get going on the farming. We are ready. We have a plan. We're ready to go.
Dean: I love it.
Crystal: That's been my question.
Dean: Tell me about Lawrence then. What's the most sexy thing in Lawrence that if you had all the listings of this category, it would be that thing? Are there lakefront homes? Are there golf course homes? Are there-
Crystal: There's kind of. We have two golf courses and we have two country clubs. We have some luxury, and that's kind of the market I want to explore more because no one's really marketing to luxury real estate. And so, now working in Beverly Hills, I feel like it can become consistent throughout. My plan was to do golf course communities here in Lawrence, and then a few in Kansas City where they have some private nice golf course communities.
Dean: Okay. Is Lawrence, is it a commuter town?
Crystal: Yes.
Dean: Do people live in Lawrence and-
Crystal: It's a bedroom community. Yes.
Dean: Okay, great. Okay, perfect. That's a nice thing. I grew up and started my business outside of Toronto, in Halton Hills, very similar situation. People worked in the city and lived in Halton Hills. What's the price range? What's the median price in Lawrence right now?
Crystal: About 225 I think is the average sale price we're delivering now.
Dean: Okay, okay. On golf course homes, how many golf course homes would there be? How many golf communities? You said there's two right there.
Crystal: Yeah. When I did the search for - which is a golf course community, it said there's 2500 homes.
Dean: Oh, okay, sounds awesome. Okay, that's the first one is the 2500. Is that a planned community?
Crystal: It is. It's not like some cities have different subdivisions within the communities. It's called Alvamar. It's inside of Alvamar, I think there's four or five different little niche parts of it. It's a planned community that I think I could market to pretty well and efficiently. It has a good turnover. It has good ratios for that.
Dean: I like that. Okay. There's 2500 homes there. And then is there another community as well?
Crystal: There is, but I don't know the number of houses that one had. There are probably about 400.
Dean: Okay, it's smaller.
Crystal: It's smaller.
Dean: Okay. That's great. Is the price range ... How do you spell that community? A ...
Crystal: A-L-V ... is it A? A-M-A-R.
Dean: A-M-A-R. Alvamar. Okay, great. In Alvamar, is there a range of homes from golf villas or condos up to luxury homes? Or are they all the same kind of homes? What do you get in there?
Crystal: There's a range. We don't have any condos. But you're probably looking at 300 to 1.5. it's a big range depending on where you're located in the community.
Dean: Okay, okay this is great. Is it the premier community in Lawrence? If you said to somebody in Lawrence, would they say, "I live in Alvamar?"
Crystal: I would think so. Our city is very different in the terms of we don't really call neighborhoods by their names. But in my interpretation as a realtor, yes. I think people who live in Alvamar enjoy living in Alvamar. It makes them feel like they're part of the history at the country club.
Dean: Okay, perfect. Is there new construction going on there too? Or is it already all built out?
Crystal: It's already all developed. Now, the new construction is just less of that. Those don't really have a name, but there's a lot of new homes -.
Dean: Okay. Right. I think this, Alvamar is the perfect thing to isolate in the beginning here for getting listings for you. You're saying it's popular, there's turnover, there's variety. You've got some great things. And it's built around a golf course community, right?
Crystal...: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: Okay.
Crystal: Yes.
Dean: I like that. That's very similar to what we have here in Winter Haven. The thing that we want to focus on immediately is to get that list together, and then the whole idea is that we look at what would be the total yield from this, just to give you a sense of the scope of it. If you're saying that there's a turnover rate of the 2500 homes, how many of them would sell in the last 12 months?
Crystal: I unfortunately don't have that number right now. But I know just from experience, I lived there for 10 years, the amount of houses that sold was pretty high compared to most other neighborhoods.
Dean: Okay. It's a good, active turnover? It's not a place where houses sit or there's huge inventory? I think what helps those kind of things is when there's not a new construction competing with it. If you want to be in Alvamar, you're going to be in one of the existing homes, right?
Crystal: Yeah. A lot of people that work at the university live there, so when they get relocated or change jobs, then we have that - move.
Dean: A lot of builtin turnover. Okay, that's perfect. I would suggest that we take Alvamar as the start. If you listen to, I think maybe the second episode of the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast, you'll hear Chuck Charlton. This reminds me of Hawthorne Village. When Chuck started out, it was a little area just like that, 2500 homes. That turned into a monster business unit for him. That's the way I want you to think about this, is like Procter & Gamble, we're not coming into the Alvamar market thinking, let's just dabble in here and see if we can get a couple of listing, or let's send some postcards, see if we get a listing. I want you to come into this thinking that we're taking over Alvamar. And that if we could get 20% market share in Alvamar, that would be the real objective here, to come into and be the only name that people think of in Alvamar.
That takes some longterm vision for this. But what we've been doing with Tony Calsey over six years has been phenomenal. I see that same thing here as an opportunity for us.
Crystal: That's where my current listing is right now, it's in Alvamar as well, my current.
Dean: Oh, that's perfect. You see how it all plays together then, that now what we really want to get to is that we've got an opportunity where we are finding the buyers who are looking for Alvamar, and we've got all of these potential sellers in Alvamar that are not yet on the market. We get to be a market maker. I think that's really a fascinating thing. What I would look at is two points in here. Is looking for, we're going to start with the listing side. We've got the whole getting listings program. We've got the postcards, the landing pages, everything that you need to just start and go for it. Now, I would say to look at it as starting with what you can afford to commit to for the longterm. We may not start with 2500 homes initially. If you feel like it would be better to start with 500 or 1,000, and get that rolling, and then continue to parlay.
Both Chuck and Tony, and Ron Reed who we talk about, all of those started and then continued to add on to it so that ultimately my goal would be that every month, we're mailing to the 2500 homes in Alvamar, and we're getting people to raise their hand, and then we're sending the, get top dollar newsletter ... we have a whole followup program for you, for everybody ... to the people who respond. All the while, we're building this below the surface list of future sellers that nobody else knows about except for you.
Crystal: Are these the same people once they raise their hand, I receive the market maker Monday? Who do we send those to?
Dean: Yes. Right.
Crystal: Okay.
Dean: Now, this is the thing is that I like that you're already aware of the language and stuff. This means that now, if we're ultimately looking for people who are coming into Lawrence, that we can find buyers who are looking for Alvamar by offering a guide to Alvamar house prices, the 2020 guide to Alvamar house prices. That for buyers gives people a sense of, oh, here's what Alvamar is all about. Where they get to find out that this area here is where the golf villas are, and this area here is luxury homes, and this area here is whatever the range would go from 300 to 1.5 million. Along with all the ones that are currently for sale. Whenever you've got somebody looking for, who's ready to go out and look at homes in Alvamar for instance, now we've been mailing the getting listings postcards. We've got this whole group of people who responded but haven't yet listed their house, that we can send.
If you responded to it, I would send you an email and say, "Hi, Crystal. I'm showing houses in Alvamar this weekend to a couple from Kansas. There's only a few for sale in whatever, the River Run section of Alvamar where you are. I remember looking up your house online when I sent you the Alvamar report. I'm not sure what your plans are, but I thought I'd check and see if maybe I could tell them about your house. It might be a perfect match for them." That sort of communication to them, if they're ready to sell, would be like, wow, what an advantage. I can skip all the hassle of having to put the house on the market, basically.
Crystal: Yeah, exactly.
Dean: And that it would make sense. That kind of communication is so much better than just checking in with people, right?
Crystal: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: Going, "Hey, Crystal. Just checking in. Are you getting the newsletter? Are you enjoying it?" None of that is really moving the ball forward. We want the thought that people have about Crystal is that Crystal has the buyers for Alvamar.
Crystal: That's great.
Dean: That's what we want, so that that way, we're supporting that. Every time you send out the, get top dollar newsletter, we're highlighting here's the new listing that we got in Alvamar. Here's the happy new family that we just moved in to River Run in Alvamar. We have a section of it called helping people on the move. That's what you're really demonstrating here, you know?
Crystal: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: It's all very exciting, Crystal. I never get tired of introducing new people to the program because we've got such a long track record of this.
Crystal: That's great. Does the getting listing postcards that I sent to the farm, do they change every month? Or is it the same postcard every month?
Dean: They change. They change in that they say, the December 2019 report. And then they say the January, and then they say the February and the March. But they're essentially the same postcard. It seems so ridiculous, Crystal, to think that that's what works, but it is what works.
Crystal: I've heard some people say on the podcast because I've listened to quite a few, that they try to change colors and do these things. But I'm going to be honest, because I want to work in the luxury, that's my intention, I'm like does this work for the luxury markets? Do you say marketing to luxury?
Dean: Yeah, I say listen to the Kenny McCarthy episode because Kenny lives in Cape Ann, Massachusets. The area that he chose for his getting listings is ocean front homes on Cape Ann. There's 970 something ocean front homes on Cape Ann. He's been doing this for years now. But I just saw him in Florida here before Thanksgiving. He was telling me about somebody who had been getting his newsletter. They responded to the postcard, been getting the newsletter for five years and called him up and said, "Kenny, we decided we had to at least give you a shot because you've been sending us stuff for so long." He went in, he listed the house, got it sold. 2.7 million dollars. It's just story after story like this for Kenny of these luxury homes.
Now, you imagine that it goes against everything that ... Just like I sneeze with you and with other people who want to go luxury, it was so difficult for him to trust in the yellow cards. He's with Sotheby's, so you imagine how that goes over. But-
Crystal: I'm with a different - in California, so I can, yeah.
Dean: Exactly. You know this is just so not Sotheby's. But it's so valuable. He's over it because it's just story after story of them. Every one of those listings and sales that he's had in there are at least a million dollars. They're all a million to four and a half million. But they respond. We've done the same thing in South Beach ocean front condos, and Paradise Valley in Arizona, and Beverly Hills, and Malibu, and Brentwood. All of these communities. It's crazy, but it's the thing that works.
Crystal: Trust the process.
Dean: Yup, that's it. Trust the process. Because at this stage, here's the thing, is it's not about convincing people to list with you. The card, you're barely even featured on the card. The only reason that you're on the card is because we can't send them out legally without identifying that it's you on the card. Right?
Crystal: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: It's not about list with Crystal. We're playing a different game. The game that we're playing is we want to identify in advance all the people that are going to sell their Alvamar house in the next 12 months. That's what we're looking for.
Crystal: Like I said, I heard that in your past podcast is real estate, when I first got into it - it's been an ego game. Who's going to have their picture on the most billboards? Who's going to have ...
Dean: Oh, yeah.
Crystal: To hear that it's not about putting me in front, but just identifying if I can the people. Like you always say, the specific performance I'm looking for.
Dean: Right. But now, there's the thing. We're just doing it for one step. Right?
Crystal: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: Now, once they respond, now we're going to tell them all about Crystal. We want them to bond with Crystal. We want you. We're going to do the personal promotion through service and valuable giving to the people who have responded to the postcard. We're not trying to convince 100% of the people in Alvamar. Because let's face it, even if there's a super high turnover rate, it's not going to be more than 10%. And so, when we look at it, I would bet that it's probably in the 5%, 6%, 7% range.
Crystal: I think, I was just about that.
Dean: Yeah. The only thing, the most valuable thing that we can do is identify if we have an advantage that we knew who those people were before anybody else, that's going to be an advantage for us. I love it. I'm excited for you because I love to see this. I get the sense you're a follow through kind of person. I like that.
Crystal: John, who introduced the program to me, he's like, "We're going to do it the way that is set up because it's successful." I know he had a question. I'm going to let him ask-
Dean: Yeah. I've been hogging it and talking. Yeah. I want to make sure that.
Crystal: No-
Dean: But I think that's the most-
Crystal: I've got five pages of notes.
Dean: That's the two most valuable things. John, hey, you've been listening for a while. Tell me what your thought was.
John: Well, in I believe it was number 97 on the podcast ... and I know it's hard when you're dealing with a master class or a master mind because the conversations, they go in different directions. But one of the gentleman, he asked a very specific question that because of all the questions being fired at you, could never really be gotten around to. I wanted to ask it again in hopes of helping us. What the gentleman said is, you know the listing multiplier index that you have?
Dean: Yes. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
John: You know the five points on there?
Dean: Yes.
John: He asked what is the first actionable step we could do on each point that would help us in the right direction to score those points?
Dean: Okay, perfect.
John: You were about to get to it, and then someone else asked a very good question. There were so many good questions, it's almost impossible to answer all of them. But that was my question. Is there an actionable step we can take for each multiplier point that would get us on the right road?
Dean: Yeah, there absolutely is. I'm not sure which one was 97, but I may have deferred that answer because we did a session on each one. We did a whole session on multiplying listings.
John: Okay, perfect.
Dean: Yeah. If that was within that session and I didn't get to it, then I'll answer your question right now because I think that we got to have an eye on that. The first thing, for people listening if they're jumping in on the first one, the thing that we're talking about, the five opportunities that you have with each listing is number one, to get the listing sold. Somebody sells it on the LMS. Number two, you've got the opportunity to find the buyer yourself for that house. You've got the opportunity to find a buyer that buys another house, not necessarily that one. You've got the opportunity to get the next listing in the neighborhood, and you've got the opportunity to get a referral from the seller.
All five of those things, we've got very specific strategies. Putting it in the LMS and pricing it right, and doing all of those things, that's really what most people do. They limit themselves to the first objective, which is to get it sold. They make a big splash and make sure all the agents know, price it right or competitively, and hopefully there's competing offers. They're not focused on finding the buyer themselves. One of the things is to look from the ground up at the ways that we can multiply those. One of the things is to take an approach like you're a Fizbo on each of these listings. You start to think, okay, I'm the only one that can find the buyer here. What would we do then? You start thinking about okay, well what are the tools that we have available to us? And so, the info box and the info box fliers are an amazing tool that has kind of been underutilized, you know?
Crystal...: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: Very few people use it, but it's still an amazing tool. We still get a lot of activity from that. The instant open house meeting, having a single property site where people can go, and the only option, the only thing to do is to ... That's why we position it as the instant open house that people can go and leave their name and their email address to get a property PDF with all of the information about that property. And then we have their email address, so now we can communicate by email to engage people in a dialogue. Each week, we'll send out an email, or in the beginning we'll send out an email and say to people ... everybody who's opted in about that property will say, "Hi John, I'm meeting some people at the house this weekend to show the house. Would you like to join us?" We can send a short, personal, expecting a reply email to everybody who's opted in for information about 22 Greystone.
When they reply and say, "Oh, when is it? I would like to," or, "Tell me more," or whatever, then we can say, "Get everybody there at 2:00." We're not doing the big four hour, put the signs and hope that somebody comes open house. We're doing all the lead generation and then specifically inviting the people who may be interested in seeing it to come by at 2:00. That way, if you've got five or six listings, we can do five or six that one day by saying, "We're meeting people at noon, and then the next one's at 1:00, and 2:00, and 3:00, and 4:00." That way, you're sending out. All the focus is on generating as many email addresses of people who are interested in that house, and inviting them, giving them the opportunity to come by and see that house. And then you only need to go to the ones that the people are interested in seeing. You know?
Crystal: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: Because-
John: Because they've opted into the instant open house?
Dean: That's exactly right. All of the focus, we focus on ... it's very similar to what we're doing with the getting listings, in that we're only focused on one objective at a time. What I want to do, the purpose of that info box flier is not to sell the house. The purpose of the info box flier is to point people to 22Greystone.com so that they can go there to get more information. When they're there, the purpose of 22 Greystone is not to sell the house. It's to let them know, you're in the right place, here's all the information, leave your name and your email. Just like you would expect that people would sign in if they came to an open house.
John: You're basically taking them through a very tangible sales process?
Dean: That's exactly right. All the while, we're building a list of buyers.
Crystal: Yeah, that's a true story.
Dean: A very valid list of buyers. We did this-
John: So does-
Dean: You talk about this in, does it work in luxury? We did this in Paradise Valley, in Arizona. Over a two week period, we generated 80 plus opt ins with info box fliers and just listed postcards to a three million dollar house. You know?
Crystal: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: We ended up having over 20 people come to an open house on the Saturday.
Crystal: Okay.
John: Was that from the combination of the info box flier, the instant open house?
Dean: Yes.
John: And then the market maker Monday email?
Dean: We didn't do the market maker Monday email at that point because that, we didn't have anybody to do that with. That was all from the instant open house and the just listed cards, and the info box flier.
John: Does that process apply to numbers one, two and three of the listing multiplier?
Dean: Yeah, because here's the thing, everything ... Yeah, because when you're looking for a buyer, there's a good chance you may find the one who wants that house, but you also find a buyer who maybe this one isn't the one, but there's another one in that similar price range that you may be able to introduce them to.
John: Yes, I've seen that process play out with Crystal. Not in this structured of a format though.
Dean: Right.
John: Okay. And then, in terms of numbers four and five, do the info box flier and the instant open house have any bearing on that? Or is it a different set of-
Dean: Well, they do in that of course a good portion of the people who take the info box flier initially are going to be people who live in that neighborhood. Right?
Crystal: Yeah.
Dean: They think, oh, how much is this house? But here's how we combine number four and five, which is getting another listing and getting a referral from the seller. We have a conversation with the seller. I can't wait for you to hear the episode I just recorded with Ron Reed. We talked about this idea of doing that on a strategy session with the seller where all the marketing is done, the info box flier, the instant open house, the property PDF, the social media posts, all of that stuff. We sit down with the sellers and we bring oversized print outs of the satellite view of the 20 homes around their house, and we start going through the ground up marketing process of saying our first thing is going to be these 20 homes right here. And have the sellers identify the ones that they know by name.
If they know the neighbors, then we're going to do a little note from the seller to the neighbor, introducing, telling them the house is for sell. Introducing you, giving them business cards to give to people, all pointing them to 22Greystone.com. That's going to introduce you in a good light to the people that they know within that neighborhood as well. Then-
Yeah, then we zoom out to the neighborhood or the 100 homes, the ones that have a frame of reference for where that is, and we show and talk about the just listed postcard that we can do to those people. Then we zone out to the 15 mile radius, and we talk about the Facebook post that we can do. We go through with the sellers, their Facebook friends and say, "Who do you know that lives in these areas that we can send a Facebook message to? And then let's post up this info box flier on your Facebook wall." You start thinking about all the ways you can get the seller involved in the process.
Crystal: I love it.
Dean: Yeah, it's exciting to see how they get excited about it, you know?
Crystal: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: Yeah.
Crystal: Well, I think in this day and era where a lot of people don't meet with their sellers anymore, everything's done electronically, just take that five star ... you call it the five star approach. I even look at them in my business. We've done everything on Dot Loop or DocuSign. To sit down with them and get them a part of it, I think that could only help my referrals because they'll say, "hey, she did something different."
Dean: That's exactly right. You think about what that 40 minutes, if you were to sit down for 40 minutes, a one hour total investment with your sellers to be talking about the neighbors that they know, the most likely people that are there. Who are your influencer friends? We're doing it all because it's wrapped in this wrapper of this is going to help you, so they're very excited about it. But the other benefit of it is that you're getting to know who are their influencer friends.
Crystal: And see, I do that. I close - party for my fliers. So then I get in front of their friends and they're like, "Yeah, she helped us sign the house." I host it, and I send out the invites.
Dean: See, that's all right. Yeah. You do all the right things.
Crystal: I haven't done that with the sellers. I haven't done it with the sellers. So -.
Dean: You have to do it ahead of time with the sellers.
Crystal: Exactly.
Dean: Maybe when you're showing the things, you invite the neighbors to come to a preview open house.
Crystal: Oh, that's a great idea. Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Crystal: Wow. Like I said, I have five pages of notes already.
Dean: You'll listen again and you'll hear-
Crystal: Of course.
Dean: ... things differently. This has been delightful.
Crystal: Well, and I think like I told you, one of my biggest concerns was should I do 206 different neighborhoods? I like what you said, just to dominate the one area.
Dean: Yeah, stick with one.
Crystal: Yeah, I love it.
Dean: Let's take over Alvamar and then go from there.
Crystal: That sounds great. Thank you so much.
John: thank you very much, Dean.
Dean: I love it. Yeah, this has been great. I can't wait to watch this unfold. I think we're going to check back a year from now and realize this was the birth of a great success story. I can tell.
Crystal: Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time and for letting us be on here.
Dean: Awesome. Enjoyed it. Have a great day.
Crystal: You too.
John: Thank you, Dean.
Dean: Okay, bye, guys.
And there we 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 Listingagentlifestlye.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.