Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast, we're talking with David Simon from Bergen County, New Jersey. David's been a long time resident of Bergen County. His family ran a hardware business for 70 years there, so he has a lot of roots that he used to start as a real estate investor, buying and flipping homes, and then into becoming a real estate agent.
Both he and his wife practice real estate. They work in both commercial and residential, but today we focused on building up the residential side of their business, and the two main things to create a game plan for 2020.
Most of his business comes from referrals, so we talked about how to shore that up and build up the number of people in his database, his top 150, the list of people that he's communicating with, and shoot for the 20% return on relationships we talked about.
Then we talked about Getting Listings and went through a real analysis of how to pick the right area within Bergen County, and what the implications of that could be over the next two years.
So this is a really great episode if you're focused on increasing the number of referrals you get or looking at getting more listings from a particular area.
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep119
Dean: David.
David: Hi.
Dean: Hello, how are you?
David: Oh, fantastic.
Dean: Well welcome.
David: Thanks Dean.
Dean: Yeah, I'm very excited to get to chat with you. Where are you calling in from?
David: I'm working from my home office.
Dean: And where are you?
David: In Norwood, New Jersey, Bergen County, near the George Washington Bridge.
Dean: All right, I know all about Bergen County. One of my college friends lived in Park Ridge.
David: Yeah, that's-
Dean: I've been there quite a bit.
David: Oh, wow.
Dean: Kinchley's was our favorite little pizza place [crosstalk 00:02:36]-
David: Oh yeah Kinchley's and [crosstalk 00:02:36], yup. Excellent pizza.
Dean: That's right.
David: Been going there since I was a kid.
Dean: There we go.
David: Yup.
Dean: Oh, that's funny. Yeah, it's been a while since I've been up there, maybe five years or something, but there you go.
David: You won't recognize it anymore.
Dean: I guess, I mean everything's growing, growing, growing, huh?
David: Yeah, especially up in Mahwah and that area.
Dean: Yeah, love it. Well, I'm excited to spend the hour with you here and talk all about what you've got going on. So, what's the David story? How long have you been doing real estate, and what's the experience so far?
David: Okay, so in 1990 I went into my father's Ace Hardware store business. He was second generation, I was the third generation. I took over the store in about 1995. We ran until 2013.
Dean: Wow.
David: Been in business for over 70 years, and our land just became more valuable than the income we were producing from a small Ace Hardware store.
Dean: Oh, I gotcha.
David: But in the meantime we assembled over an acre and a half to develop one day in the future in Englewood, New Jersey.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
David: So I got the taste of real estate very early after I graduated college.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
David: From there I got my... During my 10-year run in my hardware store I retained a sales real estate license. My wife and I started buying properties and flipping them.
Dean: Oh nice. Look at you, that's great.
David: Yeah, so in 2013 when my wife and I decided to shut down the store to develop the land, both of us went full-time into real estate. She also has her real estate license.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
David: Since then I've taken many classes and I got my Brokers Associate's License, so just in case I ever wanted to go off on my own. Since 2013 I started at Sotheby's, I'm still there. I noticed many agents were doing commercial, so I started taking that on head on. So my wife handles the residential side and I help her a great deal because we're very busy now. Then I concentrate on the commercial end.
Dean: People must be flocking to Bergen County right now.
David: Yes, they are.
Dean: Yeah I mean very convenient to the city and just far enough away, yeah.
David: So here we are and last year we did 10 million in sales and I really want to double it or triple it. I feel like I'm at a flat spot right now.
Dean: What was the split between commercial and residential?
David: I'm going to say last year we probably did 60/40, 60% commercial, 40% residential. But this year I think it's going to flip flop.
Dean: Right.
David: Based on the COVID.
Dean: Yeah, what kind of commercial real estate do you do?
David: I was grabbing any low-hanging fruit, so if a warehouse listing came along, which is the best, I'd grab it. If it was a retail storefront, a little more difficult, I would grab it.
Dean: Uh-huh (affirmative).
David: Restaurants, I sold a restaurant business this past year, this year 2020, and I got a referral for a bagel shop. I have a dental office. I'm grabbing all the low-hanging fruit that I can grab.
Dean: That's great. There's some great bagels in Bergen County too I remember.
David: Yeah, honestly the best.
Dean: I mean really. My friend took me to this place, I don't know that it's in Bergen County, but we went to this place where they actually make the bagels and you can pick them straight off the line. That was an experience, that was something else.
David: That would be a dream of mine.
Dean: It's great, I mean it was... Wish I knew what it was called and I don't have enough spacial awareness to even tell you where it was, I was just driving in the car but it was really something. I mean they have all the different ones and they come right off the... They are so hot when they come off. They literally burn your fingertips. You have to get them into the bag. That was a fun experience. What's going to be your game plan then on the residential side if you're going to look to double your business right now? Where does most of it come from currently?
David: Currently I've been doing it for seven years full-time and I've been getting mostly referrals now from the people that I sell their houses or the buyers. I prefer sellers of course but it's been basically all referral business now.
Dean: Okay, so when we talk about the... How long have you been in our world here, familiar with Listing Agent and Lifestyle elements or how did we come to connect here?
David: I found you on the podcast I Love Marketing.
Dean: Okay yep. Okay perfect and how-
David: I listen as much as I can.
Dean: Okay great, so if we go down the Listing Agent Lifestyle elements here you're saying referrals is a strong piece of your business. Have you ever calculated your return on relationship the way that we do? If you say do you have a list of 150 people that you would consider your relationships, the ones that are doing the referring?
David: Yeah, I have a list, I have a CRM and honestly that's all I worked on during the four weeks when we were basically shut down.
Dean: Perfect, and so how many-
David: I redid my CRM from start to finish.
Dean: How many people? Mm-hmm (affirmative).
David: Oh I don't know. I could put it on right now and tell you.
Dean: Yeah, I mean so part of the thing that we're looking for because what's very useful as a guiding metric is to have a sense of what's happening right now. You hear other podcasts that I do with other realtors is you hear me talk about this return on relationship as a comparative metric because anybody coming on saying, "Most of my business comes from referral," or, "80% of our business comes from referral," or, "Oh, that doesn't really have any relationship to anybody else." You can't tell whether what they're doing is producing a better result or a worse result than what you're producing. Until you have a standardized metric, and so what I've done is look at that and set that number based on all the sort of evolutionary psychology and sociology numbers that say that the number of people that you can have a relationship with is 150.
We set it at that to have our metrics based on, so when we say your return on your relationship, what we look for is the number of transactions that you got that came as a direct result of this group of 150 people whether it was repeat or a referral from those people. Now how many you have in your relationship portfolio there is what we call it?
David: On my CRM you mean?
Dean: Yeah.
David: Let me put it on. I was writing notes when you were talking.
Dean: Okay, no problem. I want to be careful that a lot of times if we go into your database and you look and look at the big number of people, I want to make a distinction on this that we talk about two different things. We talk about your business in three parts, the before unit, the during unit, and the after unit, and that the number that you may come up with when you look at your CRM and say, "I've got X number of contacts," would include prospects and people who've inquired about something. All of those types of things that are not clients or people that you know personally and we want to separate those from your relationship portfolio, which is the 150 people that if you saw them at Kinchley's you'd recognize them by name and you'd stop and have a conversation with them. That's what a relationship is. Most people have the capacity to have 150 of those relationships. Tell me what [crosstalk 00:12:38].
David: For sure.
Dean: Yeah.
David: In my CRM I spoke to 76 people personally more than once during this last say when we were really shut down, before we were allowed to go outside in public.
Dean: Okay, okay, and so is your... Is that the number of people that are in there or just the number that you spoke to or how many... If we were to try and identify your top 150, are they in that... Do you have a record of them?
David: No, no there's so many other people I didn't call, I see, or I'm an avid tennis player so I play everyday.
Dean: Wow. Well you may know my friend, he's a... My friend's a tennis pro at one of the country clubs there in Bergen.
David: At Edgewood?
Dean: Is it Edgewood? Does it got indoor courts there? He's at the indoor courts?
David: No.
Dean: No.
David: Must be Tenafly, it must be at Tenafly, New Jersey.
Dean: Okay, Kenny is his name.
David: Oh I bet it's -, it's near Mahwah.
Dean: Okay, well-
David: I could be -
Dean: Is his name, yeah. So anyway, when we look at -
David: I mean I didn't put those people in the CRM. I was mostly going by people that I've done business with.
Dean: Okay, and that's great. We want to get those people plus people that you would hope because you have a relationship with them, that if they did have a real estate need that they would choose you, right? We want to adopt those people into your advocacy kind of thing, right?
David: Yeah.
Dean: We want to start it being their trusted advisor. If we look at those 76, if they're the ones that you're keeping in touch with, then how many transactions did you generate from that group of people that we either repeat or referral or direct business with those?
David: For 2020?
Dean: Yep, or for last 12 months let's say.
David: I probably had 30 transactions in 2019, and this year I probably have seven closings, one just fell apart yesterday. Seven closings lined up and I think I did maybe six or seven closings already.
Dean: Okay, and those would all be from those relationships?
David: Yeah I think they're all from-
Dean: Okay, and that's good to know, right? That's what we're talking about.
David: I could tell you right now I have a CRM.
Dean: Yeah, that's perfect.
David: I have one. One is a referral. Two referral, two are referral out of the seven.
Dean: Perfect.
David: I have lined up.
Dean: Okay, and the other five came from?
David: One came from I happened to be in the office before we closed and I received a lead over the phone.
Dean: Okay yeah, okay.
David: The other ones were people that I knew in my database.
Dean: I count that, so those ones yeah. Those are the ones that we're talking about, people that you know, direct business. People that are in your world. They came because of who you are, not because of the marketing that you did, right? You already knew them and you're doing business with them.
David: Right.
Dean: What we look for is I bet with your lifetime of being in the community, and especially being in a public role where people are coming into your store, you have an opportunity to meet more people than somebody who has lived there the same amount of time as you but drove into the city everyday to go to work and come home, you have a chance to meet more people. I bet that there are a lot more people then the 76 that you have in the database.
David: Oh yeah.
Dean: That would be a real value to you. My first recommendation would be figure out who are those top 150 and start bringing them into the fold here. Now you can start communicating with them. That opens up a whole opportunity for you.
David: Communicating means I should pick up the phone and call them and bullshit with them?
Dean: No, not necessarily. You can but I think that the baseline thing, one of the things that we want to do with that group is to insure that they have you on their mind when the opportunity to introduce you to somebody else comes up, right? We say this, that all referrals happen as a result of conversation. People talking amongst themselves, and what has to happen for a referral to take place is that they have to notice that the conversation is about real estate, they have to think about you, and then they have to introduce you to the person they were having the conversation with. All three of those things have to fire in order for a referral to take place.
Now what we try and do with that is try and stack the deck in your favor that people, when they hear conversations, will think of you because if they do hear them and they think of you, odds are that they're going to be much more likely to introduce you. A lot of times people just go through, they hear the conversations, but they don't even think about you or it doesn't connect to you, or they think about you but they don't tell their friends, or they say, "Oh, you should call David."
David: Right.
Dean: But they never tell you that they had that conversation. Then you run into them at Kinchley's and they say, "Hey, did my friend Jason ever give you a call? They were going to be moving out to New Hampshire." You say, "No, no I never heard from them." They go, "Oh man, that was months ago. I guess they're gone now. But I tell people about you all the time." That's -
David: Yeah, I had that case yesterday over the phone. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.
Dean: That's the worst thing you could hear. I tell people about you all the time but none of them are calling you. So what we want to do is we want to flip that so that people tell you about the conversations they're having. One of the things we do with that is we have in GoGoAgent we send a postcard every month to your top 150. It's called The World's Most Interesting Postcard and it's just-
David: Yeah, I received your postcard and I had to send it to the branding department and they didn't approve it.
Dean: Sotheby's that's right, that's a shame about Sotheby's.
David: It's a shame. I made it pretty high up to my manager approved it and it went to the next level. It took like a month to get the answer, they finally said no.
Dean: It's so amazing.
David: Yeah.
Dean: Here's what you can do around that is the thing that they... It's not the Sotheby's Blue and it's not the image that Sotheby's is used to I guess. I had one of our long time GoGoAgents is a Sotheby's agent up in... North of Boston in Massachusetts and he goes round and round with them too on stuff like that. But what I think he ended up doing was doing the same thing but using pictures from glossy or so... What was the part that they were resistant to? The yellow and the look of the front of the card or the concept of the messaging on the back?
David: The concept on the front of the card, yeah.
Dean: Yeah, right.
David: I thought it was the most clever thing I've ever seen, I thought it was great.
Dean: Absolutely, it is.
David: Grabs your eye and attention. You actually read it.
Dean: Yeah, and the reason that it's important is that all of those little facts, all of those things are bits of trivia that people are going to be able to introduce into conversations, right?
David: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.
Dean: They're in a conversation, then they are able to say something really interesting, and then they remember that, "Oh, I got that attention, I got those squirts of dopamine from my friend David's postcard. I can't wait for the next one to come."
David: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: Because now you're their dopamine dealer, right?
David: Yeah.
Dean: It's an interesting thing, but if you want on a branded level that's brand - sort of thing.
David: Yeah.
Dean: Is to highlight great, almost postcard photographs from Bergen County, from around the area. Highlighting some of the snapshots from Bergen kind of thing would be a nice way to do the same thing.
David: Got it.
Dean: It's literally a delivery device for the message, because the most important thing is on the back of the postcard we highlight conversations. Right now the thing that's going on in the news that is highly likely to be on people's minds is if somebody... You live in Bergen County, somebody... It's going to be a haven for people escaping Manhattan to come out to the suburbs, right?
David: Yeah, I really want to reach those people, yeah.
Dean: That's totally on trend. So if you were to say to your... Send this postcard to your top 150 and on the card it says, "Hey, just a quick note in case you hear someone talking about moving out of the city and looking for a home in Bergen. A lot of people are going to feel safer to get out of the city and in a suburban environment. If you hear someone, give me a call or text me and I'll get you a copy of our Guide to Bergen House Prices so that you can give that to them and they can see what is available in Bergen County." Right, so as a useful tool that somebody could gift to their friend who's thinking about moving out to Bergen County. That's one thing that you could do. Each month is a different sort of way that we follow that pattern.
Just a quick note, in case you hear someone talking about buying their first home this year, or buying an investment property this year, or buying a beach house. Whatever you're targeting, whatever you would love to be able to help people with, to draw attention to that conversation so that when people hear that conversation that'll immediately make them think of you. Then the action that we engrain for them is to call you or text you so that you can give them something to give to their friend. We're not saying to them, "Tell your friend to call me." We're not turning your top 150 into salespeople for you, we're turning them into distributors for information that would be valuable to their friends.
David: Right.
Dean: Where they get to be the thoughtful recipient of the thankfulness of their friends. So they have that conversation and then, "Hey I know you said you were thinking about moving up. I got this guide from my real estate friend David. It's got all the price ranges of the different homes in the neighborhoods in Bergen County." That's a very thoughtful thing that somebody would love to do, right?
David: Yeah, that's-
Dean:
That's how we focus on that. Your target, the goal, should be that we should be able to generate 30 transactions from repeat and referral for you from your list of 150 people.
David: Wow, that's awesome.
Dean: That's our goal for your after unit. But that's just the baseline. I mean that's one of the things that you do so that every month you're in contact with them, you're never more than 30 days from them physically having your name and your phone number and contact information in their hand. That's the number one reason that people don't use the realtor that they have a preference for or a relationship with is because they don't have their contact information handy.
David: Got it.
Dean: Yeah, so you're now demonstrating that you're acting on their behalf, so that makes a big difference. Now the other things like you're calling people and having conversations with them, what would be very useful for you is one of the things to do is take your top 150 and then we create a Google Map layer where you drop a pin on each of the top 150 that you have so you can see where they live visually, so that whenever you're going out to see somebody about listing their house or you're going out to show houses in a particular neighborhood, you can look at that map and say, "Oh, there's Kenny and Anita live in River Run, this townhouse complex that I'm showing a buyer in," and you can send a quick text or an email to them and say, "Hey Kenny, I'm showing houses in River Run this week to a couple from Pennsylvania. There's only a couple for sale, have you heard anybody talking about selling their townhouse?"
David: Is that called Google something you said?
Dean: That's the mechanism that we use to do it is a Google Map. You can import your client data into a Google Map.
David: Got it.
Dean: And what it does is that it then drops a pin on those addresses on the map.
David: Got it.
Dean: It's pretty interesting to look at the map and see spatially where your clients are.
David: Right.
Dean: That gives you the opportunity to constantly be in touch with people. If you're driving by somewhere and you see one of your clients and you say, "Hey, I just drove by your place. Thinking of you, hope you're doing great." That kind of thing is a great touchpoint, right?
David: Yeah, that's a good one.
Dean: You're constantly building that awareness of presence and yourself in their life.
David: Got it, I like it.
Dean: Yeah, and so that's the kind of thing. Putting that, having that really as a opportunity is we call it building the Market Maker Monday habit. That's every Monday you look at your week, see who you're showing houses to or who you're going out to see, look at your Google Map and see where can I send a quick message that might be right in somebody's go zone.
David: Monday maker.
Dean: Market Maker Monday, yep.
David: Market Maker Monday.
Dean: Yeah. If you look in the forum, the specialty forum in GoGoAgent there's a whole thread on those. Ron Reed has been one of the drivers of this who's really gotten that habit ingrained. Yeah, it's pretty exciting to see what happens because it's free, it's basically free money just by taking 10 minutes on a Monday to think consciously about what you've got going on and send one or two emails that are appropriate, you know?
David: Mm-hmm (affirmative), mm-hmm (affirmative). I like it.
Dean: Yeah. That's a pretty cool thing. Are you focused on listings at all or do you take what... What's your listing situation because that's our number one focus for you is to try and build a strong listing base.
David: Oh yeah, I agree. I'd rather do listings than show houses any day of the week for sure.
Dean: Okay, then so how are you doing in that department? What's your process or how are you getting listings?
David: Well the listings come, like I said, are from referrals or the commercial ones I'm pretty much the only one doing the commercial listings.
Dean: So you're going out and getting them? You're proactively prospecting for them, right?
David: Not as much, no.
Dean: Okay.
David: I need your help on that.
Dean: Okay, so if you could get listings right now.
David: I know if I go out there and I talk to someone I'll get the listing, that's how confident I am.
Dean: Ah, okay perfect. That's the people who are thinking about selling their house, right? We got to get in front of those people.
David: Yeah.
Dean: If you were to say I'd love to get listings here, what kind of listings would you like to get?
David: If I was doing residential I would get to get from $700 to a million, $600 to a million is the best right now.
Dean: Okay, and so where would be... What's in that range? What do you get for $600,000 to a million in Bergen County right now?
David: You'd get a small lot, maybe 10,000 square foot lot with three to four bedroom house, decent kitchen, decent three, four bathrooms. That house that you wouldn't knock down.
Dean: Right, exactly. Okay, and are there particular neighborhoods that-
David: Yeah, I mean in Bergen County there's a cluster of small towns, maybe 5,000 to 6,000 houses per town.
Dean: Yeah.
David: They're out there, I just have to figure out way to get those people.
Dean: Right, got it. I know how to get them.
David: I know you do.
Dean: Right, that's why we're here, right.
David: Yeah.
Dean: If we were to pick 1,000 homes in that area or what would be... If you were to say where would you... If we wave a magic wand where would you love to get listings?
David: Tenafly, New Jersey.
Dean: Tenafly, okay. And so if we look in Tenafly then, are there any particular areas, are there any named communities in there? I didn't strike me that there were.
David: No, there's no development. No it's not like that, no.
Dean: Yeah, okay right. Are there any categories that you could group together? Are there any features or any category like townhouses or I don't think there's any lakefront homes or waterfront. But what would be some distinguishing -
David: There's different sides of town. The town is very popular. There's excellent school system. I guess you could name it by the school district.
Dean: Okay.
David: The name of the school in that neighborhood.
Dean: And so when you look at it, what's the population of Tenafly, by the way?
David: I would say 12,000.
Dean: Okay.
David: 12,000 to 15,000 residential homes.
Dean: I gotcha, perfect. Okay, and so when you look at this, part of that would be choosing the homes that you want to get listings in, and then we've got our whole getting listings program. The first thing that you want to identify are people who are thinking about selling their house, people who are going to sell their house in the next 12 to 24 months.
David: Yeah, we had Remind attached to our MLS, used to really dig down and filter down to how long they've been in the house.
Dean: Yes.
David: Things like that where you can really filter it down to target so you're not wasting postcards or-
Dean: That's part of it, but you looked at the... I look at those like they're not always... People sell for many different reasons and there's no... I don't see often any supporting element that this group is much more likely to sell than another group. If you take 1,000 homes kind of thing certainly you can zone in on the ones that you're most interested in, but when you look at the job of work that we're trying to do with the postcard here is to identify someone who's starting the process of thinking about selling their house. Which would always start with, "I wonder how much my house is worth."
That's when you start to get awareness of the market because that's the context that's going to set everything for them. "How much can I get for my place," if they're thinking of moving up to a bigger place, or if they're thinking about downsizing and moving to Florida, or whatever it is. Depends on the age group too right, that'd be another way that you could choose as a demographic way, or if you took everybody 60 years or older in a 3,000 square foot and bigger house kind of thing.
David: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: It's unlikely that they're going to stick that out for the next 10 years kind of thing. Would be a good segmenting. To know what the turnover rate is gives you a sense of what the total yield would be from that area. If you look at what would be the turnover rate among $600,000 to $1 million homes in Tenafly.
David: I don't know, every seven years or 10 years or something like that. I'm not sure.
Dean: Right, so there's part of the thing is knowing what that number is.
David: Yeah, correct.
Dean: If you look at it because let's say that it might be somewhere in the 5% to 10% range, right? I doubt that in a detached home area, an established area that it's likely to be 10%. 10% we often see among condos and town homes and transitional homes kind of thing, but where you get into family homes they're typically a little longer tenure.
David: Gotcha.
Dean: Yep, so but if you're looking in that 5% to 7% range that means that there's going to be 50 or 80 per 1,000 homes that are going to sell in the next 12 months, right? If we look at that and we say... Let's use the baseline of 5%, 50. There's going to be 50 people out of these 1,000 that sell in the next 12 months. Our goal is to identify who are the 50 because the 950 don't matter right now.
David: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: The only ones that we can help are the 50 who are going to sell. When we look at it, those 50, and so that would be 100 of them over the next two years say, out of those 1,000 are going to sell, and what would be the average commission that you would earn on say an $800,000 listing if we take the middle range of that?
David: Let's say $800,000, splitting with another broker is 2.5%.
Dean: Yep, so you would get... Yeah, so around $20,000 is that about right?
David: 16 and change, yeah probably.
Dean: Okay, yep so when you look at that, so $16,000 that we look at that there's going to be over the next two years, if you pick 1,000 of those homes with a 5% turnover rate, somebody is going to earn $1.6 million from this group of 1,000 people. Are you following?
David: Yep, I love it.
Dean: Okay, yeah so our goal is now what would it take to be the only realtor in their mind when it comes time to make that decision, right? So often people, when they start thinking about going out to get listing is they think we've got to brand ourselves, we got to get our name out there, and they start focusing on personal promotion things and start putting out, call Simon and Simon, the husband and wife team that gets it done or whatever. Trying to promote yourself so that you get your name out there and people know that you're an option kind of thing, but that's not the most valuable thing to you. We want to get to a point where the only thing on our objective should be is to identify who those people are who are most likely to be among the 100 that sell their home in the next two years.
We look at it and we say, "Okay... We used to do big real estate seminars and we'd have 800 people at an event and I would pick somebody in the front row and I would say, "Listen, I'm going to give you a choice, you can either give me 800 of your business cards. Let's imagine that this room represents an 800 home subdivision and everybody in the room owns one of the homes in that subdivision. You can give me 800 of your business cards, I'll hand them out to everybody and I'll let you come up on stage and introduce yourself and tell everybody all about you and why they should choose you. Or you can sit there, right where you are, and I'll have somebody bring you an envelope, and in the envelope will be a piece of paper with the name, address, and telephone number of the 80 people in this room who are going to sell their house in the next two years. What would be more valuable to you?"
David: Option B.
Dean: Exactly, so that's what we're looking for here is the way we do and setup our getting listings program is the first focus is on sending simple postcards offering the report, the most recent, this month's report on Tenafly house prices. That way people who are living in Tenafly can get a sense of what is going on in the market. So they say, "Oh that's me." Now the more specific you can get the better. You can see that Tenafly is one level of identification, but if it were down to Tenafly townhouse prices that's even more specific. So people are going, "Oh that's me." Definitely do it. That's why when we have named communities are always a good thing, but when you're into small town kind of thing that's all you can... Sometimes all you can do is that.
It's okay, whatever the most relevant level of identification you can get to trigger. We call that horoscope effect, so Tenafly is better and more meaningful to somebody who lives in Tenafly than Bergen County house prices. Right because that's a broader thing than the more specific Tenafly. There you go, even if you can go to the types of homes. If all the homes are... If they're colonial homes or Cape Cod homes or if there's any sort of similarities of the styles of these homes that's often a great distinction you can make too. If you're saying the report on Tenafly colonial house prices. You see how the specificity makes it more appealing?
David: Yeah, I can see that. How do I get to... In Tenafly, for example, or in any of these little towns, there's five superstar agents that seem to get every listing.
Dean: That doesn't matter.
David: - matter.
Dean: This is my favorite thing is that that doesn't matter because what we're doing is they're betting that... And most people choose that because they do a lot of personal promotion or people know who they are, they're highly visible sort of thing.
David: Yeah.
Dean: But they don't know. They get a lot of stage time, for instance, in our own example. Oh yeah, we're going to call them. But people don't know who to call. The first person somebody's going to call is someone they actually know.
David: Right.
Dean: If you don't have a friend in the business or somebody you trust, now you have to go outward for that and it's often like, "Well I guess we'll call this person because they seem to be the busy agent here." That's what ends up happening.
David: Right.
Dean: Doing business begets more business because of that, right?
David: Mm-hmm (affirmative), mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: But instead of trying to shout louder than them, what we do is we come in to this specific 1,000 homes and there's nothing about you on the postcard. It's not trying to convince somebody to list their house with you, what we're trying to do is offer something compelling to the people who are thinking about selling their house so that they can get this report on Tenafly house prices, which sounds like the work is already done and they're voyeuring in on this. It's not the same as inviting you over to their house to tell them what their house is worth, which people early in the process are very reluctant to do and scared to do. Does that make sense?
David: Got it. Yep.
Dean: I could get the information I want because I'm early in the process here of thinking about selling my house, this would be a good starting point for me if I knew what was going on in Tenafly. They easily raise their hand for that, and now if you send out 1,000 postcards and you start getting people to raise their hand and ask for it. Let's say you send it out and the first time you send it you get 15 or 20 people to raise their hand. Now those 15 or 20 are people that now we can start sending them a monthly newsletter, start telling them all about you and your wife. Start educating them so that whenever they're ready, the next step for them is to get a pinpoint price analysis or a room by room review or talk to you about your silent market. All of those things you've now identified out of those 1,000 homes 15 people who are much more likely to sell than the 985 other people who haven't responded.
David: Got it.
Dean: Now you're establishing your brand in their minds because you're sending them every month updates on everything that's going on in their market in Tenafly, keeping them up to date on all the sales that have happened on the new listings that are coming on, on your activity, everybody that you're helping in there. They're getting to know you, you're demonstrating your service to them, and they're building physical mounting evidence that you're acting as their real estate agent. When its time the call will come to you and they'll say, "Hey, we've been getting all your stuff, we're ready to list our house now. Can you come over and help us?"
David: I like it, okay.
Dean: Yeah, so that's what we're looking at for that. I would encourage the first three episodes of the Listing Agent Lifestyle are with three different people who at three different levels of having implemented the Getting Listings Program and it was really interesting because we've got now September will be the sixth year of a six year case study that we've done in Toronto with one realtor, Tony Kalsi, who's up over $1.5 million in listing commissions now from the area that he's been marketing to in Toronto. It's just the longevity of it is what's amazing.
David: That's incredible.
Dean: Yeah, I mean each year he has people respond who responded to the postcard six years ago.
David: Wow.
Dean: Yeah, in 2019 that was the fifth year of the case study. He had, in 2019, people who had responded to his postcard in every year from 2013, '14, '15, '16, '17, '18, and '19. Which was crazy, because he started in September of 2013 and so of all the transactions that he did in 2019, a lot of them came from people who responded years earlier and he had just been keeping in touch with them. It was really cool because we had... So it's Tony Kalsi, Ron Reed, and Chuck Charlton, and Chuck has been doing it longer than anybody, he was the guy who got the very first listing from the getting listings program. We started it in 2005, so 15 years.
David: What was the name? Those three episodes you just mentioned, what should I listen to?
Dean: They're the first three episodes of Listing Agent Lifestyle.
David: Listing Agent Lifestyle.
Dean: Yeah, Tony Kalsi, Ron Reed, and Chuck Charlton.
David: Must listen to, okay.
Dean: Yeah, but it's amazing. I mean so the sooner that you can get that started, the closer you are to that... Somebody's going to make $1.6 million in listing commissions from that 1,000 homes in Tenafly.
David: I think it's definitely realistic. It could happen if you really listen to you.
Dean: Well definitely. I mean I'm not saying you're going to get all of it, but you could.
David: Yeah.
Dean: That's what I mean, there's the thing that I would say if you could get 20% of it that you would be the dominant agent in that market. That's what we're looking for is the look so that you are starting to establish yourself in that area and then what Tony has done was he started with 2,500 home and now he's up to 20,000 homes.
David: That he sends postcards to?
Dean: Yep, and so you just start out, you start and parlay. It's pretty fascinating.
David: I think I have to hire someone. We can't do this all on our own.
Dean: Of course, you don't want to. Why would you want to do it all on your own?
David: Yeah. I need to get -.
Dean: Why would you want to do it all on your own?
David: Yeah.
Dean: We have an easy button program where we can do the whole thing for you. All you do is you point to the ones you want to get listings in and we do the whole thing. The whole thing about creating the Getting Listings Program was my provocation was what would I do to get listings if my phone only accepted incoming calls? There's no outbound phone calls, there's no chasing people, there's no hard core prospecting.
David: That'd be awesome.
Dean: Well that's what it is, that's what the whole system is. As we realize now, as it's evolved that we're here in 2020 now where the ways to work together with people seamlessly is so effortless that literally we can run the whole program from our office for you, that's how we -
David: But do you design a different type of postcard because I can't use the incredible postcard.
Dean: Well it's not the world's most interesting postcard, this is a different specific getting listings postcard.
David: Gotcha, oh gotcha.
Dean: Yeah.
David: Definitely got to sign up, okay.
Dean: Yeah, so that's the... Well you got two really good action items here. Your bumping your 76 up to 150.
David: Yep.
Dean: Starting the communication I think if you replace the yellow front of the postcard with a beautiful, whether it's historic homes in Bergen County or whether it's great beautiful postcard sites.
David: Yeah, I hear you.
Dean: Some award artist type-
David: Something that captures their eye.
Dean: Yes exactly, that's nice and fits with the brand of Sotheby's. But on the back is the most important thing. The note that lets people know.
David: The quick note moving out of the city, right.
Dean: Whatever it is. We write a new one every month, so all that creative work is done for you too.
David: Oh awesome, okay.
Dean: Yeah. So there you have it. What's your takeaways here?
David: My takeaway is what's the next step?
Dean: Well if you're not already on GoGoAgent.com that's where everything is, that's the whole next step. Everything is there.
David: Gotcha, GoGoAgent, yep okay. GoGo, okay that's going to be the next step then.
Dean: There you go. Once you're in come in and introduce yourself in the forum and seek out Ron Reed's in there, Chuck Charlton's in there, Tony Kalsi's in there, they're all in there. There's a ton of people who have gone before you. Kenny McCarthy is the Sotheby's agent that I was talking about north of Boston so you'll have a kindred, someone to commiserate with there.
David: Gotcha.
Dean: It'll help you with some of the things, but he's been doing the Getting Listings program on the Oceanfront Palms in Cape Ann, so definitely input on navigating the Sotheby's waters.
David: Gotcha, okay.
Dean: Awesome, well I enjoyed that, that went fast.
David: I really, really appreciate your time. It was great and this afternoon I'm going to go to my closing and come back and work on GoGoAgent, signing up.
Dean: Awesome, I love it. Have a great day and congratulations.
David: I'll definitely stay in touch with you.
Dean: Yeah, congratulations on your closing.
David: Yeah, real excited.
Dean: We'll be in contact. I'll talk to you soon.
David: Okay, bye.
Dean: There we have it, another great episode and if you'd like to continue the conversation you can go to ListingAgentLifestyle.com, you can download a copy of the Listing Agent Lifestyle book, the manifesto that shares everything that we're talking about here, and you can be a guest on the show if you'd like to talk about how we can build a Listing Agent Lifestyle plan for your business. Just click on the be a guest link at ListingAgentLifestyle.com and if you'd like to join our community of people who are applying all of the things we talk about in the Listing Agent Lifestyle, come on over to GoGoAgent.com. It's where we've got all the programs, all the tools, everything you need to get listings, 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.