Welcome to the Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcast. Today I want to share a call I had with our GoGoAgent.com members, and it's a good time to reflect and look at what's going on in your business going forward. We've introduced the eight elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle over the last few episodes, and on the call I'm going to share with you now, we go a little deeper into each of the eight elements and address it as a scorecard.
You can see where you stand on each of these elements, whether you are winning in that element, whether you're doing okay in or whether it's something that needs to be addressed and build a plan around it.
In the call, we're going to talk about all eight of the elements, getting listings, multiplying your listings, getting referrals, finding buyers and converting leads, as well as daily joy and abundant time and financial peace. We're going to explain a little about how to look at them and how to evaluate where the opportunity is in your business.
I think you're going to really enjoy this, especially if you like to do some reflecting and look forward to building plans.
Links:
GoGoAgent.com
Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep:1366
What I'm looking on right now is an approach to help you identify where to start, where the big opportunities are for you. I'm looking right now on our Listing Agent Lifestyle scorecard. This will give you a sense of where the opportunity is in your business. And, if you've not listened in on the original, the first episode, I posted it up on the members’ blog as well that introduces the eight elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle. I would recommend that you do that to get a deeper grounding. But, I want to go through these elements with you. I'd love it if you'd get a pencil or a pen and a piece of paper and I want you to go through ... I'm going to go through the thinking process in a scorecard for maybe identifying where you are on each of the eight elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle. That will give us a sense of where you need to spend your attention.
Just to set the stage, I'll share the eight elements that we look at are in order. Number one is getting listing. We talk about a system for getting listings in your business. Number two is multiplying listings. Number three is getting referrals. I'm going to go deeper into these. I just want to go through them quickly for you. Number four is converting leads. Number five is finding buyers and then the next three are the lifestyle elements of it. Number six is daily joy and number seven is abundant time and number eight is financial peace.
Let's go through each of them. As philosophical as they are mindset-wise, there's that element of it that you can buy into it philosophically, but there's also a metric-based approach to it that will quantify it just to make sure that everybody is on the same page, that you know where you stand whether this is actually working for you. Let me just write these down as we go and let's just use a plus, minus or neutral rating for yourself on each of these four now. I'm going to expand these a little bit later.
Let's talk about the element number one which is getting listings. What the ultimate goal for you for getting listings is to have a system where you are literally getting people calling you to come and list their house, and you're getting it at the volume and the consistency that you really want without having to do the manual things and going to chase down listings individually. We want you to be able to literally just deploy the getting listing system and have people calling you. I posted it up on the blog, a video with a sound excerpt from my podcast with Chuck Charlton where we're talking about the way that he's getting listings work is literally driving his boat up and down the canal shining the light and listings jumping in the boat.
If you're running the getting listing system, you've got that handled, you're happy with the way that's turning out for you, then rate yourself a plus on getting listings. If you get listings but you're getting them sporadically through referral or through whatever you do to get listings, but you feel like you're not completely there, then rate yourself an O, a neutral, a circle, a zero. Then if you feel like this is something that you don't have handled yet, that you don't have confidence that you can get listings on demand consistently and be able to point to an area and say I'd like to get listings in that area and be able to do that, then rate yourself a minus on that. Minus, neutral, plus, that's what we want to do the ratings here. That's how we want to do it for getting listings.
Now, in element number two which is multiplying your listings, we've talked about this idea of calculating your listing multiplier index. We've talked a lot about that so I won't talk about it here but you can certainly do the listing multiplier index calculation by just looking back at your last 10 listings and finding how many transactions you got out of those. Now, when I do that, most of the time people are in an area of 0.8 to 1.5 would be their listing multiplier index, meaning that sometimes the listings that they take don't sell and they end up with eight points out of 10 listings. Eight of them sell and two of them don't.
Some other people get all of their listings sold and maybe they get a couple of extra buyers or they get another listing in the neighborhood. Your listing multiplier index is a big opportunity for you if you have listings because it's a uniquely competition proof situation that you have, that you're the only person who has that opportunity right now. Every time you put up a for sale sign in a neighborhood, you become the reigning neighborhood specialist. You're the one. You're the guy who's got the activity going on in the neighborhood. We want to leverage all of that.
How would you say that you're doing on that? If you're in a situation where you put the listings up and you just put them in the MLS and you're riding on the wave of a positive market hoping that somebody is going to come along and find a buyer and that happens most of the time, I would say to rate yourself a neutral on that. If you're in a situation where you find yourself maybe taking listings that may be overpriced or that you take listings that you know you shouldn't have taken just to have some listings, if you look through your inventory and you realize these people are not really serious sellers, if you've got some inventory but you're not really that excited about it, it's not really that much of an opportunity to get any momentum, then rate yourself a "needs improvement" on that, a negative.
You see now and you see it in the forum and when we talk about it that the people who are focused on multiplying their listings are raising their listing multiplier index in the 2.5, 3, 3.5 range. Imagine every listing that you take is worth two and a half or three or three and a half transactions. That's where we really want you to go. We've set up that standardized metric so that you can see how you stand among everybody else. If you've got a listing multiplier index of two or more, let's go ahead and rate you a plus on that and that would be a thing to celebrate. I'm happy to congratulate you on that.
Let's focus on getting you up into that two, three range and let's see how high is high. I've got a dream where we can maybe break the four-minute mile which would be get you a listing multiplier index of four and I'm wondering who's going to be the first to do it. I know it's possible and I'm here to help you strategize them and implement some of the things to do it. I'm excited about maybe we can make some headway on that in 2018.
Number three is getting referrals. Here's how we rate you on that. If you're getting a 20% return on relationship or greater, then rate yourself a plus. That's what we're looking for. If we take your top 150 and we multiply that by 20%, that would put you in the 30 transaction range from referrals. Now, you'll hear we talked with Tony Fabiano on the episode of Listing Agent Lifestyle that you'll hear coming up. It turns out he's got a really strong after unit business and of all of his transactions, 25 of them were repeat and referral and he's communicating with 117 people. Our gold standard, our benchmark, the standardized metric that we use is based on 150 people because that's how many people we know and can have a relationship with. We talk a little bit about bumping that up to 150. There's got to be 33 more people that he knows that are not necessarily clients that if he just did the same things that he's doing with the 117 people, it would make a difference.
This is where things like your market maker emails come into play and this is where things like orchestrating referrals come into play. 20% or more return on relationship, gives you a plus. If you're happy that you get referrals, I'd say if you're at a 10% or more return on relationship, meaning 15 repeat and referral transactions or more, I would rate you as a neutral. If you're below 10%, if you're in less than 15 transactions a year from repeat and referral business, that is going to be an opportunity for you so I'm going to rate you a minus, needs improvement on that.
Now, on number four, the fourth element is converting leads. One of the greatest things you can do here is to think about this as a long-term mindset here. That you have an asset. You got a portfolio of all of your unconverted leads that you are continually in contact with. If you listened to the Chuck Charlton episode, we talked a lot about that because he's got nearly 10,000 leads that he's generated over the last 12 years that he's communicating with every day with his Milton Daily Homes. Every time that you mail out, every time you send an email to those people, there are different people jumping out that are ready to start looking at homes now. How are you doing on converting your leads? Sometimes there's an opportunity because people are focused on the short-term. They're focused on getting leads, jumping on them, connecting with them right away, and closing for an appointment. Then if people aren't ready to do something right now, putting them in the tire kicker category. That would be a mindset shift that we need. There's lots of opportunity there.
If you've got a thousand prospects or more and you are weekly at least emailing these people with a consorted effort to convert, to get into relationship with people every week, I would rate you a A+ on that. If you're going along where periodically you'll keep in touch with people and you seem to always generate enough now prospects that you're not really that concerned or focused on the long-term focus, I would rate yourself a neutral on that. But, if you are wondering that why none of these leads are converting or that you're really only focused on finding people that are ready to go right now, you got a tremendous opportunity in front of you, lots of opportunity for you to build an asset of these prospects who you're going to nurture a relationship with over time.
This prospect portfolio, this snowball, this asset snowball that Warren Buffett talked about, your equity is going to continue to yield new business the longer and the more mature that it gets. We constantly have people tell us that they said they've been sending emails to people and then three, four, five years later, people rise to the top and they end up doing a transaction. That's why we always measure when people enter into our world so that we can track how long their gestation period was. This is the kind of thing that's like the sooner you start the more valuable it gets over time, because it's really all of that opportunity.
Now, there's a quick fix. If you've got a bundle or a list of people who have not converted, you can always send what we call our nine word email where you just put their name in the subject line and send them a quick email that would say, "Hi, Dean. Are you still looking for a house in Georgetown?" That's it. Just send that email and some people will raise their hand and engage in a dialog. That's going to jumpstart it for you and then just commit to at least every week sending an email with your market updates, with your commentary on the market. We call it our market watch newsletter which you can send by email and connect with people by using your super signature items.
We talk on the buyer side of having whenever you're ready, here are three ways we can help you. Join us for a daily tour of homes or come to a home buyer workshop or get a free home loan report. We put those at the bottom of every email and you'll be amazed at what happens when you start making that focus on creating at least a weekly follow up with people.
Then number five is finding buyers. The reason that we put buyers even in here as part of this Listing Agent Lifestyle is even with the buyers, we're taking a listing centric approach to the buyers. The two things that we focus on are building a pool of buyers who are going to be ready to buy the listings that you're focused on getting. We talk a lot about this idea of triangulation. If we're using lakefront homes as an example, that we're running the getting listings program looking to find lakefront listings and, at the same time, parallel to that, we're running buyer campaigns looking to find lakefront buyers. It can be the same thing. You can repeat. You can plug in townhouses. We're looking for townhouse listings and we look for townhouse buyers. We're looking for starter homes, or condos, or town homes. That we're looking for first time buyers or golf course properties and golf course buyers, horse farms and horse farm buyers. You could see it could go any way that you can imagine.
The most valuable tool that you can have in your toolkit for getting more listings is a reliable way to find buyers ahead of when you're going to get that listing. We talk about it that because of the gestation period, because everybody who starts the process of looking for a lakefront home isn't going to buy one this weekend, it makes sense that if you have been looking for lakefront buyers and building your lakefront buyer list for the last six months that when you go out to get lakefront listing six months from now, you've got this great complement to strengthen your value proposition when you're trying to get listings because you've got a ready pool of buyers.
You can say to potential sellers that, "Listen, everybody else that you're going to be talking with is going to share with you what they're going to do once they list your house, their marketing plan. Well, start with listing your house and here's how they're going to expose it to the market. Well, I started looking for the buyer for your house 180 days ago." You can show them all the things that you're doing to find lakefront buyers, and you can explain to them and show them your list and that you send a lakefront weekly newsletter to all of these buyers and that you sent out a quick message to everybody and there are eight people right now or three people or whatever the number is that are just waiting for me to get back and tell them about your house.
That's going to be an advantage because now you're going to be perceived as being closer to the goal line for that seller. You've already done the work in advance of finding the buyer. You're not trying to take their listing just to find buyers which is what most people do. We've focused on finding the buyers which are truly the catalyst for all of this.
We say listings are the key and you list to last and all of that, but when you add to that, that who's bringing the money are the buyers, we look at your buyers as an opportunity to really enhance your listing-centric business. Plus, when you find a buyer that you start working with, you're able to now use that relationship, use the fact that you're working with this buyer to find a listing to engage with people and tell them, "I'm showing lakefront homes this weekend and I remember looking up your house online when we sent you the lakefront report. I'm not sure what your plans are, but I thought maybe I would check in, see if I could tell them about your house."
That's a much better way to connect and follow up and stay in touch with somebody than just calling them up out of the blue for no reason. "Hey, just calling to check in and see how you're doing. Are you getting my newsletters? Are you liking it? Are you ready yet?" It's so self-serving. Every time we want to communicate with somebody, we want it to be completely in their interest, that you've got an opportunity for them.
Now, even if they're not ready right now, when it comes time, if eight months from now or a year from now, now it's time for them to sell, they're going to remember that, "You know what? Dean seems to always have buyers. He contacted us three times last year and he's sending us all these newsletters. Let's go ahead and call Dean." That's what will happen for you there. Those are the business elements.
If you've got a system for finding buyers, rate yourself a plus. If you've got that triangulation going, strategic buyers I call it, if you seem to always have enough buyers, you're running ads, you're doing things, you've got your website leads that are coming in, maybe you're a neutral on that or maybe you don't have any way of systemically, predictively, repeatedly finding buyers, then rate yourself a "needs improvement" on that. Looking at those five business elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle, one or more things should shine as the opportunity for you of which to go. If they all need improvement, let's start at the top and work down. Let's build a foundation by picking the area where you want to get the listings and let's get that started because truly you can set it and forget it. You can get that rolling and now we can focus on multiplying the listings that you already have.
Then let's get your referral system on autopilot and fully cranking here. This is the perfect time of year for that. Then let's work on your lead conversion system. Connect with the buyers that you've already come into contact with. Start this process of a weekly orchestrated follow up program, your market watch newsletter. Then let's focus on finding the buyers. Just go in that order.
Then on the lifestyle side, this is a really self-examination for you. Just look through and on the elements of the idea of daily joy, how happy are you in your daily operation, your daily life here as it goes ... Your business is a big part of your life as entrepreneurs, which is what we are as realtors. Think about it like now that you're truly an entrepreneur, you're living in the results economy. You're only getting paid when you produce a result for somebody and there's nobody telling you what to do or how long to do it. You're truly mastering your own ... You're making up your own rules as you go here.
How happy are you? How joyful is your daily life? Are you doing things that you don't want to do? Are you doing things that don't bring you joy? Do you get up excited in the morning? Are you getting up thinking, "Okay, I got to go get up early here and call all these expireds? I got to make a hundred cold calls, or I got to go door knock by area, or I got to strap my sold sign around my neck and walk into the three coffee shops down just in case somebody is there." All those things. I don't know how much joy some of those things bring. But what brings you joy? How much daily joy do you experience?
Then element number seven is abundant time. How crunched for time do you feel? Plus, minus, neutral. Do you feel like you move at a comfortable pace, you're getting everything done, you are happy with the way that's going or do you feel like you have an abundance of time, and if you want to go do something in the middle of the day, you can go and do that? You can change that. Do you feel like you're constantly running from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to bed or you go to bed with a longer to-do list than you woke up with? It feels like you're going backwards. A lot of people are in that situation. We want to really step back and look at that and say, "Where are we on this idea of abundance as it relates to time?"
Then element number eight is financial peace. How peaceful are you about your finances? How would you rate yourself on that? Do you feel like there's more than enough money? You're happy. You're confident. You feel like you're on track. That you've got money to build for the future. You've got operating capital, maybe some investment capital to expand your business because the money can certainly help you move the knobs and the dials on the joy and time and it can certainly ...
Everything that we've talked about in the first five elements can be affected by money in a way that doesn't take any of your time. But we got to get to that point first. Are you worried about money? Is money an issue? Are you constantly on the brink that you seem to be ... You're pulling it out just at the last minute? You're getting negative on credit cards or credit lines and then, all of a sudden, you pull it out and you get two closings and everything then becomes joyful and you start using off the accelerator pedal on the time things and then you get to a point where it becomes more stressful again and you have to get back to work. You feel stressed. You don't feel that joy.
They're all interrelated. All three of these, they're not independent. All three of the daily joy, abundant time, and financial peace are all connected with knobs and dial that you can control here. The key to really getting that life that you want, that lifestyle that you want is really going to be fed by how well you do on implementing and setting up the recurring systems that support the bankable results in your business which are what those first five elements are.
I'm excited to take this journey and to really focus on that. I'm going to be working on a scorecard for you, too, to see where you've got that opportunity and look forward to working through, really delving that Listing Agent Lifestyle for you.
There we go. I think really taking that time to look at each of the elements and figure out where you stand, where the opportunity is a really instructive thing. It really gives you a good chance to think where the opportunity to build a new plan going into the New Year could be for you. I encourage you if you'd like to take part in our community where we're actually applying all the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle, you can go to GoGoAgent.com. Come on in and see what we've got for you. We've got all the tools, all the systems. Everything that you need to implement this Listing Agent Lifestyle is all right there for you. It's a truly free 30 day trial. No credit card required. You can come on in. Take a look around. See everything that we're up to. Take a look and get to meet some of the people who are applying all these things in the forum and many of the guests that we've had on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast. I encourage you to come on over and join us there at GoGoAgent.com.
That's it for this week. Have a happy New Year and I'll talk to you next time. Bye-bye.