When opportunity, ability and enthusiasm meet, exciting things happen!
Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast, I want to share a conversation I had with Rob Caruso from Vaughan, Ontario, just north of Toronto. I've known Rob for over 12 years now. He'll tell you the story about how we ended up connecting, but it's been great to watch his business grow over that time into the successful company he has today.
This was a great call, and I don't think we've had a Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast call with so much opportunity per minute as we did here!
Across the board, in his own business, with his after unit, with the 26 agents he has in his brokerage, on his team… Rob understand the program, he's seen the success, and we were able to create a lot of plans for him to execute this year.
The best news… Every one of the opportunities we discovered for Rob is something that's an opportunity for you too.
I'm excited for you to hear this episode. There is a lot here for you.
Links:
GoGoAgent.com
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep150
Dean: Rob Caruso.
Rob: Morning, Dean.
Dean: How are you?
Rob: I'm doing great, how are you?
Dean: I am good. Is it still snowing up there?
Rob: Finally stopped.
Dean: Finally stopped snowing, I'm safe to come.
Rob: Oh boy, oh boy.
Dean: That's funny. Well welcome to the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast. It's all very exciting to have you here.
Rob: It is, I really appreciate this. I've wanted to talk to you for a while and here we go. It's a perfect opportunity.
Dean: Very exciting. Let's catch everybody up on the Rob Caruso story here. Where are you calling from and what's the story so far?
Rob: I'm in Vaughan, Ontario which is just north of Toronto. Like literally just north of Toronto. Ontario, Canada. And I've been a real estate agent for about 15 years now. The first few years it was a bit of a struggle as everybody knows. I knew a very good agent. His name was Chuck Charlton. Actually it's funny-
Dean: I'm familiar with him.
Rob: Yeah it's funny because I saw him go from an average agent to a super-agent. Anyway I knew him personally and I saw him move from the Toronto area to Milton. I guess I saw him ... I can't remember if it was ... I don't think it was like a call. It might have been an online audio back in 2006 that some sort of interview you even did with him back then on how successful he was doing.
I contacted him say hey Chuck what's going on? What are you doing that's different? And he said, "Get on to Dean Jackson's website. Order their Money Making Website. Don't ask any questions." I said okay, done.
Dean: I love it. Don't ask questions, just call this number and when the man answers. Yeah that's funny.
Rob: Yeah. So I joined your money making website's program. I did market watch from the get go and it's probably been my single most successful ... most reason why I have the success I have right now.
Dean: That's so great.
Rob: Yeah, I have you to thank for and Chuck.
Dean: Okay. I think we got what we needed. It's been great talking to you Rob. Good night everybody. I love to hear that and that's ... You know my favorite thing is you're absolutely right. Time just flies by doesn't it? And you think about this. I've been working with Chuck since 2006 like you mentioned, late 2005. And you think about that that's 13 years later but look at what's happened in that 13 years. The progress and the ... yeah, it's amazing.
And the good news is that it's ... I think this environment we're in right now is even a better environment than we had back then for building a long-term sustainable ... that's why I'm so excited about those words because it really is this Listing Agent Lifestyle business that's really what we have a chance to do. So very cool.
Tell me a little bit about what's going on with in your business specifically now. What's working? What do you see as the opportunities?
Rob: Five years ago three other agents and I started a brokerage and concentrating on building that slowly. As far as my business is concerned, again thanks to your website the market watch I do that five days a week, it's been giving me recurring business. Repeat referrals and it continue to keep going just because I email five days a week and I'm in touch with my database at least five days a week just with the market watch, right?
Dean: Yeah.
Rob: Most of my business like 90% is past clients, referrals. Some of it is new because of the website. It continues to provide new leads and business. But now I'm focusing on getting listings from The World's Most Interesting Postcard. I kind of want to ... I dread the fact that back in 2010 I started Getting Listings Program and I did not continue with it.
Dean: Oh my goodness so you must be like when you see the infographic that we did for Tony Kalsi there with the four-year case study.
Rob: It's a shame but moving forward we're going to continue and do it.
Dean: Oh that's so great. Okay, so where are we at in that process right now because that's the number one element of our Listing Agent Lifestyle here. That's the foundation. We got to pick the area where we want to get a big market share to dominate that market. Where are we at so far in the re-ignition of getting listings?
Rob: I picked a condo complex for condos. There are 875 units. I started in November and I just listed the first listing last week so obviously it works.
Dean: So there are 875 homes in there.
Rob: Yeah.
Dean: What's the price range?
Rob: Average about say 500.
Dean: Yeah, this is great.
Rob: It's just condos so they're not anything too special. There are some higher ones but most of them are around the 500 range.
Dean: Okay great and now you've got a listing on the board here.
Rob: Yeah.
Dean: How many leads have you generated so far? How many people have responded?
Rob: 33 in total with names and emails. 12 with full address. That doesn't both me one bit as you know. I've built my business off email so we're good.
Dean: Yeah, exactly. Okay, perfect. Now the listing that you have, what's going on there? Have you calculated your listing multiplier index right now?
Rob: I did not. I haven't had the chance to ... I guess because I actually do a lot of condos believe it or not, the Infobox flyer doesn't work obviously on those. I've got my businesses in Vaughan but I've also got a lot of listings in ... they're scattered all over like the GTA a little bit north as well. So it's hard for me to ... I mean I would love to use that Infobox flyer for every single listing and use that system but it's so hard to. And when I do get a listing in Vaughan like 1.3 million sells in two days so I can't even do anything with it.
Dean: Right, exactly. Okay. Well let's talk about how you could maximize it because the Infobox flyer is really just one distribution model. It's not about the Infobox flyer per se. It's about the instant open house. It's about the landing page. Because the Infobox flyer is just one way to deliver traffic to the landing page. In addition to doing ... well here we do Craigslist ads or you could do your Backpage or whatever ads or Facebook Ads or ... and your email to your exiting market watch list. All of those things are really just a way to get people to the site.
Now, the other opportunity that we have as far as like multiplying them is looking ... do you do anything looking for buyers for that condo building without depending on having the listing?
Rob: Other than just what I email to my database and obviously I'm emailing my database any new listings I have. I'm not ... you're right I actually should be utilizing that landing page more and using that and marketing that even again to my existing database or even using Facebook or something like that I'm sure.
Dean: Yeah and to your friend ... part of the thing when we look at it that part of the opportunity is having your sellers put it on their Facebook page or to send to their friends who are local as well right? That's one of the things that you can do. Is there a ... and you start thinking like if my only job was to really get the word out about this, where would somebody who's looking for a condo in that building ... is it a building or is it a townhouse complex?
Rob: It's actually yeah four buildings. They're four separate builds.
Dean: Okay so four separate buildings. And is there a name for the ... complex or?
Rob: Yes, yes, there definitely is a name for it.
Dean: Okay. Are you looking for buyers for that name condo place?
Rob: I have not and yeah that's the one thing that I need to work on actually.
Dean: Right. And it's kind of an interesting thing. One of the great things that we can target of course is to look for people who are looking for a condo in that particular complex. So when you look at the goal here, what you have is you have 33 people who own condos in that complex that are a higher propensity, a higher likelihood to sell over the next 12, 24, 36 months than the general population right? And you've got a way to get a hold of them so you've essentially got the equivalent of 33 sort of potential sellers in there.
Rob: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: So when you look at that, is there a way that you could get the ... identify people who are looking for condos in that complex?
Rob: I think the-
Dean: Do they know? Is it a popular like...?
Rob: Yes.
Dean: Yeah, so it's a popular place so they would ask for it by name kind of thing. They'd know oh yeah that's nice I want to be in there or they're aspiring to do that maybe. Are there people who are ... is it a high rental area as well? What percentage would be owner occupied versus rentals?
Rob: Maybe 20%.
Dean: 20% rental?
Rob: Yes.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. And have you ever done any targeted Facebook Ads just in that with that at the epicenter?
Rob: No I haven't other than if I had a listing. So just the listing and that's it.
Dean: So it's interesting that could be a ... that could be an interesting thing. We've been doing a lot of testing and experimenting with micro targeting where you can target just a one-mile radius. So you can put that ... you know the middle building kind of at the epicenter and you'd be surprised how actually tight a one-mile radius is that you could get all of that building and not really worry that there's overlap kind of thing because you're targeting everybody that you want to reach for instance is right there in that building. Or right in that radius. So you could call it by name and it doesn't matter per se. What else would be if you were to imagine that one-mile radius with the center of that complex of buildings in the thing, what else would be in that radius?
Rob: Well obviously there would be some homes and there is a lot in the area as well like retail.
Dean: There's a lot of what?
Rob: Retail commercial as well.
Dean: Oh perfect, so that's great. Its' not going to be too much ... wouldn't be too much overlap right?
Rob: No. No.
Dean: No. So I think that there's a ... that's one opportunity to have almost like an Infobox flyer. It's recognizable for people who live in that area if you had a picture of those ... of the buildings. Do you have nice exterior shots that would be recognizable?
Rob: Absolutely, yes.
Dean: Yeah. And so that might be a ... that would be a really good place to start. I look at ... my new philosophy around the Facebook advertising stuff, it I treat it like direct mail in a way when you're doing the micro targeting. I treat it like Every Door Direct Mail like Admail where you can do a home postal route. The postal route we're doing is the one-mile radius that includes all of those buildings and the mailbox is their Facebook newsfeed. And I treat those little ads like postcards.
And we're getting like with those kind of metrics actually the response rates end up the same as what we get ... what we would expect percentage wise on the ... for the replies. But the cost is less than direct mail because I can send 1000 postcards I call newsfeed postcards. You can send 1000 newsfeed postcards for $5 basically, right, $5 CPM.
Rob: Sure.
Dean: Yeah. And that becomes a really cool thing.
Rob: We're basically advertising our listing there right? The listings that we have there and that way any buyers looking. But we we're targeting that area, we're just targeting only people in that area correct?
Dean: Yes, exactly. When you look at that the thing that I would look at doing to supplement what to do with the mail is to still offer the report on the Sands or whatever the name of that complex is condo prices.
Rob: Interesting, yeah. So we're doing a double advertising not only for buyers but we're also targeting to sellers which is what I'm really, really interested in.
Dean: That's exactly right.
Rob: Getting listings so I could do way more with less work.
Dean: Yes, that's exactly right. And now that supplements then what happens with the ... that supplements because also the 20% who are renting in there, they're potentially buyers as well. People might be renting in there and decide to buy. But that's one really good ... that is the equivalent of the Infobox flyer. And there's really ... it's an interesting that the way the targeting goes you could do it geographically of course with real estate Facebook you can't target ... you can't have any sort of ... and this is evolving but you can't have any sort of age or any kind of discriminatory exclusions or anything. So you can't say income or you can't do some of the normal targeting that you could do but certainly you can do the geographic targeting.
Rob: Yeah, absolutely sounds great. I'll do that today.
Dean: Yeah, so that would be one. What's the go-to thing for ... what would be the effective online place that people ... that you could advertise? Craigslist works here. Is that something that's viable in Vaughan? What would ... or it's Kijiji or Backpage or any of the online ones, are they active?
Rob: I feel that Kijiji is great only because it will show up in a Google search.
Dean: Okay, yeah.
Rob: Because nobody's ... I shouldn't say nobody but I'm not sure there's a lot of buyers going to Kijiji to search for their next home. However you have a good captivating message that shows up on your Google feed and it leads you to Kijiji then obviously that would be the next best thing.
Dean: Yes, absolutely. And it's all of these things matter.
Rob: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: Doing all the things where everybody would be looking. So if I lived in the area and I were looking for a condo in this complex, where would I look right now? What are the things that people are...?
Rob: Other than going to Google right? That's kind of like the biggest thing ... obviously people are going to the real estate website but I don't think there's anything else that I can think of. Nobody's really going to Facebook to search for it but yeah the ad targeting-
Dean: No, but they're ... exactly. Nobody searches stuff on Facebook but certainly you can use that geography to be right in that area. That makes the most sense. What about the ad words for the name of that complex?
Rob: Yeah, that would be the next best option obviously that way we can really target Google and it wouldn't be a huge cost because we're really micro targeting as you said earlier.
Dean: Yeah, that's what I mean.
Rob: Yeah. As you may know or not but I just rebuilt the Money Making Websites platform again and that's what my target wants to be maybe the guides to that complex condo prices or whatever right?
Dean: Yes.
Rob: And we could go a Google AdWords search just for that absolutely. I definitely have been thinking about it but now you're making me think that yeah you're right. I should be getting the listing multiplier index up just on that complex.
Dean: Right. That's the whole thing. We want you to think like your only market is this complex right? That's how you dominate the area is to start thinking ... I always say to people imagine if your real estate license restricted you to only selling in those four buildings. You'd have a little higher intensity with it right?
Rob: Yeah, absolutely.
Dean: Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense. So when you start looking at that you've already got an advantage now that you know 33 of the people in there who have identified themselves as being interested in what the prices in there which is always a good precursor because now you get to communicate with them. Now they're visible prospects not invisible anymore.
Rob: Absolutely.
Dean: When I look at this what are you expansion plans from these ... so you started out with the 875 building, the four buildings there and you've got one listing in there and the market's pretty good right now so you expect that it'll sell?
Rob: It's stable. It's changed quite a bit over the last year or so.
Dean: That's what I've heard yeah.
Rob: Yeah, so right now I don't expect it to sell really quickly but 60 days, 90 days or something like that it should sell.
Dean: Perfect.
Rob: Yeah.
Dean: Okay, so you'll have some surplus. You'll be ... reached escape velocity for the expense of the mailings and all that stuff. Where's your next layer of this? What do you add after now this one is self-funding? You know I mean by that right, that now you've recouped all the money you spent to or will have recouped all the money you spent mailing to them to get that listing. You'll have now the profits to continue mailing that one and it's self-sustaining. It'll continue to pay for itself now and the idea is to now parlay that and roll into the next area. In a year or so you're mailing to 8700 homes instead of 875. So what's next?
Rob: Yeah, I've already started as I mentioned because I own a brokerage. I've got agents who work for us. There are actually two agents I'm working with that we've split areas on just to get them going. I've got two other home areas that we've started literally like a couple of weeks ago.
Dean: Oh, okay great so first mailing, yeah.
Rob: Yeah. We're expanding slowly but surely.
Dean: Okay, so you're on your way with that. Perfect.
Rob: Yeah. And they're homes. These are not condos these are actually homes which obviously are higher price.
Dean: I'm going down the elements here as we look at it. Getting listing, check. Multiplying listings we talked a little bit about some of those things. Certainly in the homes areas you'll be able to do a lot more of the listing multipliers. But, that mindset is really what's the most important. I want you to think that it's not just about the Infobox flyer. It's really about this mindset of how do we find the buyers because we look at what are the listing multipliers right? You get the listing sells because you priced it right. You put it in MOS. But the other opportunities are that you find the buyer for it. You find a buyer that buys another condo because of it. You get another listing in the building because of it. Have you already communicated with the 33 about the new listing?
Rob: No, I haven't.
Dean: Okay. All right. I see an opportunity here.
Rob: That's today. Today it will be done.
Dean: So there's an opportunity. You say to them, "Hey Rob, I just listed a condo in your building and its unit this and here's the link to the info about it. I'm not sure what your plans are but I thought I would check in with you because we're sure to generate some activity around it and I thought maybe you might want me if this isn't the one for them to tell them about your place." You know?
Rob: As always you always have a good idea Dean.
Dean: Well ideas are us.
Rob: No, that's going to be done today.
Dean: Okay. But that's a better thing than ... that's a better way to communicate with those 33 than to do any sort of checking in with them, "Hey just checking in with you. Are you getting the newsletter? Are you enjoying it? Do you have any questions?" All that passive is not ... the only time we want them to hear from Rob Caruso is when things are happening. "That Rob Caruso man he's in action. He's always got buyers." You know?
Rob: Yeah. Very interesting.
Dean: Right. That makes a difference because they maybe ... they may say from that, "Oh no, we're not ready yet," or, "Yeah, keep us in mind," or whatever it is. But it's always then perfect, "Let me pop by and take a look and I'll keep it in mind to tell them about it." Or you on Saturday when you're going over to have a ... even if you sent an email to people, those 33 and you said, "Hey, I'm meeting some people on Saturday at the condo I'm going to be over on Thursday after work," or whatever, "Would you like to join us?"
Rob: Interesting. That's great.
Dean: And a way for them to ... people are always curious about what other units look like and they get a sense of whether theirs is better or worse or that'll give them a scope of what they look like. The thing is you just want to meet them now. You want to now build this relationship with these 33 people. You know them. Yeah.
Rob: Yeah, absolutely.
Dean: Now we want them to get to know you, right?
Rob: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: Yeah.
Rob: It's great.
Dean: So that would go a long way. And especially now you want to insert that into the next Get Top Dollar newsletter package that you send them as well.
Rob: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah for sure.
Dean: Right. Helping people on the move. Use that section and put your new ... your Infobox flyer basically. You could put that in there you know?
Rob: Yeah, because I have added those people to my World's Most Interesting Postcard with some added value and lo and behold of course I put that I just listed a new condo and got a booking, right? But yeah absolutely for sure they're all great ideas Dean.
Dean: And so you look at that we're just at our next objective is just going the listing multipliers of that it gets sold. You pretty much handle that. You find the buyer. You find a buyer that buys another house. You get another listing in the complex and you get a referral from the seller so part of the strategy that we talked about getting the sellers to post on their Facebook. To maybe let you know if they have any friends in the buildings that they can message about it. All of those kinds of things will help.
Rob: Absolutely.
Dean: But that should be your goal is you've got this opportunity because if you're looking at it that rather than getting 12 or $15,000 you've the opportunity to get $80,000. That's really what we're looking for here.
Rob: Sure, absolutely.
Dean: Okay so the next one that I was talking about is referrals and you mentioned that with The World's Most Interesting Postcard and you also mentioned that most of your business comes from repeated referrals. How many people are you communicating with? How many people are in your after unit?
Rob: 100 people.
Dean: Okay. And so you got 100 people and what kind of ... do you calculate your return on relationship? Do you know that number?
Rob: Yeah so basically they got 50/50 repeat and referral so 50% are repeat, 50% are referrals. Let's take a number for the last whatever like year. So about nine were past clients. Eight of them were referrals and then all the rest were like new, a couple of sign calls, whatever from the website. I still get business from the website. So yeah it's obviously working correctly. It's just that we need to up the numbers of that right? Up it to-
Dean: Yeah well that's exactly it. So you're at 17 or 18% but the two things that can affect this right away are number one, getting up to 150. I know you know more people than that if you've been here for at least 12 years right?
Rob: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.
Dean: So I know that about you. You're missing out because there are at least 50 people that you know by name that are not being communicated with every month.
Rob: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: Right? So what would it take to get those 50 people identified and on your list here?
Rob: I have to use that memory jogger and find them and put them on my list.
Dean: Right. And I bet that the first place memory jogger ... I bet in three memory jogs we could add 50 people right now.
Rob: You're probably correct.
Dean: If you just look at your Facebook friends ... you know how you can go in the tab that says friends and you can see all your friends?
Rob: Yeah, yeah.
Dean: If you just went down that and looked and you recognized people that are local there, that's going to add people for you. If you look around you probably there's some number of people that you might think I know them but I don't have them on my list. I was thinking about on our last GoGoAgent call or member call, I don't know whether you were on. Justina was sharing how she just got a listing and they're buying a $1.2 million house from sending them The World's Most Interesting Postcard and she knows this person she's friends with them. But she wouldn't normally have put them on and she actually debated putting this person on the list because she knew that she had cousins that were in real estate.
Rob: Yeah, it's crazy. I did hear that, yeah.
Dean: Yeah. And so there's probably people that are your neighbors, people that you assume know that you're in real estate, right? But you don't think about it or talk about it with them. And because of that, they're in these conversations all day every day that are about real estate and they're not thinking about you because you're not top of mind in the real estate category for them.
And if they're not thinking about you, then they're not going to tell people about you. Or they're not going to tell you about the people they've talked to which is ideally what we're looking for right?
Rob: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.
Dean: So when we look at that I ... if we have this opportunity to presence that, presence these conversations. And now we've got 50 extra people here, you're already getting the 17% annual yield on the 100 that you have in there, right, 17 transaction nine and eight.
Rob: Yeah.
Dean: I think that if you just bump that up to 50 more, that would be able to get us probably an additional nine.
Rob: You're right. All good stuff.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And so I think that's a really full one. Do you do any of the market maker activities that we talked about? Like do you consciously build this market maker Monday muscle that I call it where-
Rob: That is another one of my next things because we ... I'm definitely not taking advantage of that and I know that that is something we can definitely increase sales with or at least build awareness right?
Dean: Right.
Rob: Yeah.
Dean: And it's those things that I think if you ... how many agents in your office?
Rob: There are 26 of us in total so far.
Dean: Wow, so you ... Okay back up for a second now. Now we're getting somewhere. Do you have all 26 of your agents mailing to their top 150?
Rob: No.
Dean: Okay. So first of all you need to lead by example for you first off. And then these 26, imagine if you just created a market maker culture in your company.
Rob: Interesting.
Dean: Well it's one of those things that imagine if every ... you don't even have to do it in person but do you meet with your agents or do you ... are you all sort of roommates?
Rob: No, yeah, we all meet eventually. It's not like we have ... it's not daily but we definitely do meet here and there for sure.
Dean: Okay. But do you have a regular scheduled meeting or no?
Rob: We do. We're trying to make it more regular but we're definitely having one very soon because we have some FINTRAC rules that are being changed.
Dean: Okay.
Rob: So we can easily talk more then for sure.
Dean: Yeah. I think you know imagine let me just paint a picture for you because this referrals, we're on element number three of the Listing Agent Lifestyle is getting referrals. So we've established you're getting listings. We got your listing multipliers. Kind of addressed your next actions on that. This getting referrals we talked about what the impact could be just for you personally to bump up to 150. But if you were to impact that on your 26 agents, what does that look like? What's the impact?
So just imagine even if the 26 agents were getting 20% annual yield on their top 150. Just do that math on that real quick. If we're talking about 30 transactions times 26 agents is 750 or 800 transactions right there as the gold standard, right, as the potential. Now, would that be ... are you guys doing that many transactions in the ... among the 26 agents?
Rob: Not quite only because there are quite a few newer agents, like brand new agents.
Dean: Yeah, right. But when you look at it, it would be a really interesting thing for you to embrace that with those agents. That you look at those things as the ... that's a really low barrier easy way to increase the amount of business that the agents are doing. But what I talked about this market maker Monday for you just thinking to yourself who am I showing houses to this week? Who have I got actual appointments with that I'm actually in the process of working with right now?
Who am I going to see physically in their home about selling their house for the first time in the next ... this work week? And looking at your ... have you done the map layer for your top 100?
Rob: I haven't yet but I do understand that process and...
Dean: Okay because you can export them from your GoGoAgent. You can link how to create a Google map layer that drops a pin where all of your top 150 are. So if you're showing houses in River Run and you look and you see hey I know three people in River Run. Or you look in that condo building where you're going because you can layer another layer for your getting listings leads you know?
Rob: Very interesting.
Dean: That you start looking at that and creating this idea that every Monday you're going to send out those kind of emails saying, "Hey John, hey Lisa, hey Sue. I'm showing houses this week to a couple from Pickering and they're looking for this. We're going to be looking at ones in your neighborhood. I don't know what your plans are but I thought I would check in and tell them if I could see if maybe I can maybe tell them about your house."
Rob: Amazing.
Dean: That's the best type of check-in that you can do with somebody because it's action oriented. It's real and that's why I say you can't smuggle this into a situation. You can't smuggle it in and say, "Hey the market's really hot we've got buyers. I have a buyer," and then they say, "Well I don't actually have a buyer right now."
Rob: Yeah.
Dean: It's got to be 100% authentic. But imagine if culturally that market maker Monday was also extended between the 26 agents that you have where everybody's thinking who are they showing houses to this week? And somebody might have a listing lead. Somebody who's not yet on the market or a client who lives right in that neighborhood. Somebody in their top 150. And they say on your behalf, "Hey, Rob in my office is showing houses this week to a couple from Pickering and he's going to be right there in your neighborhood and I thought about you. Have you heard anybody talking about selling their house?"
Rob: Pretty amazing.
Dean: That would be ... look at the impact of that over 50 weeks.
Rob: Absolutely, we can really leverage everybody's showing and listing past clients.
Dean: Yeah.
Rob: Wow, good stuff.
Dean: That's not just a standup huddle. That becomes the exciting thing on Monday or whatever. It could be done even... yeah, it can be done by email or whatever. I think I should create an app for that actually. Create a market maker app.
Rob: That would be amazing.
Dean: That all 26 agents could have the app it's a closed loop system and everybody can put in check boxes or whatever of what they've got. Yeah.
Rob: Interesting. You've given me some really good ideas. Really good ideas here.
Dean: I mean that's pretty cool, right?
Rob: Yeah, it is.
Dean: Yeah. Very cool. There's so much opportunity with you Rob. What about converting leads? What's going on? You've got how many people in your market watch, your flagship. It seems like that's your ... you've got a real system around that five days a week.
Rob: Yeah. There are about 3000 people on my list that I email every day. And it's come down. It used to be like 5000 and my problem was I wasn't feeding it anymore but my goal is to re-feed it and bring it back up to the 5000 range. What I love about that part is I do my daily emails. I put some personality into it. Sometimes I record a video here and there and what I love about its conversions is that I don't chase after anybody.
Dean: Right.
Rob: They pick up the phone, they call me. They email say, "Okay, Rob we're ready." It's like okay great, when do you want to meet?
Dean: Yes, exactly.
Rob: I don't have any trouble converting because it just happens naturally just the way you taught us.
Dean: Yeah because it's just a meeting. That's exactly right. We're not trying ... this is the thing is you're not trying to convince anybody to do anything.
Rob: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: Right? You're there and that's why we say in the super signature, whenever you're ready here's three ways I can help you.
Rob: Yeah.
Dean: Right? And that kind of thing is really cool. Do you offer that sort of ... the data or the things that you send to people, do you encourage your 26 agents to do the same thing with their buy prospects?
Rob: Some people are just copying exactly what I do and I encourage it. I say yeah please just copy whatever I write. Copy this. Copy and just do it because there's opportunity there.
Dean: I think that's kind of a cool thing. What a differentiator as a broker like to be able to answer the question for people who are considering joining your team. Well what makes you different? How are you going to be any different than going anywhere else?
Rob: Well what we're doing is we're actually getting ... well we've got six, seven agents that are using GoGoAgent in our brokerage on top of myself and the partners. We're getting them to use the Getting Listings Program. I'm like, listen to the podcast. Listen to the weekly or the monthly twice a month calls. Get involved. There's just so much opportunity there you just have to implement.
Dean: Yes, that's perfect. I love it. There's the kind of thing where you've got ... imagine being able to say to recruits to potential agents that you want to work with to be able to document and show them that here's at least three ways that we're going to be able to impact your business without you having to really do anything. And you can talk about their return on relationship and talk about how you can help them get more referrals and show them that your agents average 18% return on relationship or whatever that number is. It's going to be higher than what their number is because they're not focused on it. You're going to show them how to multiply the listings that they already have. That if you show them that your company average listing multiplier index is 2.5 or whatever it is compared to what theirs might be which might be one.
And you're going to show them how to convert more leads because all they need to do is just put people in the hopper and you already write the emails that go out five times a week. They just need to buy their buyer prospects in this situation.
Rob: All good stuff. Wow. Give me a lot of ideas.
Dean: I think that's a pretty a pretty cool thing. And then finding buyers, the last business element there. You've got your money making website. You've got your way of finding the buyers. But I would encourage you to start looking at how you can create more category buyers. If you were to get out of ... if we were to ... we started the conversation talking about the 875 condos in those four buildings. That one complex that you're talking about there. If we were to zone out one layer from that, how many condo buildings are there in Vaughan?
Rob: In Vaughan it's crazy there's a lot.
Dean: Yeah?
Rob: And it's growing.
Dean: How many would it be? What would be the next layer?
Rob: What do you mean like how many condos can I target in Vaughan or?
Dean: Yeah, what would you say? Just...
Rob: Oh there's got to be at least 100 probably more than that.
Dean: 100 buildings?
Rob: Yeah, there's got to be.
Dean: Yeah?
Rob: In all of Vaughan anyway.
Dean: With an average of 100?
Rob: Yeah, yeah, 100.
Dean: So it's 10,000 potentially?
Rob: Yeah, maybe more. I don't know. I've never really counted but yeah 10,000 would be a very good starting point.
Dean: Right. But it would be interesting because that's how you can sort of start finding condo buyers by going out of that category. It doesn't ... even though you can only ... you're focused only on these 875 right now, where would this complex fit in the low end to high end condo bell curve in Vaughan?
Rob: It's mid to high.
Dean: Okay. So when you look at that that's right in the middle there that anybody if you were to start thinking about how can I start offering the three ... the Vaughan condo guide, the 2018 guide to Vaughan condo prices?
Rob: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: That for everybody looking for condos.
Rob: Yeah. This is something that needs to be done.
Dean: Yeah. I mean boy oh boy oh boy. There's so much potential there.
Rob: Oh yeah, nobody's doing this.
Dean: No, exactly. I mean it's so great. Do all 26 of your agents are you all sort of Vaughan-centric?
Rob: No, they're scattered. They're not all in Vaughan.
Dean: Yeah. But I mean it's just there's so much. I think that's really ... and Vaughan's got everything. You've got condos. You've got townhouses. You've got luxury homes. You got it all.
Rob: I know. I know.
Dean: And proximity. I mean it's so close to the city.
Rob: Absolutely yeah. Perfect.
Dean: You're sitting on a gold mine Rob Caruso.
Rob: I know I am and I have to take advantage and I needed this little kick in the derriere from you. It's good, I'm so glad I did this.
Dean: Yeah, me too. I love doing this. Recap for me then. A lot of times on these calls people will have one or two action items. The good news is you've got a lot going on, but you've also got some amazing opportunities. How did all that land? What's your recap here of your opportunities here?
Rob: Well we're definitely going to use Facebook to advertise those single property websites, right?
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Rob: Create some activity there. For sure I got to get myself to 150. I have to get to 150 and we are going to create that guide. The guide to Vaughan condo prices. We have to.
Dean: Yeah. Did you see like if you look in the GoGoAgent on the member blog, there's ... you could just model the South Beach Condo Guide. Have you seen that?
Rob: I have, yes I have.
Dean: Okay. That's what we're talking about.
Rob: And then we just got to advertise it.
Dean: That's exactly right.
Rob: Yeah. Good stuff. No, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate it.
Dean: You are very welcome. And then the other ... the thing ... I think this market maker Monday organizationally could be a big thing.
Rob: I didn't forget that yeah, I'm so glad this is being recorded.
Dean: Yeah, you're going to listen again because what happens is as you're thinking something else while it's happening and you're going to hear it completely differently this next time. It'll amplify the things.
Rob: For sure. No, we got to get everything going. Every idea is going to get implemented. Love it.
Dean: I love it. I like what I'm hearing. Okay, well I think we've said all we can say for now. That's enough. You got an action-packed checklist here to get to work on.
Rob: I got to get to work.
Dean: All right, Rob, I really enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing.
Rob: Yeah, and thank you for the ideas and just making sure that I don't forget about them.
Dean: Right. That's exactly right. Awesome. I'll talk to you soon.
Rob: Talk soon. Take care.
Dean: Thanks. Bye.
And there we have it. Another great episode. So much opportunity per minute and I can't wait to see how Rob goes about executing all of the things that we talked about. We really ... there's something where Rob has things firing in all of the Listing Agent elements. I think the more that we go through conversations like this the more you see the layering of it. The first thing we want to get established is that you've got a system for getting listings. And so he's started that process, restarted that process. Got to the point where now he's got the first listing. Plus he's got 33 people who have responded to his postcards over the months that he mailed to get the first one.
We talked about the listing multipliers and not just thinking about them as the Infobox flyers. There are so many things, so many strategies that we can deploy to reach the outcome of getting multiple transactions per listing that you take. So we listed some really great opportunities there. We talked about getting referrals. He's already got a really great percentage-based return on relationship with 100 people. Imagine if we bumped it to 150 people.
Same thing for you. There are 150 people that know you, like you, trust you, are involved in conversations all day every day that are about real estate. If they're not thinking about you when those conversations come up, the odds of them introducing you to the person that they had the conversation with, are zero. So the more we can get them thinking about you when they hear conversations about real estate something magical happens and your referrals go up. And that's just that one simple tool of sending The World's Most Interesting Postcard to your top 150 people.
Then we talked about converting leads and the opportunity to be a market maker. Rob's had great success sending five days a week a market watch email to his buyer prospects and that when people are ready they just pop out. You don't have to chase anybody. You don't have to call people. You don't have to do any of that type of outbound prospecting that nobody likes to do or receive. You just are serving the people who are ready to go and when they are ready, they connect with you.
And then we talked about finding buyers. He's got these beginnings of dominating a category which is always what I love to see for you. He started out with one particular set of condo buildings but now how can we start finding buyers for that category so that we can introduce them and match them up as a market maker to the 33 people that live in those four buildings that he knows are highly likely to sell their condo in the next 12/24/36 months?
This is how you establish yourself as a market dominator. It doesn't happen overnight. But it surely happens over time. We're amazed at how fast that time goes. 12 years we were talking about you look at what's happened with Chuck Charlton, over 12 years since he first moved to Milton and what happened to Rob in the time when he first got involved here. So that's all very exciting.
The best most fulfilling thing for me is this community that we're building at GoGoAgent.com. I really want you to experience that and be part of this and know that we've got all the tools for you. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. You don't need to think about how to make it all happen for you. I've already got all of the tools that we need and I want you to have them.
I want you to join us and be part of it. We offer a 30-day free trial. You can come on in to GoGoAgent, see everything that we're doing. No credit card required. You don't have to put in anything. You don't have to buy anything. But my goal is that in that 30 days, you'll see what we're up to and you'll want to stay forever. It's $79 a month. It's less than $1000 for the year and if even on this podcast for free we're giving you ideas that you could certainly turn into one additional transaction that would give you a 5, 10, 20 times ROI on just one year of being part of GoGoAgent.
I'm super passionate about it. It's my favorite thing and I'd really love for you to be a part of it. So come on in. GoGoAgent.com. We're here and whenever you're ready, I'm here to help you live the Listing Agent Lifestyle. That's it for this week. I will talk to you next time. Bye, bye.