#190 Mail Right Show With Special Guest Josh Schoenly

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We Going to Discussing How You Can Attract Your Ideal Clients

Josh Schoenly is the world’s leading authority on digital marketing for real estate professionals. He is the co-founder of Client Alchemist, a company whose mission is to help real estate and sales professionals learn the skills and mindset necessary to attract their ideal clients.

Jonathon: Welcome back folks to the Mail Right Show. This is episode 190. We’ve got a great guest. For this week’s episode we got Josh Schoenly of Client Alchemist. I love that name Josh, I love it. And I’ve got my great cohosts Robert Newman as well. Robert, would you like to quickly introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?

Robert: Sure. I’m Robert Newman. I’m the founder of Inbound Real Estate Marketing. We are a SEO focused lead generation company located in California.

Jonathon: And I’ve got great news. This is some views. It’s been their biggest month so far, the biggest week of downloads ever for the show. So that’s great news. Josh, would you like to introduce yourself quickly to the listeners and viewers?

Josh: Sure. Josh Schoenly, I’m the cofounder of a company called Client Alchemist. Our sort of tag line and the whole idea behind Client Alchemist is we help you turn leads into gold. He turns lead into gold. So how we can attract potential clients and connect with them and get into conversation with them. So we have opportunity to service them. I’m also a license agent with EB Realty. I have being a licensed agent for 14 years now, but had been inactive for quite a while. And I have just recently reactivated for a number of reasons. And I’ve been in the industry since about 2005 or 2006 in various capacities. And found very quickly that what I loved and was most passionate about is the marketing aspect. How we can go from not having clients. Not having a sphere of influence, not having a referral base to building that database of clients. And turning them into repeat and referral business. And that’s been my passion since the mid two thousands and continues to be my passion today.

Jonathon: Oh, that’s great Josh. So you kind of real catch phrase is how to attract your ideal clients. So obviously the opening question, a slightly large one is how do you attract your ideal clients?

Josh: I think the first, and in a lot of cases, the hardest part is taking the time to understand who your ideal clients are. We see this time and time again and I’ve seen it for years. Real estate agents who are kind of in this deadly cycle of commission check to commission check. And so any client is a good client. But the reality is if you sit down and take the time to identify who your ideal clients are, you can build a business by design instead of one that’s just chasing this and chasing that and so forth. And so the way that we look at identifying your ideal client starts with geographically speaking. Where do you want to grow your Business? For me, when I reactivated my license recently, I had a ton of clarity on that already.

It’s the township that I live in. And specifically the reason why I chose that is A, I live in that township. B, I’m already well connected in the township. I volunteer in various places. I know a lot of people and so forth. So getting crystal clear because you know, lots of agents, they try to service an entire county. Or they are a single agent, but they’re trying to service all of the Greater Cincinnati area. And that’s just foolish. You can’t be all things to all people. So starting with geographic area, target area, and it could be a single zip code. It could be a township. It could be depending on the kind of market you’re in, it could be one neighborhood or subdivision. Where I live, they’re not very large, so that wouldn’t work. But there are areas where there are subdivisions in the thousands of homes.

Well, that might be your geographic target area. And then looking at what type of clientele do you like to work with? Do you like to work with first time home buyers? Do you like to work with sellers? Do you like to work with baby boomers that are looking to downsize? There’s no right or wrong answers to these questions. There are only the answers that make the most sense or the right answer for you and your business. So getting really crystal clear on how you attract your ideal client is step one. Step two is what are you going to do to attract them? What kind of content are you going to create to get those people that we’ve identified as our ideal clientele, audience base? The ones that are interested in real estate. What are we going to do to get them to raise their hand so that we can connect with them in some way?

And the beautiful thing about the internet is, and the growth of Facebook and Google and so forth is there are many, many ways that we can connect with them now. So it’s not just somebody picking up the phone and calling you. It’s just by visiting your website or watching a video that you put together. Or clicking on a lead ad or clicking on. Just engaging with a post on Facebook. There are lots of ways that we can build audiences now that that didn’t exist when I first got started. I mean when I first got started the way we connected was. They had to fill out a web form on a website and that still works great. But there are many other ways that we can do that as well.

And then once we’ve connected with, then how can we get into conversation with them so we can identify the ones that are ready now or ready in the short term. They have real motivation to buy or sell real estate in the short term. And how do we get into conversation with them while also being able to identify and get into conversation with people that are interested but their timelines a little bit longer. And then creating a plan or following up with them such that when their motivation hits a tipping point, it’s already a foregone conclusion that you’re going to be the professional of choice. You’re not competing against everybody else because you’ve demonstrated value. You provided good information. You’ve been maybe entertaining on some level. And it becomes like I said, a foregone conclusion. You don’t have to compete for the business. You’re there and ready to take the business, when that clientele hits that tipping point.

Jonathon: I just love it Josh. You have just spilled in about 5 minutes what I and Robert have being literally saying for the past 8 months. You have come to the right podcast Josh.

Josh: That`s the sense that I got when you invited me on, so I’m glad it’s 100% congruent.

Jonathon: What do you recon Robert?

Robert: I like it. I like everything he had to say. I always like to do, but it’s all extremely high level and I think that we probably just lost about 40% of our clients. Either we lost them or there’s probably 40% that think that they know most of what you just said. I’m curious to know, Josh, before the show started everybody. Josh mentioned that he had just gotten his license that he was re getting his license, which means that most likely at least as a case study. You’re going to probably try to get some clients for yourself.

Josh: Absolutely.

Robert: For some real estate clients. All right, so how are you going to do that? We know who your client is because you just shared with us. You don’t need to mention the name of the community. It doesn’t matter for the podcast. So what’s your next step? How are you going to go get them?

Josh: So I’ve already been doing that. In fact, I have a listing appointment this afternoon. And for me, well for a number of factors, when I sat down and thought about, okay, who’s my ideal client. It started with in my case, the township that I live in just because that’s the way it is in the Pennsylvania area. And then I thought, well I’m busy. I have four kids, I have other companies, and I have other activities and so forth. So I’m going to focus on the seller side, the listing side, because that’ll create leverage for me. And then I went about crafting campaigns, several different campaign ideas to get those folks, the homeowners in my, in my township to rise their hand in some form or fashion. To indicate that yeah, they’re thinking about selling in the near future. Whether the near future is the next couple of months or over the next year.

Robert: You’re talking about digital marketing campaigns?

Josh: All digital marketing, Facebook and a little bit of Google. I don`t know how deeper or tactical you want me to get. But the very first campaign or offer that I put out there, again with the intent of, of attracting and connecting those clients. Was an offer that we help our clients set up for themselves, which is to offer a free weekly list of all the just sold homes in like area? So the target area that I’m looking to serve or the client is looking to serve. And so that was the first campaign that I sort of deployed. And that’s the campaign that led to this listing appointment tonight. And several others that have indicated interest, but just not quite ready. They don`t really want to list until school lets out here locally.

So that was kind of step one was deploying that.

Robert: Did you have this list, have the deliverable? I’m curious.

Josh: Oh yeah. Well, it’s a list it’s all I do and all we recommend our clients do is you build the list and in your mls. It’s just a report from the mls that we’re not making publicly available. We’re making it available to people who opt into our database and then just bring that. And ideally not just delivering the report but over delivering. So maybe an additional report talking about 10 things you can do to prepare your home for sale when you’re ready. Or five ways to improve the curb appeal of your house, things along those lines. But yeah, it just started with offering that report.

And putting that out, deploying that as a Facebook lead ad campaign. And letting it do the work. Showing it to those potential ideal clients. And when they opt in, I send them the report through the CRM platform that I’m using. And just follow up with them.

Robert: You’re covering all the good stuff and I don’t want it to be a mystery to our clients. Everything that you’re mentioning right now, we’ve probably done a show on that one particular concept. Like we’ve done shows on Facebook marketing, we’ve had Facebook marketing experts on the show and we’ve done. And so all of this stuff that you’re just so casually running by, we’ve done a segment that focuses on the one strategy. So unless I’m asking you a question, you’re not comfortable with.

Josh: I’m an open book, I’m 1000% transparent. I don’t hide anything, fire away.

Robert: So what’s The CRM? You just kind of said, hey, there’s just like the CRM I’m using. Which one is it?

Josh: So what I’m using is KB Core. I’m using that because I’m with the XP and it comes as an EXP agent and it’s a wonderful platform. A lot of our clients, if they don’t have access to something like that. We love and recommend Lion Desk. So those are kind of the two that, and I actually have. I use Lion Desk as well or some other real estate related things that I do. But in this case, that campaign I just described, that’s all run through KB Core. And we set up the campaign on Facebook when someone submits their information, we’re using Zippier, however you and that sends the information into KB Core and KB Core sends out. I actually have it set up so that it sends a text and an email automatically to the person that requested the report. The email gives them the report and the texts just say, hey I emailed you the report that you requested. And I forget there was a question in there of some kind.

What is the question? I’m going to look that up. But it’s all designed to create a conversation. Just to get engagement. We’re not trying to sell them anything. Right then and there. We’re just trying to have a conversation to determine two things. Number one, can I sell, serve, help or serve this person? And then when can I best help or serve this person? I’m not trying to sell anything. I’m just trying to determine if I have the opportunity to serve them.

Robert: And so with this particular, like the listing appointment you are going on today. So they made some type of inquiry on the text message I would presume. You happen to recall how fast you were able to respond to the inbound note from the prospect?

Josh: I’m looking down because I’m pulling up the APP right now. I think I can tell you with pretty good certainty. Let me see if I can find it. She originally requested the report at about 10 in the morning. And she responded to the automated texts, which, by the way, I have it up here. So the text says the blank area just sold homes report should be in your inbox. And I should probably put email inbox, but whatever. Just curious, what neighborhood do you live in? Because the township that I serve, we have a ton of different neighborhoods and the price ranges, like some of the neighborhoods are similar, but some of them can be pretty diverse. Again, I’m just trying to get a conversation. So she says, I live in blank neighborhood and I’m planning to sell within the next two months. She sent that at 10:18.

I responded at 10:30. So 12 minutes later, which ideally I would have responded even sooner. I don’t know if I just didn’t see it come in or if I was in the middle of something, but whatever the case may be. So I said, terrific. Thanks. I’ll send you a custom report for the neighborhood that you sent, which I emailed to them. And then the conversation with the email. And that’s how I’ve actually not talked to this person on the phone. I’ve talked to her through text and email and I’ll meet her for the first time at four o’clock today.

Robert: Awesome. Awesome. Listen, Josh, thank you so much for, for allowing me to ask all the questions.

Josh: Yeah, absolutely brother.

Robert: Down the rabbit hole with you because I’m finding it very helpful. And here’s my guiding principle about doing podcasts or writing content on my website. I mean I always look at something and go, if there’s something that I’m finding useful then probably my clients will as well. And now I’m a marketer. So numbers and specifics make the most difference to me. Because I can design my thoughts around. But the general stuff, there’s 9,000 different places you can find people who generally say, Oh, you know, identify who your best client is. And even that can be a little bit tricky because like I’m in Van Nuys. And you know everything in California and everything in California right now is like set three fourths of a million to one point $5 million. Everything in real estate cost that much. So my ideal client is somebody who has damn well near $1 million to spend on a house if I’m a real estate agent. So in that case, geographically, if you can be that guy in that, in a specific zips code or even all of Van Nuys. Even in a specific property type or something like, so there’s still ways that you can kind of carve out a niche even in a scenario like that.

Jonathon: I think that`s great. We’re going to go for a break. I’m going to be talking some more with Josh. The Lead Alchemist. The man that can turn lead into goal. We will be back in a few moments.

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Jonathon: We are coming back. Robert has being getting very specific with Josh. Josh the man who can turn lead into gold. Something which has eluded me for most of my professional career. I’ve got one quick question, and then I am going to let Robert continue the interrogation. I am only joking. Obviously getting a CRM from your broker and it being free is fantastic news. But there’s something kind of learn about the internet and bins in general. Nothing is for free really. Have you got any concerns about using something that comes from your broker? Because fundamentally, it’s a strange relationship, agents with their brokers, isn’t it? Because you’re really building your own business, but you’re also working with a broker. Are you a little bit concerned about is obviously you’re going to be sharing that database where your broker, because they’re, they’re providing it to you.

Josh: Yeah. So my opinion is that your database is your business. And if you’re sharing that with your broker, then you don’t own it.

And so I know that there are great solutions that our broker provided, but I would, I would certainly, I would never be comfortable in a scenario where I was sharing that and it wasn’t, I didn’t have, I would not be comfortable if tomorrow I left that broker and I didn’t get to take my business with me. So if that’s the relationship you’re in a probably merits thinking about it. And I know brokers may not like that, but as someone who is an agent who’s been in those shoes. Listen your database is your business. And if you leave and go somewhere else and you don’t get to take your business with you, then you’re starting from scratch. I mean, starting from scratch. So yeah, I’m a big believer of building that, building your database and making sure that it is portable to you, that it is yours.

Jonathon: If you are using this tool that they are freely providing, then it’s a great tool. I know it well, but obviously they will have access to your database, but alone you can get that data out of it easily.

Josh: So you were asking specifically for me. So even though the brokerage provides it, it’s not a scenario with I at least the way our broker works where the database is our database. They may be able to access it.

Jonathon: I am sure they can if they are providing it.

Josh: You can get down a funky road there and it anyway. Even with a different provider or somebody can have access either way? In my scenario, if I were to leave, I would obviously strategically export my database and take it with me. And there’s no agreement. Like some brokers will have explicit agreements that you have to sign that say you know, it, it’s theirs and so forth. And there’s nothing in place with that. But the cautionary tale is making sure if you’re spending your time and money to build your database, that it really truly is your database.

Jonathon: Thanks for saying that. Over to you Robert.

Robert: You kind of took a looper there. So I guess I’m going to just kind of follow up on your looper though Josh. So I’ve loved everything you’ve shared so far and I’m extremely impressed by your level of detailed knowledge. Especially as it relates to our vertical and real estate. Some of the guests that we get, our marketing specialist in general who could service real estate agents. You are an agent, which puts you in my mind, head and shoulders above some of those other people.

Just in terms of usefulness, not doing any of the comparison. Our entire audience is Real Estate. We’re not a diverse show. We focused only on Real Estate. Having said that, so let’s say you’re building your database right now. You’re adding some names to it, you’re running some test markets, and you’re obviously kicking the tires on this new focal point for your businesses. What is going to be your system of maintaining those prospective leads once you have them? So let’s just say we’ve collected 100 names. They are all in your target demographic. So your niche has been served. What are you going to do to stay in front of them now?

Josh: Great question. So number one, the offer that we make oftentimes will help us with how to stay in touch. So for example, the offer that I’ve started with is a free weekly list of all the just sold properties in blank area. This means I’m going to send you a weekly list. So at a minimum every week I’m going to send out the updated list with all the properties that sold in the last week. So that’s at the very minimum for me personally and what we recommend. Some additional follow-up and contacts that we recommend are either a weekly or a monthly market update. This can be done as simply as opening up your mls or if you have a good IDX solution.

Bringing up information about the properties that have been recently listed or properties that have been priced reduced. Properties that have sold, things of that nature. And just talking about what’s going on over the last week or over the last month. You can use free online software to make those kinds of videos, screencast, nomadic, loom. There are lots of solutions to do that. And then simply sending that out. We have different kind of templates that we recommend. But one wonderful sort of email strategy that you can use is once you start getting results is turning those into stories that you can then send out as well.

So for example, let’s say I get this listing. I know that this listing is going to sell quickly just because of what my market looks like. Well, once it does or even once it is listed, I’m going to turn that into a story that I can then send out. And I might ask the database, who do you know that might be interested in this home? Or I might turn it into a story about the conversations that we had when I met with the person about how to best prepare their homes. So it will sell quickly, those kinds of things. And then once it does go under contract, then we can tell that story. Hey, we listed this property on Tuesday. We had multiple offers over the first 72 hours and it went under contract on Friday. The market’s great. If you’ve been thinking about selling or know someone who is, we should chat. Here’s how to reach me.

So that kind of relational, conversational type of email or texting. Or even just content, even that can be put on your blog or on your Facebook page. We’ve found that that works great with deepening the connection with that audience. And then getting into the conversation with the folks who maybe when they first came into your database, they weren’t at a tipping point, but now they are for whatever reason.

Robert: So for our audience, I’m going to break this down a little bit. Josh just shared with us that he’s using a combination of a case study and the social proof. And here’s why that’s relevant. So from a perspective of let’s say that you own a home and you’re getting ready to list it. One of the things that you always want to look for if you are doing a little bit of research as you want to see like an absolute. Like if you’ve got to talk to somebody listened to somebody. I love all that Josh was bringing forward because I personally do this in my own real life. When I’m looking at maybe a vendor or I’m looking at my pool guy. The first thing I do is check his reviews. Now you didn’t suggest reviewing but what you did suggest was what we did for this client that worked. This is the same thing as a review except you’re putting forth the information. And if you’re clinical about it, in other words and you seem to be very clinical in this conversation. Like if you say this is what we did on A and this was the date. And then just what we did on B and this is the date and then this is what happened on.

These are the three offers that we got. We accepted offer two because blank, blank, blank. And then the house is under contract total length of time was three weeks. That’s the kind of hard data I personally seek as a consumer. And everybody else is going to feel the same way. That is a different type of social proof as a review. It’s saying if you do this with me subtly, it’s saying this is the result. You’ll get your painting a very vivid picture inside the client’s mind. And that’s exactly what you want to do as a marketer. And you don’t want to hammer them over the head with it, in my opinion.

Josh: Well you’re indirectly showing the value that you bring without having to say, I’m great. Or I’m this, that or the other thing. Or I have these certifications or I’m top 5% of this, whatever. You’re just letting the story of the transaction tell all of that unconsciously or subconsciously to the person. Versus having to tout your wares or beat the drum for yourself.

Robert: I think that beating the drum marketing is dead. That’s my personal opinion. That’s why I stay away from it as an inbound marketer. Who cares if your top five who cares if you’re number one? I don’t think people care anymore. I think they care, what will you do for me? When I hear number one I actually sometimes in my brain I hear it. That means that you’re really busy and you may not have time to service me. Strangely.

Josh: Not everyone would think that way, but a lot of people would. It would actually accomplish the opposite of what you’re here, you know, looking to accomplish.

Robert: Sorry, John, go ahead.

Jonathon: We’re going to have to wrap up the podcast part of the show. Josh hopefully is going to stay on with us for another 10-12 minutes.

Josh: Sure.

Jonathon: You will be able to watch on the Mail Right YouTube channel. Go ahead and subscribe. Or go to the Mail Right website and learn more about Mail Right where we get you quality leads. In our way we turn lead into gold as well. Josh, how can people find out about more about you, your ideas and your services?

Josh: Sure. So you can find me on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter, Josh Schoenly as where you can find me there. You can check out our website at clientalchemistsdotcomclientalchemists.com. You can check out the blog there. You can grab a copy of my book, kind of outlining our four step process. And hit me up on social. I’d love to connect with any of the listeners.

Jonathon: And you definitely have to come back on the show. I think we kind of just scratch the surface. And you will be interrogated more by Robert. Robert, how can people find out more about you, your thoughts and what you’re up to?

Robert: I am the founder of Inbound REM. And that’s all the information that you need so you can go and search that. Today I want to give out massive props again to Jonathan every single day. It feels like every week our audience’s growing. Josh we are up to a few thousand dedicated listeners every single month to be specific. And that number seems to be increasing rapidly. Because I don’t know, we’re finally getting past that. And so anyway, I want to say thank you to all our audience members and want to say thank you to Josh. I strongly suggest that you check out his website. I haven’t looked at it myself just in the spirit of transparency, but this is definitely a person that I think knows what he’s talking about. And if he’s done what any good digital marketer has done, he has something on their. He’s going to offer you for free. That you can download or take a look at in exchange for your information. And it’s probably a pretty good piece of digital content. If I were to guess. So, that’s all I got guys.

Jonathon: Oh, that’s great. We’ll be back next week with another great guest. We have another fantastic guest next week, and he’ll be sharing his knowledge and insights with you so you’ll have a record 2019. We’ll see you next week folks. Bye.