#185 Mail-Right Show: The 19 Fastest Ways to Get Listings in 2019

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The 19 Fastest Ways to Get Listings in 2019

Real Estate Agents You Need to Know About Going Super Local With Marketing & SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Part 2

In this episode of the Mail-Right show, we look at a recent article that the Curaytor team published on their website titled “The 19 fastest ways to get listings in 2019.

00:11 Jonathon: Welcome back folks to the Mail Right Show. This is episode 185. It’s going to be a discussion between me and Robert. Robert who is my great cohost Robert Newman. Would you like to quickly introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?

00:27 Robert: Certainly. I am Robert Newman. I’m the founder of an online marketing lead generation company in southern California called Inbound Real Estate Marketing. And I have website that has a lot of cool information on it called inboundrem.com.

00:42 Jonathon: He does. And before we start on our subject, which is going to be the 19 fastest ways to get listings in 2019. which is an article that`s on the Curator site. They cover similar areas to me and Robert. I thought it was a reasonably cool article to go through. We went through, we got to the number five or six last week and we’re just going to finish it off this week. And before we start that folks, I just wanted to say last month was our busiest month for Mail Right. And also we had the most downloads for this show. It was the biggest download month we’ve ever had for the show. And we must have had a lot of new listeners and viewers. And if you all joining us, thank you for spending some time with us. We know you’re busy people and we really appreciate you doing that. Don’t we Robert?

01:40 Robert: We most certainly do. Absolutely.

01:43 Jonathon: You must be signing areas up.

01:48 Robert: They’re all just waiting for you to talk about bestiality again.

01:51 Jonathon: Oh, you do? That’s why we getting more listeners. Let`s the right page up. And so we covered number five and we covered number six. Onto number seven, this is similar to number six. Use realtor.com and your mls defined upcoming expires. It’s an old one, but it’s a trusted one, isn’t it Robert?

02:22 Robert: Yes. FSBO is probably one of the oldest and most common ways to seek getting listings. Mike Ferry has 21 scripts that he gives away for free. On how to find, on ways to call out. We’ll kind of get these listings with how often people like us say go out and get your FSBO list and then call it. I’m shocked that it’s not overly saturated but despite the fact that people say do, do that, do that, I really don’t think that that many people do. Making it still a qualified valid strategy and somebody that’s determined who can pick up a phone is probably going to do really well with it.

03:12 Jonathon: Yeah, it’s quite surprising but I would strongly advise you to get Ferris, he does provide this list of scripts. And I would advise you to download that free resource. [3:36 inaudible] We had a little bit of a chat but he’s got these resolves and I really do think you’ve got to prepare yourself. I didn’t know. I’ve had one agent. I think that’s come on the show. I do know there are a small number of agents. Their whole pipeline is just based on this. That’s all they do is expires and they built up a reasonable business. Do you know some agents that only do that?

04:09 Robert: They only do expire?

04:09 Jonathon: Yeah

04:10 Robert: I’ve run across a couple of, can’t remember them off the top of my head over the years. I’ve run across a couple of agents that have, yes I’ve done that. Now there’s something I want to mention before I forget, I’m gonna take. There are two things that I really want to discuss, which is number eight. Number nine, which were two of the most fascinating points on the entire curator list. And one of the reasons I actually agreed to do a recap of a piece of content off curator because usually they’re not cutting edge in terms of their content production.

04:52 Jonathon: Are you sure of that?

04:52 Robert: I know, I know. Well, you knew how I felt about this when we started this process.

04:58 Jonathon: I do, I do.

04:59 Robert: I’m just being transparent, but here’s what we got. There’s an instant offer and I want to talk about that for a second. Cause John and I or you and I, John and I and whatever, however you want to say it. Guys I’m sick so I’m not, I am probably a little caddy because I’m sick. But John and I were talking about how we both, we had both had feelings. They not surprisingly mirrored each other but it was like, hey these Zillow instant offers, we both think that they’re a, it’s not that we don’t understand why people are talking about it or worried about it. It’s just we both feel and I feel strongly I will stop speaking for John. I feel strongly this is a, there’s going to be a certain percentage of the audience out there that this appeal strongly to. And yes, they’re going to buy their sell and sell their home using an online process. I feel like that audience is very small. The amount of people that I’ve talked to you that are consumers of homes who are willing to do that is my nuke. And my friends are in the tech world and it’s still my nuke.

06:09 Robert: They’re not very many people that would do this at all. But I’m sure there’s some and they’re probably really excited that the opportunity exists. So the Zillow instant offer thing is coming through loud and clear right now. I think we have many years before we start to see this make any true market penetration though that’s my opinion.

06:31 Jonathon: I don’t think is going to make any significant penetration. I really do honestly think it’s a lot of hype. There will be a percentage that will, but the wholesale has been there for a long time. I know the percentage that is looking to take is a lot lower than it should be, if they’re going to get any traction with this. But also I think the market, its ups and its downs for the past 15 years. Orr the least, the 12, yeah, 15 years. It’s been very unusual compared to the historic record. And I think as one of the reasons that schools that, and I also think Zillow, we’ve discussed this before. Zillow’s a public company, it makes tens of millions. But it’s expected to make more and more every year. And I think it’s been forced down this road through the fact that it’s a public company to some extent. What do you reckon Robert?

07:43 Robert: Yeah. Zillow still hasn’t made a profit. This is one of their most promising divisions right now. Is this instant offers is buying and selling of homes online. And they did 20 million in revenue off it last year and there are 20 billion. They’re going to do a lot more this year. And so it’s a big category for them. And yes, I think they’ve got to keep trying to find ways to make money. They’ve already switched their offer up in terms of the way they were distributing leads. And then they backed off it. They have a group called Zillow Porch light and that particular group, which is like a group of master users that they go to that help dictate the offer. They thought it would be a brilliant idea at first to rollout. Hey we’re going to give you 20 leads when they call him for you.

08:28 Robert: And then they immediately reversed that decision because everybody hated it. It was a disaster, complete and utter disaster. But all the pressure to keep manipulating their offer, they have massive market penetration and yet they are still not making a profit. Whoever is running that company, I would be quite worried. Like because the fact that you’ve got so much traffic, so many advertisers, you’re booking $345 million in advertising revenue every quarter and you can’t pull a profit. Yeah, you’re right. They got to keep trying stuff and I don’t know what it’s going to be. But their model that they’ve had so far is not doing that well, to be honest. And the real estate market that we’re in, it’s going to come to a close soon. And I don’t know if that’s going to impact Zillow well or poorly. But my guest is going to be, maybe Zillow ends up being one of those huge gambles that just didn’t work out. Unless they can pull it up by the bootstraps.

09:34 Jonathon: I don`t agree with that actually. I think that it could be really profitable. They’re probably going to have to look at their expenses. But I think there are models where it could become very profitable. I think they have been, but they really bright people know who am I to criticize them really. Let’s move on because I don’t want to make a fool of myself. I might do that too often listeners. Refresh your listing presentation. I think this is good advice because I think people team can get a bit stale and a bit repetitive. And I think looking at it every year trying some different things is not a bad idea. What do you think Robert?

10:37 Robert: I think that I get a quick browse of this video, which they have connected to number nine. And it’s some kind of, if somebody connected curator, probably curated customer and his name is Sean something or another. And he does a great job of clearly explaining not only some questions that he asks in terms of his listing presentation, but why he asks them. For all of those people that are like me, who are super sales vets his method of communication is concise. His reasoning is strong. Every year I like to review my sales presentation and we’ll get another professional and see what they’re doing and make sure of that. Because oftentimes you forget the basics. Like it doesn’t, I don’t care if you’ve got 50 years’ experience, 30 years’ experience, if you’re salesperson, some of the time, the things that you decide to eliminate or that you forget that you’ve eliminated or some of the simplest steps like in a qualification process.

11:33 Robert: For instance, like in my world it’s how long have you been doing this particular kind of marketing? How much marketing, how much have you been spending on it? How did you find me? These are the basic set of questions that you ask when you’re talking to somebody. But many times, if I don’t refresh my memory all the time, I eliminate one or two of basic questions. And as anybody in sales knows if you take out some of your groundwork rang questions than the front of your presentation, you actually oftentimes end up affecting your entire sales presentation very poorly. So reviewing this guy is great. I love, this is my favorite thing about the whole Curator article is Sean Moore’s video under number nine. I don’t care who you are. I think personally think that this is a good review. It’s an hour long video. The Curator dudes are on the video with them. If you’re a fan, you can check them out.

12:32 Jonathon: He is another person I have to try and get on the show.

12:37 Robert: Okay, cool.

12:39 Jonathon: I will try and see if he’s up for it. Yeah, presentations. The more you put into it, I would do it. I would do it on an iPod myself. But if you just want to print it out and have a nice PDF. But have it presented properly and go through it. Anyway that you can make yourself more professional, more [13:14 inaudible] the competition, the better is isn’t it?

13:17 Robert: Yes the next thing on the list which is number 10. Sell your services are really saying create a plan and put it on your site. I actually liked this. I’ve just been thinking it over right now and I realized that we probably need to improve our advice to our clients because we do build websites. And I’m realizing that we don’t really have a sell your services page and what they, what they, it feels like they’re talking about is there saying come up with a game plan that that highlights how you tackle selling somebody’s home. And then putting that on your website and as far as a printed plan is concerned. And I agree with that. That is not a bad idea just to sit here and put a page on your website that has an action plan for selling a home. It’s a good idea.

14:16 Jonathon: Well I totally agree with you. This is something that a lot of our agents on their websites, they just don`t do this and it’s bad. Having a clear outline of the process and in that process you can clearly define why you’re different than the competition. If you can’t you got a problem. So it’s a good exercise anyway because it will show you, it would then start discussions in your mind listeners about how do you make yourself. Because unfortunately in the real estate industry, there’s a lot of clichés. It’s really great that we offer excellent service. We offer better service. The clichés, if you can show it, and have morphology is going to be a lot better for you. And it doesn’t have to be Jet Science. It can just be a morphology which you outlined on the website. The reason why it’s important your competition won’t do that. So it shows you different to the competition. We’re going to go through our break folks. We’d be back in a few minutes.

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16:03 Jonathon: We are coming back folks. My cohost is not a 100%.

16:07 Robert: Sorry.

16:07 Jonathon: But he seems reasonably chirpy. Every time I make him laugh he coughs. On to number 11. Established seller’s success series. Well, it’s just reinforces that you get results. Obviously if you haven’t got that many, you can’t do it. But you as soon as you get traction talking about your successes is just reinforce is when people come to your website. That you can and also use it in your presentation. You use it if you’re going to do a postage card campaign. Whatever you’re going to do, the flyers that you push when you’re doing the open house. Having success stories is rather important, isn’t it Robert?

17:03 Robert: It definitely is. So social proof for success stories, which is what everybody is calling them. I call them social proof because social proof is exactly that. It’s proof that other people have had success with you. So social proof and most of it is social because it’s not like we’re doing client testimonials where we’re getting in front of a camera, recording them and putting them on the site. Most of the time. Video testimonials would be excellent though if you get them. Most of the time it’s stuff that we’re importing off Google, which feels social to people. Same thing with Yelp. Most of these sites are identified as social media sites and that’s where you house your reviews. So social proof, Zillow is maybe kind of an exception. But nonetheless, social proof is something we to include it on most of our clients sites. I think it’s extraordinarily important for conversion rates. I can’t say enough about it. Social proof is an insanely important part of, should be an insanely important part of any campaign. And if you’re not gathering reviews right now, you’re really putting a roadblock in your way in terms of your online success.

18:16 Jonathon: I mean it’s like the rest of it folks are on your radar. Having it on the list. You’ve got to get these photos and you’ve got to get this testimonial. As soon as you know the high point of your relationship with the client. Normally when you’ve sold, or they bought a house, that’s the time to get these photos. Get a written endorsement of them either when it’s hot. And this is why you need at least a mythology. These things get done at the end of our engagement. Initial engagement of the client. Because that’s another thing, after you sold them something. Now a lot of agents won’t talk to these people. Well they have done business with and it depends on the personality type, but keeps in touch with them. That’s really important as well. We they say should be your biggest referral results. If they’re not, you’ve got a problem. Haven`t you Robert?

19:13 Robert: Yes you do. You really do.

19:17 Jonathon: Onto the next.

19:18 Robert: Number 12 is finding hidden sellers buried in your databases. We do a lot of shows on this. It’s a favorite topic of John. I don’t disagree with it with him and we’ve had some amazing guests on the show. That focuses on database marketing. There’s no doubt at all that if you’re collecting your list correctly, that it will be one of your most valuable tools. Working a list though in my opinion is an art. And the science, it’s a combination of the two. And I think that our guest Beatty who we’ve done three episodes with. Because the guy just has such brilliant insight about the various ways that you can heat up your list. His personal offer which he’s one of our guests where I really buy deeply into his marketing message. And he says, hey, give him 200 names as long as they’re good names and he’ll get you, what was it, two or three new sales out of it or something. Isn’t that the number?

20:22 Jonathon: It`s about that yeah.

20:22 Robert: So he does this. Obviously if a talented marketer can take a list of a few hundred names and get a 1% return off something that was not generating revenue previously, that is an excellent asset. An excellent resource.

20:45 Jonathon: Well it’s the kind of. I’m going to repeat myself, but I really want to get through. Using your lists is it’s a one on one of a successful real estate to be a real estate professional. As far as I am concerned. The red book, how to become a million dollar real estate agent. It`s a kind of Bible, it’s still very relevant. It’s been updated. The red book. I would suggest that if you’re a newish agent, you should buy a copy. I will make sure it’s in the show notes. The red book and you can get it off Amazon. I periodically still listen to it. But on audiobook. It is the 101 and it’s about data mining. And how, and that was written in the 90s, that book, but it’s still totally relevant now. It’s just you’re using a different mediums, dives lists.

21:49 Robert: I’ve never read that book. I am going to have to read it.

21:53 Jonathon: It is a little bit Hammy in sections, but it’s still totally relevant. And I consider it McKellar is a legend. He’s a guy that knows what he’s doing and it’s still highly relevant. So, and I still see a lot of agents who don’t have morphologies to build their lists. And the list they do, they tend to treat their list all the same. I send out a monthly newsletter to the whole list. We all do it. We’re all attached with the same brush where we’ve like what Beatty was pointing out. And what I’ve tried to hammer away is that you should sub divide your lists into at least three to four sections. And then you market to those lists in very fundamentally different ways.

22:55 Robert: Okay.

22:56 Jonathon: All right. And the problem is people just lump it all together and they mark it. So that list all the same and that’s why they don`t get fantastic results. Yeah. I think I have hammered away at that a bit too much, but here we go. Update your referral network. What do you recon of this one?

23:24 Robert: Well, it’s a solid piece of advice. I don’t know that a lot of people have a deep referral network necessarily. It’s not that they shouldn’t have one. I don’t know that they do. I think that my strongest piece of advice that people that I do know that have really deep referral networks and get money off them almost exclusively are all active rain users. Because active rain is a real estate blogging platform. And if there is ever a place to develop contacts to do a referral network, it’s going to be active rain. And I’ve got people that it’s supplement their income like 10 or 15% using a referral network.

24:03 Robert: So it can be an amazing strategy, but it has taken all of those active, those Rainer’s as they call themselves a lot of time to get that network up and going. It’s not like it was an easy or fast thing because the way that Rainer’s introduce themselves to each other’s oftentimes looking at blog posts and becoming used to each other’s personalities over a long period of time. That’s a lot of work to get a solid referral network going. However, if you’re in a destination like real estate location. Like certain parts of Florida Mountains, Tahoe, certain ski resorts in Colorado that would be one of my first strategies. Like anything where we know that our, you know, a percentage of our audience is going to come from other warmer places to go where it’s cold and do sports or something like that. All of a sudden a referral network becomes incredibly important. Establishing it with other realtors. A really good idea because if you’re in a destination that’s quite popular, you might end up getting one or two referrals per month from people that you know through blogging, which I think would be awesome.

25:14 Jonathon: Yeah. Let’s take a slightly different stance on this. I agree with everything Robert has said. But I think building a local referral network, and what I mean by that is if you want to get realtor quality back you’re going to offer it out. And giving referrals out, if you have clients that are looking. That just bought a house and they’re looking for the landscaping to be done. There is decorating, there’s DIY, there’s security alarms. Building those relationships with other vendors in your local community and then handing out some referrals is the way to build up a local network. That when they hear somebody, they refer stuff back to you. And we’re very digital focus, but I’ve always said that the traditional methods of real estate and marketing and building a book of business. I still think they’re totally relevant in 2019. It’s just that unit. There’s the digital side. You need both combined in into a logical strategy. What would you say about that Robert?

26:30 Robert: I agree. I do agree with you. You’re struggling with the word digital but I am just going to throw it out there guys. We’ve got three more. John, I suggest we wrap this up and do it under the bonus notes. The last four, cause I don’t know that we should do another show on this.

26:50 Jonathon: No we don`t need to do another show on this. We can do it in the bonus. So we’re going to wrap it up for the podcast show, but we’re going to be going through the others. Which you will be able to see on the Mail Right YouTube channel. And on the Mail Right website. So Robert, how can people find out more about you and what you’re up to?

27:09 Robert: Oh, if they really wanted to, they could come to my website. I’m pretty excited about all the numbers that John is mentioning. He manages that side of the podcast, but I’m incredibly excited. And I just wanted to reiterate, I am humbled and grateful that so many of you tune in. And we’re really excited. We’re hoping that means that we’re giving you information that you find valuable. And if you want to find some specific information on some of these platforms that we talk about occasionally. Like I just did a Commission’s Inc. review, you can find them on my website, inboundrem.com.

27:48 Jonathon: Well I think part of the success is one of the few areas where you’re going to find this type of information if you’re looking for it in a podcast format. There’s many other real estate podcasts and they’re fantastic. But they tend to cover slightly different topic areas than what we cover Robert. I think we are one of the few that really go in hardcore on the technology with the marketing side. And that’s probably why our listeners is growing. If you want to find more about Mail Right. And also you can get a free demo that will be shown by me. So if you’ve got any problems, concerns about your real estate performance, we’re going into 2019. We can have a chat about that. And also I can give you a demo of the Mail Right product. So we’re going to wrap it up now, folks, and we see in next week where we’re going to have another discussion between me and Robert. Or we’re going to have a quest. We will see you next week folks. Bye.