How Real Estate Agents How to Make Money With Geographic Farming

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How Real Estate Agents How to Make Money With Geographic Farming

Beatty runs the popular podcast “Get Sellers Calling You!” and his company MasterGrabber and it’s most popular product Agent Dominator.

Beatty is recognized as one of the leading experts in professional-to-consumer marketing — from branding to lead generation to top-of-mind.

A veteran marketer, branding and direct response expert, Beatty’s professional career began in 1997 when he formed a marketing company to service the booming telecommunications industry. His clientele were independent sales professionals for whom he developed proprietary marketing technologies. These technologies helped clients generate ongoing sources of pre-qualified prospects for their services. One sales manager in Ohio exclaimed her sales team had increased their sales by ten times after only five months using Beatty’s technology.

Jonathon: Welcome back folks to the Mail Right Show. This is episode 200, yes.

Beatty: Wow. I am impressed, 200.

Jonathon: That’s my great guest. He has been on the show a number times. That`s Beatty Carmichael and he’s from the Get Sellers Calling You Podcast. I listened to it myself. It’s great stuff. And he’s product agent domination. Unfortunately Robert has decided not to be part of this particular podcast. Actually he had a prior engagement that he can get out of. That his partner arranged and I think you’d be in the dog house if you didn’t go. So you bailed out. But we got Beatty around. They’re always excellent shows with Beatty. He’s been on the show about four times. We keep having him periodically back, always enjoy the conversations. So Beatty how’s things been going in the world of podcasts and in your business, in general?

Beatty: Oh, world of podcasting and business life is very blessed. So as a friend of mine says when I ask him how he’s doing and he said blessed beyond all human reason. So that’s probably where I can say where we are too.

Jonathon: I do like it. And what we are going to be discussing during the show. Beatty has got some fantastic guests lately on his podcast. Is that a number of agents like ourselves, we’ve had some good guests as well, and he’s going to be discussing some of the things we’re going to be discussing. Some of the things he’s learned over the past six months talking to these various agents. And I just go in through his business. So Beatty, where do you want to start the conversation? Where shall we start?

Beatty: Well, I’ve got a range from geographic farming to your personal contacts to other stuff. So why don’t we start with geographic farming if that works. So I had a really interesting conversation recently with a client of ours. And he trains other realtors in his office. And what’s interesting, so my client’s name is Ed. And he wanted one of his agent’s share of what she’s doing. Her name is Marla. And actually I’m going to be interviewing her for my podcast, Get Sellers Calling You before long. And get this. I want to set the stage and then I want to share what she did. So to set the stage, she was at this time a fairly new agent, like a year into it. She’s never done geographic farming. So she decided she was going to have a party at her house in her neighborhood.

And from that party in about a year to a year and a half, she control something like 40 to 50% of all of the listings in a 300 home farm. And she didn’t even try. It just happened. Isn`t that a great story?

Jonathon: It is a great story.

Beatty: So I asked her how she did it.

Jonathon: Bribery?

Beatty: Bribery almost. Actually it’s, what’s really interesting is she doesn’t know how good she is. That’s the key. You know, it’s one of these things sort of like since you’re from England originally. Britain’s got talent, you remember that show?

Jonathon: I do.

Beatty: And you know that you have someone come.

Jonathon: I been to one that wouldn’t have me on the show.

Beatty: I wonder why?

Jonathon: I don`t know. I can be entertaining. Well Robert sometimes doesn`t think I am entertaining. But there we go. I don`t try to be Beatty.

Beatty: Well, I try to, and sometimes I’m the best entertainer in aisle nine. Sometimes you get on that show and somebody that comes up and she’s just a nobody. You think, oh my gosh, here’s one of these talent folks that are just, nothing’s going to happen. And then she brings down the house. Okay, well that’s kind of what happens with Marla. So here’s what happened. She said, she’s in this neighborhood. She just moved there. She has kids, she doesn’t know anyone. And so she wanted to meet people. But the problem is her neighborhood, everyone’s kind of closed, no one’s really friendly. And so she said why I don’t just invite people over to my house? But he’s going to come because no one’s going to come if they have nothing to talk about. So she’s going to these things in her brain trying to figure out who to invite.

So she said I know what I’ll do. I’m going to have a party at my house for other people who have their own business. Because they always have something to talk about. Because they’re always trying to sell a product or service. Does that make sense, Jonathon?

Jonathon: It really does.

Beatty: So now you see kind of where I’m going. So she invites the people who have something to talk about because they have something to sell. She has about 20 or 25 women over and they’re all in various things, you know, like the Mary Kay’s or the Amway. Those are my generation years that. Or whatever it is that they actually involved with today. And so they had this great party. Everyone loves it. Everyone gets a chance to talk about their product or service and try to drum up business. And so she decides to do this every month.

And she calls it the Skagit social night. Because it’s her community Skagit is the name of the community. She’s out in Washington State. And it starts to build and word starts to get out. She’s the only realtor involved. But now think about this. She’s had having the Social Party of all the women in the neighborhood who are all the networkers. Because they’re all looking for more business, more people. They’re always talking to other people. And she’s has exploded in business and chat and now she owns that community a real estate agent. Isn`t that disarmingly simple?

Jonathon: It is, but it’s really powerful. It is amazing actually. It`s analogical isn`t it?

Beatty: It’s logical, it’s powerful. And she doesn’t realize how amazing she is. Because I was talking to her saying, I want to interview. Well, you know, I’m just a young agent. You know, I’ve only been in business for two years maybe, or three. I’m nothing special.

I said, no, you may not be anything special, but what you did is amazing. And it has all those perfect ingredients that make it work. So that will actually come out in a podcast on our end, probably late 2019 at the pace I’m going. So somewhere between September and November. You can check the Get Sellers Calling You podcast to listen to more about her.

Jonathon: I can`t believe it is June really. Can you?

Beatty: I cannot, it has gone by so fast. I was one of the folks I want to talk about. One of the things I learned how to thinking, okay, now what podcast episode was her and she’s coming up in August. And I’m thinking, no, no, no. We did a call back then. So it has really moved quite fast.

Jonathon: Yeah it has being amazing. I think that was a really powerful example. Because I think people tend to overthink stuff. Well, they tend to be dashing around all over the place and looking for the next thing. And it’s just sometimes you just need the obvious that’s in front of you. And it’s doing it correctly, is there to your target audience, isn’t it?

Beatty: Yeah. And it really is. It’s all just having a little bit of thinking behind what you’re going to do. And that’s all she does. She said, how can I get people to come to my house because no one knows anyone? And if they come, they don’t have anything to talk about, so then it’s uncomfortable. So she just logically went down this process and said, I know I’ll talk to people who want to sell something because they’ll definitely get them to come. So now I’ve got a room of people who want to sell things to each other and now we’re going to have a party.

And I thought, how amazing, because I actually have and have to tell you this story, personal story on this. A neighbor of ours asked when we moved into our home. And just moved in, she asked if we would host a party. She sells Juice Plus I think it was. And then another friend of my wife’s asked if my wife could host a party for whatever she was doing. You know, everyone new house. Okay, let’s host a party there. So my wife ended up just making it simple. She said let’s just host a party with everyone coming. At one time I was thinking that’s going to be a disaster because everyone’s trying to pitch on a different product. But it turned out great. Large crowd of women came. They all loved it because everyone got to see other products and get pitched in.

And I was thinking when Marla was sharing this story about what she does. I was saying it’s a perfect ingredient. Everyone wants to be there and everyone wants to share. And so you now you got something for people to talk about. And they want to keep coming back and invite more people. Because now it’s a networking opportunity.

Jonathon: It is amazing. So on to the next thing. What is the next thing you want to bring up?

Beatty: Next one is just as simple stupid that’s right in front of you that you don’t even see. By the way, this is, I interviewed a friend of mine named Tony Fury. He’s been a real estate agents for 20 plus years. I used to know him back in singles Sunday school class that goes back a long ways at church. But he’s on my podcast, episode number 29, if you like this.

And in fact the headline says it all. Because I’m interviewing him and he’s is blowing my mind on how you can build a business. Because here’s the headline to that podcast, no marketing, no advertising and turns away business. Okay, how can you have a real estate business with no marketing, no advertising, and have so much business that you never pursued the opportunities that you have? So I started interviewing him and here’s the sacred message. It’s real simple. He’s engaged at a personal level with things in life. Like he’s in a bicycle club. He goes out and plays tennis or golf or things like that. And then all he does is he calls people up and just say, hey, how’s it going? He doesn’t talk real estate. He’s all only a friend and he’ll do a pot by. So some people have heard Brian Buffini’s, you know, he started coaching with Brian Buffini many years back and that’s all he’s done.

And I’m thinking, you know, that’s so simple stupid. Because if most agents simply nurtured the relationships of people they already have and simply become a friend and don’t turn it into a business. He never says I’m a real estate agent. They know he’s a real estate agent. He never calls and says, Hey, are you thinking about selling or know anyone who is? He simply calls him up and he’s a friend. But he strategically stays in touch with all of the people. He’ll write handwritten notes, he’ll do a pot by, but he’s nurturing relationships. And as a real estate agent, you start getting business if you have relationships. Isn’t that simple?

Jonathon: It is the preferred method of one of my old cohost Thomas. I think you were on the show when Thomas was my cohost. I am sure before Robert took over. He was speaking the Pothini mythology. Had been with Pothini for over 10, 12 plus years. And it does work. It tends to take a little bit of time to build up those close relationships.

Beatty: It does. Here’s what I’ve learned and this is kind of what we teach our folks. Because what we do on our end, okay, not trying to put a plug in here. But what we do is we have a really sophisticated touch system.

Jonathon: You can feel free to plug whatever you like. I am merciless myself. So you know, feel free, you’re our guest.

Beatty: Very good. Well then I will be gentle on the plug so that it’s not self-serving. But what we do is we had a process, a touch system where we create totally custom content specific to an agent that educate home owners why they should choose that agent over someone else. In real estate, most agents say how do you differentiate yourself from someone else?

That’s what we do. And then we take that content and we send it out all the time and postcards and Facebook ads and email campaigns and videos or whatever it may be. So that that agent from an automated system is always top of mind. But what I teach our clients, and this we have a guarantee with it, but I guarantee requires that agent to be personally involved. Because here’s what happens. You have a stool with three legs. If you want a home owner to choose you, they got to like you. Then they have to know why they should choose you. And you had to be top of mind at the time they’re thinking about choosing an agent. Does that make sense?

Jonathon: Oh, totally.

Beatty: So this is what has impressed me so much with my friend Tony Fury. And what Buffini does is it’s all about the relationship. If you’d take the relationship out in all you have as a touch system that educates them why and keeps you top of mind, you lose the third leg of the stool. And it doesn’t stand not near as well as when you have all three legs. And so this whole relationship business is so important and it permeates geographic farming. It permeates your personal contacts. It permeate home valuation leads. If you don’t have a relationship, your chance of getting the sell as far as. In fact years back, we used to do a lot in geographic farming. What we used to do, Jonathan, is we would identify sellers before they come on the market. We still do it, but we do it differently now. And so we would build a list of seller leads for our clients. The challenge is our average client only converted 10% of those that went on the market. But then we started realize this whole relationship thing. And we started to teach them, hey, go knock on the door and meet them.

Say hello. Hey, I’m in the neighborhood. I’m meeting different homeowners. Here’s some information about me. Here’s a gift, and just build a relationship with them. Guess what happened to the conversion rate? It went from 10% I’ll tell you the, it went higher, but can you guess simply by showing up and meeting them? How high the conversion rate went on those leads?

Jonathon: 40%?

Beatty: How much?

Jonathon: 40%?

Beatty: Nope. An average of 90 to 100% win rate. In other words, we may have identified let’s say 20 leads. And maybe 10 of them actually went on the market. My typical client would only get one out of those 10. But once they would start to meet them in person and build a relationship, nine or 10 out of those 10 would choose our client. That’s the power of simply meeting them and building a relationship.

Jonathon: That’s fantastic. We’re going to go for our break. I’ve got a difficult question for Beatty, which I’m going to ask him in the second half of this show. So come back and listen some more. We’re going for our break folks.

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Jonathon: We are coming back. We have Beatty back. It’s been a great conversation. Now Beatty, I’m going to ask a difficult question. I was in two minds styles this, but I know you’re extremely ethical person. I have a slight problem with what you have outlined a little bit. Because are you really these people’s friend or are you just been artificial because you need them to become clients? And isn’t that a little bit, I’m trying to find the fair word for it.

Beatty: Self-serving versus authentic.

Jonathon: Exactly. It doesn’t sound authentic to me. And I was in two minds to ask you this question. I think you’d become bit of a friend of the show. You’d be, you know, and I know you’re a very ethical person. I feel you are everything else about you. I don’t know you that personally, but you’d been on the show and I’ve seen you. And I have followed your podcast. So am I asking a fair question really?

Beatty: I think it’s not only a fair question, but it needs to be asked because if the realtor he’s listening to this doesn’t understand the difference between self-serving versus authentic, they’re going to get it wrong. So it’s just like me, I don’t want to plug my product. I’m not here to plug my product and turn this into a sales pitch. But I am here to share my expertise. And if I can share my expertise and you get confident of what I do, then you’ll probably be confident to come check me out and learn more about me and maybe let me serve you. So that’s authentic versus self-serving. When you’re doing this as a real estate agent, the relationship has to be authentic.

It cannot be self-serving. Because once it turns self-serving your prospects recognize it. And then you lose the you lose that, those Brownie points that I want to use.

Jonathon: That bond.

Beatty: Yeah, that bond. Exactly. And so I was actually talking to Tony. So you’ll hear this. And the great thing about the Tony interview is only about the first 15 minutes. I mean, 13 minutes he tells it all. And I was asking about the same thing he said. I said, so you’re not calling up and saying, hey by the way, do you know anyone thinking about buying or selling? He said no. And he said, I never mentioned anything about real estate. When I talk with them, I never even mentioned I’m a real estate agent. They know I am. He said, my only purpose is I’m building a relationship because I’m authentically interested in them as a friend.

And I thought that’s really neat. And so this whole thing of authenticity is the key. It’s let me make a segue into it for a moment. I’m going to get really on the edge. Since this is my fourth time, I feel I have at least enough 10 year on this call that I can push really on the edge outside of real estate. But if you listened to my podcast at Get Sellers Calling You, you’ll know that I’m a passionate Christian. And I go out and I pray for people and I pray for them because I love them, not because I want anything from them. So it’s totally authentic. I pray for them when I say them having a limp. I got to tell you this one story because you won’t believe this, but you’ll believe it only because you trust me.

I’m in a Chick-Filet. I see this big old dude come walking in on crutches. He sits down in the booth right next to me. So I lean over and I say, you know what happened to you? He said I was trees. I’m a tree cutter. And he said, I turned my body but my leg got caught in the trees down in the bottom. And I ripped the ligaments in my knee. Can you imagine how painful that was?

Jonathon: Mostly.

Beatty: Yeah. And so it’s all bandaged up. He hasn’t gone to the doctor yet. So this must have been a new accident, a fresh accident. When he’s walking on his crutches on a scale of one to 10, the pain levels at 10. And so I said, well would you like God to heal you? And he said, well, I believe he can. I said, well, I believe he will. Would you like him too? And so I prayed for him. I had him tested out. Long story short no pain. He’s walking without his crutches. I get them to do a deep knee bend, gets all the way down there. I said, you know, but you’re walking out of here and carrying your crutches rather than walking on them. And I tell that story because it’s the difference between authenticities versus self-serving. Sure I love to go pray for people and watch God heal because it’s exciting. But I do it because of love for the person, not out of self-serving, just to get something fun out of it for me. And when you do that in your relationship with your real estate business, you’re calling them up. You’re visiting them, you’re dropping by because truly you loved them, and you liked them. You really desire to nurture that relationship, then that’s authentic.

Sure, it’s going to turn into business down the road. It’s going to be something you want, but you do it first and foremost because you really liked them. You really want to be engaged. If you change your focus and say, I’m doing it only because I want more business from them. And you did it from the self-serving standpoint. They’re going to see right through that. They’re going to say that this is a facade and it’s not gonna work. The reason it works for Tony, the reason it works for other people. Is because they truly appreciate the relationship and they truly are nurturing it and it’s received. I got to tell you one last story. I think we’re good on time. So my wife’s, she won’t be listening to this. My wife’s cousin is a real estate agent in Alabama, in Birmingham. In fact her cousin is the one that sold us our home 20 years ago now. And then sold the home that we’re started at home. And so it was a move up home. She handled both sides of those transactions. This lady, her name is Stephanie, is also the number one producer in the state of Alabama. And according to Real trends, she’s the number of five female producer individually in the United States.

Jonathon: Wow.

Beatty: So when we moved to this house, guess which agent we chose?

Jonathon: Her?

Beatty: No, not her. So now that begs the question, why? Well, real simply our relationship was not authentic with her. You know, there was always the understanding because we’re family, you’ll always choose me for your real estate needs. And because there was that presumption upon her, there was never any nurturing of a relationship. We got the standard Christmas card with all of her family, not even a handwritten note. We would see her at parties and stuff because we’re in the same social circles a lot. And it’s, oh hey baby, hey pa, boom, I got to go talk to someone else. There is no relationship there. And so that self-serving not authentic. And that’s why your question is so good, but you’ve got to make sure that what you do is authentic. Because your friends will see through if it’s inauthentic.

Jonathon: There is another thing. i don`t know if you agree with this. Is that when you’re trying to build your farm, when you’re doing these calls. And there’s some people. I don’t want people to dislike me Beatty. But I’m 55 years of age now. So the need for everybody to like me as diminished to some degree. So I realized that there are some people on how this is going to be amazing actually. But there’s some people that are not their cup of tea. I just don’t really gel with them. Where there’s other people that it`s the tiniest, they get me. They understand my English humor. I’m trying to find the right word. My sarcastic little side of my humor.

Well, some people just don’t know. They just don’t get it. But it’s okay. We can’t all like everybody. So if you know you’re dealing with somebody that you don’t really gel with. Just don`t pursue them because there’s plenty of other people there you probably will gel with. Am I on the right track really Beatty?

Beatty: You are. And so this is why I do what I do with my podcast. If you go to my website, Get Sellers Calling You. Or go to my podcast, Get Sellers Calling You, you’ll say there’s a very prevalent Christian influence there. And I learned this from a friend many years back. She does a lot of social media marketing and she said, you’ve got to pick the group you want to focus on that’s going to resonate with you individually. Sure, there’s millions of realtors out there, but they’re not all your prospects. Or say it in this way. There’s lots of homeowners out there, but they’re not all going to be your friends. And so I wanted to attract people who are like me. So on my Get Sellers Calling You, there’s those strong Christian influence. Because I’m happy to serve anyone but the people that I’m really going to resonate with and will resonate with me are going to be those that resonate with my faith.

And in the same way with you as a friend. You know my friend Tony, he’s in this biking club and you know a hundred people, he’s not personal great close friends with all hundreds of them. But those that he really likes and who really likes him, he nurtures those relationships cause that’s all that matters. Build those relationships with the people you really want to be friends with. And then when those relationships are authentic and you continue to expand that friend group with authentic relationships, your business grows. And if you want to nurture that and dry more business, then that’s where you know you have a touch system that can touch them. But first and foremost is the relationship. I don’t know if that makes sense, but back to your question of not everyone’s going to like you. That’s okay. You focus on those that you’ll like and that they’ll like you and then it all works out.

Jonathon: Some don’t and others do. Don’t they? Well it’s gone quick. [Hopefully you can stay on for like 10, 12 minutes bonus, which people can see on the Mail Right YouTube Channel. The bonus content folks, the quickest way to see the whole interview with the bonus content is to go to the Mail Right YouTube channel. Because it’s put up there the quickest. So Beatty, how can people find out more about you and your wisdom?

Beatty: Simply go to www.getsellerscallingyou.com. And we have all of our training out there. I’m trying to make it a site where you can search for anything, anything related to geographic farming or personal contacts. Lots of content. All of our podcasts are there and if you want to learn about agent dominator, there is even a link that says agent dominator. And you can learn about us on that too.

Jonathon: You got to plug your podcast as well.

Beatty: Yes. Get Sellers Calling You with Beatty Carmichael. And you’ll see a second one out there now called Get Radical Faith with Beatty Carmichael. And that is simply taking all my Christian teaching and carving it out into its own podcast. So Get Sellers Calling You is real estate training and Christian. And Get Radical Faith is taken all the Christian who just putting it into its own we can market that into non real estate areas for those who have interest.

Jonathon: Great. Well, we’re going to wrap it up. We’d be back next week with a guest or another internal discussion with my great cohost. It has gone quick and we will be having some bonus conversation. Like I say you will be able to see on the Mail Right YouTube channel. We’ll see you next week folks. Bye.