#316 Mail-Right Show: 7 simple steps for getting more listings in 2022
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7 simple steps for getting more listings in 2022
With Special Guest Jimmy Burgess
Jimmy Burgess is the Chief Growth Officer with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Beach Properties of Florida in Northwest Florida. Jimmy has been in the real estate business for 27 years as an agent, company owner, and team leader before shifting into his current position 3 years ago.
taking over as the Chief Growth Officer Beach Properties of Florida has seen its annual sales volume grow from just under $700M to now over $2B. Their agent count has grown from around 70 agents when Jimmy took his current position to over 250 agents all from organic growth and no company acquisitions.
He has a passion for giving back to the real estate business that has given so much to him and his family.
contract or sold, depending on the timeframe. If we just sold this person something where they said, hey, we’re five years away. We’re going to have it where it’s not daily. It may be weekly. It may even be monthly depending on their motivation, but we’re going to have a consistent flow of properties like there’s that is going out to them in email that gives them the opportunity to know what’s going on around them.
This is really fundamental. It’s a, literally a less than a minute set up with your MLS or with your website. So from that standpoint, it really gives you the opportunity to systemize that part of the follow-up.
Second thing we’re going to do is we’re going to always have consistent communication with the entire database through an email newsletter. Once a month at least, some of our most effective agents are doing one every two weeks. But this is going to be basically not just we’ve already got the property portion. That’s going to give them information about the property. This is going to be a mix of some things that are affecting the real estate market, but it’s going to be some lifestyle stuff too. So it may be in there. So what we’ve been doing is we’ll do things like, five best restaurants to get whatever in this community, whatever it is. We’ll do, you know for things to do with your kids if it’s raining. whatever it is, it’s just lifestyle type pieces for the area we will highlight in that newsletter one area of the community that maybe people aren’t aware of, or that is a favorite of ours. So we may say our favorite park to watch the sunset is this our favorite place, to spend a Saturday afternoon is this just.
These are lifestyle type pieces. We’re just basically building relationship with these. These are going out once a month through the entire database. They’re not specific to that owner. It’s just blanket emails that are going out that way. Third thing we’re doing is we’re utilizing a tool called home bot. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this or not, but home bot is, is the most detailed property report I’ve ever seen it’s a product that through black knight, they have a hundred data points, and it gives you the capability really to give them the most detailed, think of it this way. Like if you’ve got an, asset account with a Merrill Lynch or a brokerage account, they send you this complaint report each and every month, it basically breaks down your cost of what you have in the place. What the value is now, what’s your equity is what your tax consequences of selling it are. What you could do with this asset
Gives you all of the details and really does a distinct breakdown of what this looks like. That’s what home bot does with this. It will take your house with all the a hundred data points they’ve got, they know how much the mortgage is. So they’ll say your equity is this, your mortgage is, this based on when they bought it, it’s going to tell them if you were to refinance. Now, you could expect your payment to be this. If you refinance to 15 years, it would be that this is the amount of equity you have, and you could do an equity a lot of times they’ll have a partnership with a lender you don’t have to, but then you have that lender that can basically cover any expenses and this is very minimal. It’s like 35, $40 a month for this. And you can put up to 500 homeowners in this.
Detailed report about their place. What I love about it is it’s so detailed and they have an open rate of in excess of 65%, every single month. So think about that. A lot of people, I get a ton of email. Whatever it is, that’s getting open 65%. I want that for my people. So it’s branded to you and it gives you the opportunity to see a detailed report about their house.
Jonathan Denwood: I want it for myself.
Jimmy Burgess: Yeah, it’s a big organization they’ve been around for a little bit. They were kind of beforehand they always had to have a partner that was a lender. So the realtor had to have a partner the lender paid a little more than the realtor. And, they now have the capability that you don’t necessarily have to have a lender. You can control all that yourself. So it’s been this has been one of the best tools that we’re utilizing to give a professional report to owners consistently
Jonathan Denwood: Do you know offhand how much it is?
Jimmy Burgess: Roughly $35 a month. Again, I think John there’s, there’s certain things I would like for us what we do for our agents is we’ve got a group that we put together so that we probably have a little bit reduced price on that, but it’s available out there where you could go as for just an individual as well. And as I remember back in the day, I was paying on my own before I did that for the brokers, somewhere in the neighborhood of about 40 to $45, that’s been years ago. So that may have changed going up or down, but it’s a bargain. Think about that. If I put 500 people in there is costing me 50 50- let’s say I put 400 people in there. It cost me 400 a month. I mean, literally four for 10 cents a month. I’m giving them the most detailed report on their asset that I’ve ever seen, that I know is going to get open and it’s branded for me and it’s constantly asking them, would you like to, Jimmy’s opinion on this, would you like for Jimmy to give you an updated idea on the valuation? Because it gives them an evaluation, but we all know the electronic valuations are only so good, so, I mean, they’re not going to be perfect. So that, so think about.
Jonathan Denwood: They are a little more realistic than Zillow.
Jimmy Burgess: I will say this John you’re absolutely right. This is the most accurate that I have seen as far as valuations for anything, or I wouldn’t send it out. And so you’re absolutely right. The Zestimate is wrong, you know what I mean? But no, this is accurate. This is as close as I’ve seen. Of course it’s not perfect, but it’s, it’s the best I’ve seen so far. Okay. So think about that now, just putting those people in there, we’ve already got an automated email that’s coming typically, depending on their motivation, daily, weekly, monthly with properties that are like theirs, we’ve got a newsletter, that’s going out to them once a month. And now we’ve got a detailed report that’s coming through home bot and every single bit of what we said, the only thing that you got to do is put that newsletter together. Other than that, all this is automated to that point. Okay.
Robert Newman: hold on, hold on a second. So with home bot in particular, the way that it, the way that I’m looking at it, the way that seems to be working, because you’re now the second or third marketing mind that I respect that has brought up home bot. another one is Juefeng Ge, who is a CMO of Ylopo. And he and Howard Taker really swear by home bot. They use it inside the lead generation process. I feel like you might be using it differently than they are. And I’m just going to try, to identify that distinction. You’re saying that once you have an actual real estate client, that you’re then submitting their name to home bot and home bot is sending them a monthly report. Am I understanding that correct?
Robert Newman: That’s exactly right. You put their email address, their address and their name in there, and it generates a report based on their address. So what they’re doing is they’re utilizing, because it does have that option basically to run ads of curious about your home value. And that is the mechanism they’re using through home bot to grab those folks and give them that estimated value. And then it automatically continues to brand and send them that going on. So that is a way to use it. That’s not what I’m talking about right here, but it’s a valuable way to utilize that also. You do have option as an individual as well. So there are-
Robert Newman: I got you so there’s a lead generation option. If you were inspired to write ads like on Facebook or something, you could, you could partner up with home bot and use them. Right?
Jimmy Burgess: [inaudible] for you. I mean, it’s pretty, I mean, those things need to be done correctly, but what we were talking about in step one, Robert, about building the database of homeowners, that’s a great way to leverage that tool in two different ways, not just to nurture the folks that you already have, but to build some additional folks as well.
ROBERT NEWMAN: Sure. How close are we to a break John?
Jonathan Denwood: We’ve got time for Jimmy to go through His next point. I think let’s go for our break now actually.
Robert Newman: Yeah. That’s what I thought. All right. So, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to, take a break. We’re all gonna have a little bit of coffee. We suggest you do the same. If you’re driving. Thank you for listening to us while you’re driving. We hope that you’re getting an incredible download. And we will see you in a moment.
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Robert Newman: Welcome back to episode number 316. We have the, incredible Jimmy Burgess with us, Inman contributor, rock star, the real estate world champion of, his local brokerage responsible for $2 million in growth has grown his team from 70 to 200 agents. So we’re really, really excited to have him. And Jimmy is, talking to us about seven ways to increase get listings in 2021. And he’s been, I think you’re on point number one, point number two
Jimmy Burgess: We’ve been through 1, 2, 3 we’d been through building the databases. Number one, automating the properties being emailed out is number two. Number three is sending the monthly newsletter to your entire database. Number four was leveraging home bot lab. Number 5 is the unsolicited CMA. We talked about this last time. Didn’t where basically, this is doing a video on unsolicited CMA. So this is where you are actually taking the people into your database. And you’re, without them asking on a six month, every six months, you’re sending them an updated valuation through video. That basically is something different than they’ve ever done. Three points to that. I know if you want to, people can reference back to the previous, podcasts where we really went into depth with this. I’m not going to go in depth too much on this, but basically you want to have it where it’s got your three tabs pulled up.
First tab is you’re going to have, is going to be through Google earth, punch that zooms in off from outer space on top of their house. Second part is the comparable sales that have happened. Walk through those with you on the bottom corner of the like with either BombBomb or zoom or loon or whatever you want to use. And then the third part is their estimated seller’s net. Just giving them an update. And that simple step there is the one that took me where I did 72 of those in the fourth quarter of 2018, without anybody asking me for them. And it generated over $11 million worth of listings directly from that one step. So that is something we definitely want in the follow-up system. As we’re building the value to this group and this database of owners.
Robert Newman: So the 72, what timeframe was that? So you did 72. I understand what you did, what you did. You created a video, you, you actually, the last time that you met with me and John, you were kind enough to really dive into that detail. So I remember what you did. How long though did it take you to do 72 of those?
Jimmy Burgess: I did one a day for the everyday that I worked in the fourth quarter of 2018. That’s where I had my data there. And so listen, I mean, it’s the fourth quarter we got Thanksgiving, we’ve got Christmas, we got a few holidays, so I didn’t work every day. I mean, so it was 72 of the days that I worked. I didn’t 1 every day, take me about 30 minutes. Some days I can do four or five that were shorter. Some days it would take me a little bit longer, depending on the depth that I was going to go. And when I say I did one every day, I based that on a weekly basis. So I mean, there are certain days where you just don’t have time. So if I got to Saturday and I did not have my six for that week or whatever how many days I’d worked that week, I did a, I made it up so that when I started on Monday, I had done one a day for every day. I worked the week previous.
So it took me basically three months. And that it was pretty incredible to see what an impact it made. And I thought it, might’ve just been a one situation. We’re doing this for our brokerage right now. I’m running a big contest right now for the month of November for our agents where we’re just doing it, where they’re, the person that, because anybody can do this. It doesn’t matter if you’re a brand new agent and you’re doing it for your next-door neighbor and testing it out on them, or you’re doing this. And you’re, if somebody that’s done 400 transactions and you’ve got 200 past buyers that you can email these to, anybody can do these. So what we’re doing is, is we just have it for the month and the person that does the most, we have a thousand dollars cash.
We got a 500 to 400, 300, $200 cash basically there. And then, we are set what’s today. Today, we’re doing this is the 11th. And, we’ve already gotten listings from it, from our agents already that started this on the first. So we’re excited. I mean, this is something that I just believe it’s still unique. It’s still a value that’s that people will make people stand out. And, man, that’s what people want right now. They want to know what the value of their, house is. And this is a unique way to do it, that it’s gonna make you stand out.
Robert Newman: Okay. So you, you email these people, are you using home bot as part of this seven, this 72 things, or it’s just like loom or boom BombBomb or something? Just something where they open up a video and they look at it. And I remember you’re using Google earth and then you were, you go through a lot of points of value using your MLS. But here’s the thing that I, I kinda missed. I think you’re just saying anybody in your database is what you’re saying. Did you have a warm list? Were these people you’d already done business with? Where they just cold people? Like who did you select for the 72?
Jimmy Burgess: I started and I made my list before I ever started. And I went through and I made my list based on these things. I wanted people that had mentioned first. I started with people that had mentioned they were going to sell within the next couple of years. I mentioned people that, had mentioned that they might have a job transfer in the next couple of years. I went through a talk to my past buyers. I then went down and talked to people that I had met, who were homeowners at open houses, or that I talked to on circle prospect. Then I went to my farm.
You gotta understand when you do 72 of them, there’s not a lot of people that have got 72 warm people. So what we’re doing right now is, is we’re taking specific neighborhoods in our area, on the beach, some of these condos, because it’s super easy to do that. You know what I mean? And we’re basically utilizing those condos because it’s the same floor plan. I mean, they are box. So it’s like 1101 is the same floor plan is two. Oh as it’s 201. Its 301, 401. So we have the ability then to take a one email and basically put all the data together on what the value is. Record one video to John that owns the first floor. And then on the second floor do the one for the one that owns the one on the second floor to Robert. And we just record two separate videos where it’s personalized, but we got all the data already up. So it moves very quickly. Does that make sense?
Robert Newman: Yeah, I got you. And, you’re talking ocean, you’re talking, you’re talking, condos. What market are you in?
Jimmy Burgess: So I’m in a coastal market. So it’s a mix. We’ve got some that are primary residence, but the majority of our second home, and also that, so if you’re curious about where’s the low hanging fruit, if you’re going to do cold ones, I always tell our agents start with the out-of-town owners. And that’s one way you can get a lot of that information if you don’t have that information, just calling them and saying, hey just checking in with folks and building database that way with circle prospect and saying, let me keep in touch is email okay with you if I keep in touch that way? Once you’ve established that phone call, they’re in that database. And then you begin to set up the automating, the properties, you set them up where they’re getting your monthly email newsletter, you leverage and get them set up on home, bot where they’re receiving monthly updates on their property. You send them an unsolicited CMA.
Now we’re taking, we’re taking one conversation, which this was the problem that I see with a lot of agents is they’ll actually go out and prospect and they make talk to, five or six people that own houses, but the conversation stops right there. Maybe they send them a little note, but they don’t get them in their database and have a systemized plan to stay in touch with them where they’re the agent of choice when the time comes. It’s sickening to me. I can remember those days where I would see people that I had talked to three months ago, and then I would see a sign go up their yard and being like God, I was supposed to call them back. Well, this is a way that we can systemize this process, which that then rolls us once we’ve done the unsolicited CMA.
Ultimately people do business with people they know. So the next step is to every three to six months. In other words, you’re off those. We said six months for the video CMA [Inaudible21:41 ] between that those are personal phone calls and those are where we’re picking up the phone. And we’re just saying, hey, just checking in with you guys. Do you guys still love the house? Hey, just checking in I know I sent, the updated evaluation last a couple months ago. Hope that I’m not overwhelming you with information, but just want to make sure you’re getting everything you need. Those are those conversations that are happening twice a year that are wedged in between the two CMAS. So that we’ve got something happening in every six months. It’s very personalized. Does that make sense?
Robert Newman: It does. Indeed. John you’ve been off the slide, sir.
Jonathan Denwood: No, I’m just lapping it up it’s so relaxing having Jimmy as a guest, because you got to do so little work [inaudible] you just say here is Jimmy, here is the subject and off he goes. It’s nice to have somebody who can communicate so effectively
Robert Newman: so, all right, so we’ve got you. You’ve given us a very, very, very good system for, so I loved what you said about leveraging home bot. I love the follow-up. I love the calls every six months. I think these are all brilliant ways to establish and keep a database. However, there’s going to be a different quality of lead when you enter them into the database. Anybody that’s been a professional salesperson knows this. Like, you’ve got your neighbor as you said, somebody you see every day and you say hi to, and that’s probably just by association a fairly warm lead. Then you could do something like buy the email addresses or, or addresses with names on it from a lead provider and get the names of every single, but every single person in a target farm. But they don’t know you they’ve never met you. You’ve never emailed. They you’ve never mailed them nothing, but you do have their information. So you could theoretically enter them into your database.
So you were saying lifestyles, best restaurants, newsletters, but I feel like you kind of went really, really fast when you said how you building the database in the first place. Because to me as a salesperson, what I’m most curious about is how do I get a reasonably decent stream of qualified leads into my database? I think you’ve done a great job at telling us how to nurture them, but, how do we get them there? Like, how do we get enough? Like, you’re right. 72 that sounds like an incredibly big number to me be like, oh, I’ve got 72 warm leads. And I’m just going to like pop off this video Jimmy. Fantastic. Where the hell did you find 72 of these people?
Jimmy Burgess: Yeah, I think that’s the biggest thing that man, I’m gonna tell you, Robert, I think you nailed it because this is the question I think, where people get stuck on. And let me just say this one or two ways is the way you’re going to get those leads. Sweat or, debt are you either going to buy some leads and begin to nurture those leads, which is a slower process. Like what we’re talking about. I mean, you can take those cold leads and put them in this. You will begin to see because you’ll get reports on your unsolicited CMAs, you’ll see how many times they’re opened and viewed. You’re going to see with home bot you, get all the data of where they went on there. You’re going to get an understanding of how many times they opened it. Many times I went back to it.
So you’re going to be going to see people heating up if you’re doing the code. This is the way I built my warm database though. And this is the sweat part. And don’t let anybody fool you. If you’re going to build this business, right. There is going to be a time I’ve got this principle, man it started when I was like 20, 23 years old, 22 years old, coming straight into college. I went to work for Merrill Lynch. And there was this old broker there and he said, Jimmy, you probably not gonna be the smartest one here. And he was right. I knew that, I mean, I’m 22 years old, I’ve been walking to this brokerage, I got a bad fitting suit. You know what I mean? And so I don’t, I didn’t want to wear a suit.
And so next thing I know, he says, here’s how you can make a living though, and really thrive in this. I just need you to turn these locks either in the morning, being the first person here or the last person to leave. And to this day, well, this morning I turned them dang locks. Last night I turned the locks. Listen, there’s going to be a lot of people that will be smarter than me. There’s going to be a lot of people that are going to be possibly, think out of the box, better me, but they are not going to outwork me. So when we get to, how am I going to build this database? I tell you how I did it. I picked up the phone and I just circled prospected. And now let me tell you some examples of how we’re doing that effectively right now.
A house sells a house, goes under contracts. It doesn’t have to be your listing house goes on a contract in one day, multiple offers you know its multiple offers, you’ve heard it or you missed out, or you had a buyer that missed out. I’m taking and doing school, reason why I called it circle prospecting is in the old days I didn’t have the database on there. I had a map and I would take it out and mark the house. And I would do a circle around it for the 20 houses that were closest to it. The 10 that roll on both sides of it on his side of the street and the ten across the street. And I just pick up the phone and I would call them and I’d say, hey, this is Jimmy Burgess. Just wanted to let that the house three doors down came on the market the other day. Not sure if you saw that or not. It went under contract with multiple offers. We’re at a place where, we have a lot of people that missed out on this that may be, willing to pay a premium. Have you heard of any of your own of your neighbors that might be willing to sell? We’re just trying to help meet some of this demand and then just be quiet. And typically they say, no, I haven’t really heard of anybody. And then they want to know, well, how much was it listed for? And they’ll have a question or maybe they just get off and that’s fine too.
Then that conversation just leads to, okay, great. Well, listen, I’d be the worst realtor ever. If I didn’t at least ask you, if you ever can, if there’s a price where you consider selling. You’ll be amazed what you’ll find when you get out there and get in the water, you’ll catch some waves. The other thing I did is I didn’t have an objective of listing their house. I just want to generate a conversation. And my goal when I did it was to get email addresses because I knew that I knew then that if I got their email address and I’d had a personal conversation with them and I plugged them into this system, there was going to come a time when I was going to get some business from whether it be a referral or whether it be that something else
Robert Newman: Well, it makes a ton of sense for me, because for everybody listening, Jimmy is now deep in my home field. This is all we’ve, we’ve turned this around so I’m an inbound marketer, which is a lot of attraction marketing. However, there are really, really beautiful synergies and sync ups between inbound and outbound. And this is one of the sync ups that you’re talking about right now, because your inbound is about providing enough value that people want to reach out to you, that they’re inspired to reach out to you. And that that’s what they do. And what you just described is the way that I would make the sales call, I would never, ever, ever looked at a list of a hundred people and say, I want to call them and sell them something. Not ever. I don’t care what you give me. Never.
What I’m going to do is I’m going to look at a list of a hundred people and say, God, I hope I can get to a hundred good conversations. That’s it. Get to know them. Yeah. And get to know them. Because if I get to know them, if I have a good conversation with them, and if that conversation has something to do with whatever product or service I’m representing and they seem to have some need now, or in the future, chances are strong that a real honest integrity filled conversation with maybe a couple of points of compatibility between you and their personality. They’re going to remember you because people just don’t do it. Its crazy how rarely people experience this legitimate contacting like a connection based marketing strategy.
All I heard you just say is, Hey, I’m going to reach out. I’m going to try and connect. Yes. I’m going to talk about their home. I’m not really expecting that they’re necessarily going to list right now. But if they ask me a couple of questions, I get a chance to demonstrate my expertise. Now that, to me, what you just described is a beautiful person to put into a database because you have a very good chance of them remembering
Jimmy Burgess: Think about it this way the way that I teach people is I would say, prospecting is like dating. The, the thing that I’m trying to do is to create an opportunity in a conversation that might lead to a relationship. First off, let me say this. If you do call people and they want to do business with you immediately, it’s about like going to the bar and finding the girl that’s willing to go home with you immediately, is that really the girl you want to go home with. So think of it this way, just like you said, Robert, the whole goal is to build and have a conversation that gives them the ability to give you their information in a way that now I can follow up with a systemized plan of action. That’s going to add value to them in a way that moves them from now, they know me liking me, and then they begin to trust me and trust takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a process. It’s not something that happens, immediately. And if it does, it doesn’t have any roots and it’s not gonna, it’s going to wither the first time that a storm comes along.
Robert Newman: Right. Another thing that I agree with, Jimmy, are you willing to stay with me and John for just a little, little while longer?
Jimmy Burgess: I have a seven point I got to bring to you too. Okay.
Robert Newman: So ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the podcast part of the Mail-Right show today, we’ve been with the amazing Jimmy Burgess in a second. I’m going to give Jonathan and Jimmy the opportunity to share their contact details with you. If you’re driving, don’t stop, don’t pull over, just keep driving. We’ll be here in a recorded way when you’re ready to take our information, Jimmy, how can people find you?
Jimmy Burgess: They can find me through YouTube, just go to Jimmy Burgess we’ve got about 250 different videos on there for training for agents and the real estate sales podcast or on Instagram. So thank you.
Robert Newman: All right. Awesome. Jonathan, how could people find you/
Jonathan Denwood: Just go over to the mail right website? We’ve got some great information on there. All the videos from our pass interviews it’s a training course in its own right, Robert.
Robert Newman: Awesome. And if anybody is interested in looking your show, leading voice, Robert Newman, you can find me on inboundrem.com. I’ve been doing real estate SEO for a really long time, and I’ve shared a lot of information there about real estate systems and doing SEO and things like that.
So thanks everybody. One last thing, go ahead and smash the, no, sorry. Leave us a review on the podcast wherever you heard us, wherever you’re hearing this right now, however, you downloaded us. There’s probably a way for you to review the show. Anybody that takes any time at all to tell us what they think of the show, what we could do better, what you liked. We would really appreciate it. All right. We’ll see you next time.