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Are you ready to supercharge your real estate business in 2025? This video offers a comprehensive guide filled with practical steps tailored for today’s market challenges. We explore innovative trends, client engagement tactics, and networking opportunities that can help you stand out from the crowd. Equip yourself with the knowledge necessary for sustainable growth—click play now and start implementing these game-changing strategies.
#1 – Getting clients with stories that speak to them!
#2 – Building a database of possible clients
#3 – Build a secondary database of loyal clients that can refer to you.
#4 – Have a follow-up strategy that works.
#5 – Building a personal local brand
#6 – Successfully combining person-to-person and digital online marketing
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to 2025. It’s episode number 457. John and I were talking real-world stuff, which, of course, he will edit out of this video, and you-Well, we weren’t recording, Rob. You will all be so grateful that we did because we’re having a gripe fest about fires and running small businesses and all sorts of different stuff. But we’re excited to be back, or at least I am excited to be back. I will not speak for John. I’m excited to be back to talking to everybody about all sorts of cool things in the year, sharing our vision, wisdom, and experience about marketing, and digital marketing, specifically, and then even more specifically, digital marketing ideas that we have for realtors. We’re kicking the year off with some real-world steps to grow your real estate business in 2025. We’re going to try to make these specific and actionable to all of our beautiful listeners. But before we dive into that, for those of you that are not familiar with the fact that I have a Pugnacious English co-host who is a rock star in the podcasting world, who took a very long break, took a 30-day break about their about and is now back by the skin of his shinny, shin, shin.
If you would like to do us all a favor, John, give yourself a little bit of an intro. I’d love that.
Yes, folks, Rob. This was for 30 days in the county jail. I just got out about five days ago. No, that’s not true. I needed a break, folks. I was planning some travel, which I didn’t do, but I stayed at home I had a break from podcasting and I feel a little bit refreshed. I’m the founder of MailRight. We’re a CRM and we get leads through Facebook advertising, and we can provide a great website as well. Back over to you, Robert.
All right. So it already knows, and John knows, I feel like between the doldrums of a slow real estate business, and by the way, it was slow right up to the December, John, and now I’m getting tons and tons of reports from clients. So for me as a real estate marketer, it’s still slow. But I am seeing lots of reports from clients coming in that they’re selling homes. There was a big, long pause, and now my client base is starting to communicate transactions are happening again, and I couldn’t be happier. However, there’s still a lot of conversations surrounding what marketing looks like currently. I’m getting more comments on old videos and stuff like that. Like, this is still true, things like that. We’re going to share some ideas that we think are valid, still valid in the world that we live in, the proliferation of conversations around AI, the proliferation of conversations about older real estate marketing systems that are aging out in some ways. We’re going to have those conversations. So without any further ado, John, why don’t you kick us off? Number one on our list here is getting clients with stories that speak to them.
Why don’t you give an example that moves you?
Well, I think we touched on this in a couple of episodes before December in our break, and I think you really put it in the top of your own personal skill list, and I think it’s really important. It’s finding messages and stories that really resonate with target audience. If you’re a real estate agent, it’s finding niches. If you’re starting in the profession for the first few years, you normally have to take whatever comes your way. But as you build your customer base and your reconnaisation of your brand, your personal you should be focussing on finding a niche of some type in your town, city, region, wherever you’re practicing. The quicker you do that, I think the more you’re going to stand out and be more successful in a crowded industry. I think the stories that the more you niche, the more your stories, the more the branding message that you target target to the particular targeted audience will become more effective. I think with your own agency, that’s what you really concentrate on, isn’t it, Robert?
It is indeed. Ladies and gentlemen and John, this personal stories and personal messaging, I’m going to give you a great example, John, a one-of-a-kind example that we will never be able to repeat again, hopefully, if we’re lucky. Right now in California, we’re You and I started talking about this. We were having this cataclysmic series of fires, and they are cataclysmic. I’ve already been thinking about doing a piece of content. I may very well use this video, John, this podcast as part of that, is that I have always believed strongly that every emergency, every cataclysmic situation, including the slow down, it is an opportunity for a savvy salesperson to connect better with their prospect list. Because when you’re having extraordinary times, that is the time to have extraordinary conversations. Right now, if I was a real estate salesperson with a long list of people I’d done business with for over 10 years, and I was living in Southern California. I’d be calling all my clients, past, present, and future, and sending emails and saying, Hey, can I help you with your insurance? Is there anything I can do to help you right now? I would be having that very real conversation.
And if they said, yes, I kid everybody not listening to this podcast, I would help every single one of those people resolve insurance issues. Because what’s happened right now is 10,000 people have become unhomed. Probably the largest amount of people ever in California history simultaneously becoming unhomed at the same time. Some point, far in the future, these people will be looking for new homes. In the meantime, the person that gets in and helps in the most trying time of their entire life will have a client for life. That’s it. Full stop. If anybody is looking at this as anything other than an opportunity to be of service to human beings, number one, and then being of service to their career, number too, they’d be crazy. I’d be calling and emailing people and saying, I can help in this way, in this way, in this way. Let me know if any of those things, if you need me to do any of those things. I’d be focused on the mechanics of… Because these houses are completely lost. The Pacific Palisades is 75 %, 100 % destroyed. That means that some of the wealthiest Californians in history are all without homes, homes that they’ve had for 25, 30 years.
If they’re not looking for help right now, I’d be flummoxed. You get out there, you help some people, and then when it comes time a few years from now, you’re going to have the best career of your life. For sure, being a good person and having good messaging And by the way, at some point after the service is provided, their life is back on track and they have new homes and everybody’s happy, those stories that you create, dude, you’d only need one of those stories to make a good real estate career, just one. And you probably have many. You see what I’m saying?
Yes.
Building a database of possible clients. Now, John, to do you also a personal favor, to return the favor, I feel like this has been one of your strengths It’s certainly been one of the nails that you’ve been hitting on the heads. You’ve been talking about building databases since you and I started podcasting. And if I can remember correctly, even the name of the podcast had something to do with you thinking about database marketing. I may be wrong about that, but I do know that we have been talking since the very first conversation I’ve ever had with you about building databases. And you studied Bafini, and you studied other people in the real estate world that use this almost exclusively as a primary marketing tool. So what are you thinking about database marketing in 2025?
Well, I think some things have changed in the real estate industry. It’s only my perspective, Robert, but I do honestly feel it does depend on the target audience. I think phoning for leads is a dying proposition, in my opinion. I think to some extent door knocking is also dying to some degree. But you could say with COVID-19 and people working much more from home, that I could be wrong about that. But I think a lot of people don’t like people knocking on their doors. But if you’re up for it and people aren’t, so it probably could be effective. But I definitely think phone calling, because of the ‘s worth of mobile phones and people’s… The way they act, that’s probably declining. But one area where I think the truth is still relevant, and it comes from the Red Book. It comes from the million dollar real estate agent. I call it the Red Book. It’s all about building up databases. I still believe that when you look at the data that comes from the industry, that one area that still prevalent is the terrible follow-through that most agents don’t do, and they don’t build a list.
They don’t understand that there’s different types a database lists, and you should use different content for those different lists, and how important. There’s different stages of the buying process or selling process, and keeping in content to some degree with possible customers is really important. I’m sure you also through your consultations, have to still explain all this at the beginning of 2025. So that’s my thoughts about that, Robert.
Database marketing, for those of you who are listening to this show, listen, I’ve been in sales for 50 years. It’s always been part of the business, database marketing. And it is definitely a thing that’s changed in modern times. In 2025, database marketing is probably about the same as it was in 2024. But the The idea of a database has changed. We rely very heavily on free services that gather our information. Many of them provide… Back in my day, we had tools like Act and Goldmine and other tools that managed all your data for you in a program that you downloaded onto on their computer. Now we can manage it through web applications, more commonly known as Instagram and Facebook. You can literally, much of your database management has moved into services that are managed by other people. Because if you have people join a Facebook page, or you have people join an Instagram channel, this is basically your database. You can create a database out of that, or you can go old school, which is what I just coached an artist friend of mine into recently because they were doing a lot of shows, getting no sales, no activity whatsoever.
And then I discovered they were collecting no information from anybody who was at the show. And I was flummoxed. I was like, why would you hold a show and not try to meet your customers and create information with them. What’s the point of having the show? Anyway, so that’s what I would say to a real estate salesperson. Every time you’re out, is a chance for you to collect some information. Every time you have a good conversation with somebody, you make sure you get added to your Facebook page, your Instagram page, somewhere to keep continuously in touch and nurture them with your messaging. One way or the other, whether you do it the way that John and I do it through online marketing or drive people through paid traffic or however you get people, It is to trade information, to create connections, and make sure that they stay in tune with what you’re doing. That’s the objective. It’s changed a bit, in my opinion, but the idea has not. You must trade information in the age that we’re in with anybody that is theoretically interested in doing business. You must keep in touch with them. Database marketing, which is what we’re talking about.
All right, build a secondary database of loyal clients that can refer to you? Explain this one to me because I was a little bit confused by this.
Well, I think the follow through, the way you keep in content, in in front to some degree of clientele that have already used your services and purchased a house or sold a house, should be very different to the people that have come in to your database that might be possible clients. It’s the same mythology, but the outreach is very different and the content that you’re going to be supplying, where the people on the secondary list, your previous clients, people you’ve had some one-to-one discussion discussion with, that should be more personalized. That should be more sending out content that maybe is more personalized for each one because the lead, if they do refer you, that is going to be a much stronger lead than somebody that’s never done business with you, that is in your database your marketing to them, but they could be just a possible new client. And this is, I’m probably boring because this is 101. But I just think a lot of people, they send out the same content to both lists. But the reality is they’re very different, aren’t they?
They are very different. And I understand, what I perceive that this is is filtered, filtered lists, filtered database lists. And this is just you displaying your expertise inside database marketing. Database marketing, which is not something that I do at the very highest level and never really have, because I always intrinsically, I keep in touch with everybody in in a strong enough way that my… I always felt like your strong clients stand up and identify themselves. Now, there’s another school of thought that says that your clients can be built into great clients, and that requires a lot more outreach than what I prefer to do personally. But anyway, let’s move on. Number four. Actually, let’s go to break. You want to go to break, John? Yes. Okay. All right, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we’re going to come right back. And when we do, we’ve got three more exciting subjects from when we return from break. Follow-up strategies, we’re going to touch on those a little bit, building a brand and talking a little bit about the combined strategies of combining in person and online. All right, that’s it. We’ll be right back. Stay tuned.
What the hell is going on?
You need to log back in. You’re frozen or you need to restart. I like the It’s a picture, though. You look very thoughtful.
Okay. All right. I got it.
Or maybe you want to keep it because you do look thoughtful, Robert. Jesus Christ.
Okay. I don’t see anything at all. I’m going to come right back. I’m going to drop out, okay?
Yeah.
He’s back. He’s come back.
I didn’t run away, John. Shocking.
What was that? Sorry, you lost that first.
I didn’t run away.
There you go. I would have. So if you want to do, you can then go straight into it, second off.
Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 457 of the Melright Show. As promised, we’re back with follow-up strategies, building a brand, and the combination of digital and in-person strategies. I’ve got a lot to say about the final one. So why don’t you jump into with us this follow-up strategy that works? What works for you, John? How do you follow up with your prospective clients?
Well, it’s quite simple. I do have a lead magnet on my WP Tonic web business. I haven’t got a lead magnet on the mail right. That would probably something we will change. But I’ve been just working on getting some traffic to that website. Obviously, I have a lead magnet. Then with the WP Tonic, there’s a free lead magnet which they can download. I get a few people a week to download that. Then what I do is then I send them a per email that offers a course that shows them how to build. It basically offers them a course that’s quite extensive at half price, basically. It gives them a coupon code. And then if they take the course, if they transfer some money, it’s only a small amount, with the coupon code, it’s about $25. If they actually purchase that, then I pursue them because they’re given a clear sign that they’ve opened their wallet. It’s not a sophisticated process because I get about 20 of those people per month, and I get about 10 to 12 per month that actually buy the course, and it’s done by one of the people that worked for me, and he did a really great job.
The same thing applies is that they come into a funnel, a digital funnel, and you need to offer some value, probably some form of download, and then they come in their funnel, and then they need to trigger something, and maybe you offer something of even more value. Then if they get that, you then need to pursue them through phoning them up. It gives a sign that this person needs more of your one-to-one personal time as a real estate agent to then maybe get them to become an actual real client of yours. There’s a process. I don’t think I don’t know what conversations you have, but I think a lot of agents, they have no process, do they?
I think you are correct. I think there is very little process to a follow-up strategy that works. Our follow-up strategy has been collect data and send out valuable content, but it’s generalized. It’s not filtered, which is we probably could do a lot better as an agency if we filtered the follow-up. But we’re still so small doing proper sales strategy into our database is crazy hard for us because it would involve me personally reaching out to everybody. Honestly, while I would probably get a couple more sales, I’d probably lose some because of the way that psychology works with people, making me this distant figure that you can only set an appointment with that never calls you and never follows up, adds to the mystique and thus makes sales calls easier for me, which is which is what I like for my sales strategy. With a real estate agent, having a follow-up strategy that works, in my opinion, is making sure that you personally participate in one valuable message per month. Then oftentimes, as John alluded to, depending on where you are in your career, at the beginning of your career, you get that message out to people yourself.
In the middle of your career, you probably have a service helper like somebody off Fiverr, and at the end of your career, you have an actual personal assistant. Those personal assistants get the message out. It gets easier and easier and easier to get your messaging out. Would you agree, John? As you establish yourself as a business owner?
Well, it should do. You should know what is working, generally. Obviously, things change. It’s a bit like my opinion, and I did quantify, it just depends on the target audience. Generally, when it comes to phone calling, if you’re dealing with audience that still have… I don’t have a landline. Most of the people I deal with don’t have a landline. If somebody calls me on my mobile and they’re not on my contact list, I’m not picking it up. If they can’t leave a voice message, they probably get deleted. If you’re dealing with a lot of people that I’ve got a landline, and it tends to be older people, phoning might still work. But I think if you’re in a sector that don’t have landlines that only have mobile, I think phoning for leads, I just don’t see it working, but I could be wrong.
It I still have clients that do it. It is an ever diminishing effectiveness in terms of a strategy, but it does work. But stronger technical screening tools is a problem for outbound salespeople. It is. It is becoming you’re doing more calls for less of a result. Having said that, let’s talk about building a personal local brand. We’ve talked about this. We’ve done entire podcasts on this one subject. For those of you listening, this is going to be footnotes. I advise that you go back into our catalog of shows because we have talked about brand a lot. You can go on to the MailRight channel, the MailRight website. You can, to a smaller degree, come on to my website, but I’ll probably direct you to other content talking about building a local brand, not necessarily this podcast. If you’re listening to this podcast and like podcasts, you’re going to want to access them through MailRight. You You go there and you look up brand or local brand, and you’ll get so many great shows that we’ve done with the two of us and guests talking about brand. But having said all that, John, what is your top-level branding comments about building a local brand?
Well, my observation in the industry is a lot of people aren’t very good at it. But the successful agents or the successful micro-brokerages, the boutique brokerages, they do find a niche. They do successfully build a brand. There’s no one way of doing it because there’s too many variables. But there are definitely, we’ve covered it quite a bit, finding a particular niche, finding a particular group of clients that have a specific need that is a little bit different than the general market with enough volume that can get the results, the income that you’re designing or need, and then pitching That’s why you need a website. That’s why you need your social media strategy. That’s why you need to put videos up, all the things that we discussed during 2024 that we’ve spent the past four years talking about consistently, isn’t it, Robert? And hopefully, it hasn’t just fallen on. But I think we’ve got a small audience, but I think they’ve stuck with us. People say, but the majority of agents, it can’t be done overnight. It is difficult when you’re dealing with clients and the normal weekly ups and downs of being a real estate agent.
It’s really easy to put this on the back burner, but if you can be consistent and really understand why it’s important in the end, it will pay big dividends, I feel. What do you feel, Robert?
I think that building a brand, informational in nature, qualitative, in other words, you can, and I believe brand, I believe that most brands are qualitative quantitative. That just means that you can identify the quality of the brand that you’re dealing with before you deal with them. And it’s part of your brand, part of your messaging. I believe that strongly. That means that you’re well-reviewed and that there are many people out there talking about using your product or service and giving many details about it. That’s what I mean by a qualitative informational brand. I think that plays directly into a local brand as well, which can also mean, again, it’s qualitative and quantitative. You go out and you meet with people and you put that stuff up on your social media channel. And that allows people to understand how you engage with the world. And that’s part of building a local brand. But I strongly believe that everything you said was correct. And I strongly believe that local branding, local branding, if anything, John, is becoming more and more important for real estate agents. It’s more important in 2025 than it was in any other year, and it probably will continue to gain momentum that way.
Specificity, separating yourself from the proliferation of of agents that are jumping into AI tools and stuff that does not provide personal messaging of any kind, is you have a massive opportunity as an agent to set yourself apart by that by doing personal things, like this podcast. This is really me and John. We’re not AI agents. We’re having a real discussion.
Well, you might be real.
Okay, I speak for myself. All right, we’re going to go into bonus material, ladies and gentlemen. It’s going to be about 5 or 10 minutes, and today’s bonus subject is going to be successfully combining person-to-person and digital online marketing. And John, if you don’t mind, I’m going to jump into this one because I have a lot to say about this.
I just want to quickly say, I think it would be really interesting to hear what you’ve got to say, but I I think my observation, Rob, is a lot of agents that are really good on the one to one are really bad on the digital, and those that are really good on the digital tend not to be that great on the person-to in-person, and the one that’s going to be really successful in the next couple of years, in my opinion, are those that combine the two.
I agree with you. And here’s some examples of the way that clients that I work with have combined the two, digital and in-person. So number one, taking control of your time as a real estate agent and having a more fruitful career Career-work-life balance is so incredibly relevant when it comes to having the conversation of how do you mix digital and in-person. Because one of my top clients, his name is Brett Wallace, we’ve We work together, he’s five times his income. All of that’s great, but you know what hits me personally the most because I’m that guy, is that he’s also spending more time with his family, which doesn’t make sense. Making five times as much, but spending more time at home and spending more time with his kids. How do you do that? Well, when you really focus carefully on using digital the right way, you can eliminate 80% of your driving as a real estate agent. That’s number one. So how do you do that? You do all of your consults, all of your initial. You insist that everything with a client happens with a Zoom conversation first. You look at them, you say, before we get in our cars, before we meet, what are you looking for?
You do all the qualification, and you make sure that you should be getting in your car, number one. And then number two, you make sure that you have an understanding of what they want. Number three, you look at online pictures so that by the time you hit any property, it is a de facto thing that you know that they’re interested in it. You’ve already done all the work online to get to a place where it’s just making sure that it looks in person like it looked online. Eighty % of what we do now with Brett is digital, and he’s not alone. Even in the category of 5, 10, 15, $25 million properties, my luxury clients are moving in the direction of instead of having foreign investors look at to fly in LA and spend a week with this one foreign investor, which is a common thing in the luxury market, in the ultra luxury market. That’s been common. That involves passports, travel, private air fare, a whole bunch of stuff. I now know luxury agents that are selling these properties almost site unseen or using agents like local representatives that walk in for these foreign investors.
But most of the conversation is place digitally. That’s selling the property. In terms of marketing properties, what you really want to do is you want to make sure that you’re directing people to your online presence as much as possible every time. The way that I have this conversation with my clients, the way I’m going to have with you, John, look at your time as the resource and you spend it much better than you spend your money. I’m terrible with money. I’m with my time. I am so good with my time. If I look at something and go, Can I accomplish more digitally in terms of saving my time? Will I do it? With a single exception of establishing strong connections with people. That I still do personally. I still take my time personally to do that. But once the connection is established, the relationship is 100 % maintained digitally. And usually I look at efficiencies. I use Base Camp. The only reason I use Base Camp is because all members of my team are communicated to simultaneously on every single client issue affecting a project at all times. That just means that no individual emails or messages are going anywhere else.
And I love that. It manages the account with 20 people touching it. It manages the account seamlessly. So we don’t have a lot of emails going out to my team. And I love that efficiency of time. When you’re looking at digital, ladies and gentlemen, ask yourself the question, can it replace normal marketing more efficiently? You and I talk about this incessantly. Video replaces door knocking. It should because you can get in front of a lot more people with a lot less effort than knocking on doors physically. It’s a great digital medium. Now, does that mean that you want to eliminate all personal contact? No. You just want to make sure that somebody has done all of their homework, and then you do a call. That’s my thoughts, some thoughts on successfully combining person-to-person and digitally online marketing, at least the ones that I wanted to talk about today. How about you, John? What do you have to add?
Not really. I just think the people that are really good person to person, really have a local network. They tend just to concentrate in that particular marketing way, and they not to want to invest time and money on the digital side. The people I know that are into databases that are the principle of a small boutique brokerage, they are the lead generated to a small team. There’s a few that I’ve worked with. They tend to focus on either Facebook advertising or Google Ads. It’s paid placement and with organic as well, some element of organic. But they really don’t concentrate on building… It’s all through paid traffic, basically. They don’t invest a lot of time on organic or they don’t invest any time on personal networking in their area. I just feel combining the two is the best methodology. I haven’t I’ve seen many that have come on my radar that really do both to the extent that they could.
Sure. I agree with you. And that’s an interesting thing. A lot of my ongoing clients for many years, John, it’s just they continue to get access to my calendar, like one call a year, which is what? Because like I said, I’m good with my time. And that one call a year, I get on and tell them to do the things, a lot of the things that we’re talking about and tell them how to blend their business with digital and physical all at once. And those efficiencies, like with Brett, he’ll say he considers me as a business coach, and I happen to do SEO, and he happens to get calls, and he happens to make some deals, but he also gets a lot of advice that he follows with me. That advice that he’s followed has yielded more revenue than the physical services provided. And so there is that small element. And that is another way to do personal and digital because I provide that personal advice. I do Whiteboard Thursdays now, and that is all because of Brett. I just continue to provide business advice so that I don’t have to do the individual calls to guys like Brett anymore.
I just put it up on a piece of content and direct my clients to it because it is the same advice, as you well know from doing this podcast with me over and over We’re just waiting for people to listen and do it and apply it. Then what I would love to see in the podcast world, which never happens, is I’d love for our clients to reach out to us and said, Oh, I took that piece of advice and it shit the bed, Robert and John, or I took that piece of advice, and it was fantastic. It was game-changing. But we all get that advice from our grandmothers or mothers or brothers or sisters or fathers that we know is correct, and we don’t do it. We need- You’re true.
We need to wrap it up, Rob.
Yeah. So ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, if you’d like to reach out to John, how would you do that, sir?
I’ll just go to the MailRight website and you can book a free chat with me on the website, and that’s a half hour and that’s totally free. Back over to you, Rob.
If you’d like to reach out to me, you can email me at robert@emboundrem. Com. You can go to my website, emboundrem. Com. Get all sorts of incredible, incredible, incredible lessons on real estate marketing, digital marketing for real estate. There is no cost to any of it. We occasionally ask you for your email, but we don’t even always ask you that. So please go to that site if you’re looking for some good help, additional help other than this podcast with your marketing. It’s a great resource. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning in. This has been your first show of 2025 for the MailRight Show, and I’m so excited to be here. I’m so glad John is back, and thank you all for tuning in. I’m so grateful.
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In the competitive world of real estate, many agents need help finding their footing. In this week’s show, we dive deep into the reasons behind high failure rates among realtors. From inadequate training and lack of mentorship to unrealistic expectations and poor marketing strategies, we uncover the hidden pitfalls that can derail even the most passionate professionals. Don’t miss this essential episode.
#1 – Lead Generation
#2 – Not Understanding That You Are Now Self-Employed
#3 – The Need to Be Self-Motivated Month in and month out
#4 -Religiously and Consistently Using an Easy-to-Use CRM
#5 – Doing a Great Job For Your Clients
#6 – Don’t Become One of Those Invisible Agent Types
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 456. This, my friends, is our last podcast episode of 2024. I am so excited to announce that John is getting the out of dodge. He’s going back.
I might be.
He might be. We. Whether he is or he isn’t, he’s taking a break.
I’m oscillating, Robert. I’m humming and hiring.
Okay, well, he’s taking a break from me, ladies and gentlemen. So he will not see my glorious mug at the end of the year. He will be doing something else, whether catching up on work, seeing family, or combining the two. So. But today, before we go, you know, attractive send-off subject, we will do the following: Why do so many realtors fail? Okay. We’re going to provide a few insights and advice so that we can help you succeed in 2025. And yeah, I can’t wait to get into this subject. Forgive those tiny handful of you who logged in. Look at us on the YouTube channel. Forgive me. I am definitely in streetwear today, which is rare.
You’re very golf. He’s very golf.
I mentioned to you that I don’t own any colors. I’m, I’m the real deal. I have the earrings, I have the tats. I’ve got it all. So let’s. But let’s dive into this. Oh, John, when you come back in 2025, I have one of my closest friends, previous co-workers, a guy that’s run many sales teams for me, just got into real estate, and I’m probably going to want to do a podcast with him.
Yeah, sure.
All right, let’s. Let’s leap into number one because this is our favorite subject. Lead generation.
Yeah.
Okay. So, John, I’ve got a lot to say about this. What. What do you have to say about this?
Well, that is the crucial thing you know: if you still need to get a plan about lead generation, how you’ll get leads, and a lead generation plan that works, I think you’ll be in the real estate business for a while. You need to be realistic here, though. Unless you’re very experienced or have a lot of social capital, as I call it. Yeah, you, it’s. You will need a supportive partner or funding for the first three to six months. Or you probably need both. But at the crux of it, if you still need to get a strategy around getting leads, if you think your broker will get you leads, I believe you are deluded. I know some brokerages will provide some authority, but it will be down to you in most cases.
Agree. So, I will give and echo a conversation that I had with two young, cold callers who called me the other day for an inbound lead for inbound rem. So they’re calling me about it. Well, they were, they were dual calling me one. They casually asked me how to do an SEO website. And as you can imagine, John, I get quite a few of these calls where they go. How long does it take? And you go, I don’t know, a year, two and a half. All right, what else do you think you could offer? So we immediately started calling. They started asking me a lot about what I do squeeze pages for. That’s. That’s what you do. And I sent this guy to you; he may have called you. And they wanted me to do a squeeze page and then do advertising—the squeeze page. But amid this conversation, I asked this young man what he was doing to generate leads today. And he had one of my favorite answers that I ever get on the phone, which is like, oh, I’m a cold caller. Like, how much do you cold call?
He’s like, I cold call for three to six hours daily. I’m like, okay, so why are you calling me? He’s like, well, listen, I’ve been doing that for three years, and while it’s generating me an income, it’s getting harder and harder.
Yeah.
And I said, okay, explain. He’s like, he’s like, I just can’t get a hold of anybody number. Like blocking in, like, ways to block your number if you don’t already know somebody. Are Becoming more and more prolific. He’s like, I do. I don’t, I don’t. I do door knock every once in a while. That’s getting tougher too. There’s a lot of ring doorbells. You, you, you end up holding up your car to a lot of digital things at doors and stuff like that. And it made me realize, John, that the gateways to, to actual humans, which is what you need if you’re, if you’re an aggressive salesperson or if you just like meeting, stopping you in terms of lead generation. Ryan Sirhan says that he generated leads at the dry cleaners. I believe him because you can, if you’re good at striking up conversation with complete and utter strangers, you can make a lot of money in sales, regardless of what you’re selling. Having said that, if you’re actually trying to get people where they live on their phone at home, it is getting much, much harder. Which is why digital lead generation has been a favorite avenue of mine for a while.
That’s why keep ringing the inbound doorbell, because you’re getting in front of somebody trying to address a question they’re already asking, so there’s no screening. You’re getting their eyeballs, you’re getting their focus, and you’re getting their attention. And once you’ve had their attention for a bit, if you were able to collect their information even without them filling out a form, they would be far more qualified, far more likely to be a viable prospect for you. I just believe so, like very strongly in that there’s other ways to do this. It’s a five touch introduction system. I’m just saying, let’s do it with inbound. There’s other ways to do it. You can do direct mail, but guess what, John, everybody, you’d have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to do it the other ways. How much does it cost you? If you’re starting out new, John, and you knew what you know right now, or a little bit of it about YouTube, how much would it cost you to do your first YouTube video?
We’ve got a phone, I have to get some form of mic. Less than $100 maybe.
Okay. And how many videos do you think you could create on the backs of that $100?
Hundreds.
Okay. And then let’s just say we’re gonna get you an optimization tool to help you optimize these videos. So they’re done. You’ve got, you know, you’re uploading them, you want them to get some more attention. How much do you think that would cost You.
Well, the one. The one that we both use now, I think that starts at. If you pay month to month, it’s slightly under $20 a month, isn’t it?
So all in about maybe for your first year, three, four hundred dollars.
And the time.
And the time. Yeah, but. Okay, let’s just let. Again, lead generation. We’re having that conversation. John, I don’t know that in all the things you’ve done, have you ever doorknocked. Have you ever cold call?
No, not in America. I don’t want to be sure.
Okay. No, I’m just. I’m not. And I’m not trying to. I’m not trying to put you under the. I’m not trying to put you.
That was why. That was my very dry English.
Okay, so I’ve done that in here in California. And you know what?
The young man podcast folks almost three years and steal wine by. I think it’s humorous. But Rob. Rob’s got used to it and he’s up for it. But I still lose him totally sometimes.
Sometimes.
Sometimes I totally lose you, don’t I?
Every now and again you do the. But. But here’s. And I also am so, so horrendously adhd. I have to. I have to hold on to a thought like a dog that’s just caught the bumper of a car is chasing. And so. See, I’ve almost already forgotten what I was talking about. So when this young man that I was talking. Talking about, he does three hours of calls every day. Every day, John. So that’s 18 hours a week, conservatively. So you’re sitting here going, well, besides the time, you know, a good video, how long do you think a good video takes you to produce?
Depends what you call good video. Because the videos I knock out video.
A video.
Just a video. I’ll do the thumbnail, do some basic editing. Probably hour.
It takes me a lot longer. But still, in either case, I don’t think it takes either one of us 18 hours. My lowest videos get a couple hundred views, usually, and my Highest videos get five to 10,000. So I’m basically knocking on anywhere from 100 to 200 doors for that three to five hours I spent, right? And I’m slow. Everybody calls me slow. My team calls me slow. I’m slow, you’re fast. If you ever got the same result, you would knock on 100 doors for an hour. Let me tell you, as a professional door knocker, you never come close to 100 doors, John, per hour. You have to run to the doors and even Then you wouldn’t be able to do it. If you got into one or two conversations, you really wouldn’t be able to. That’s just knocking. That’s not anybody paying attention. So if 100 people pay attention to something you do, you are literally at about 80% more efficiency or 800%. That is why when we start talking about lead generation, everybody who’s listening, watching the show. As a lifetime producer and user of leads, there is nothing more efficient than digital.
That is the point of my entire conversation.
Can I say something extra?
Yeah.
Well, I, I just don’t believe in phoning because of the factors that you just said. And I really don’t believe in door knocking to some extent. I’m more, I’m more accepting of the argument around door knocking than I am around phoning. I just don’t see in 2025 it’s got much future. Anybody that phones me that doesn’t leave a voice message that’s not on my contact list, I don’t pick it up. I. But I, on the other hand, even though I run a digital agency, I believe that this is a person to person business. I just believe in a hybrid model. But I believe the hybe. I still believe that you should be out there, not the invisible agent. You need to go to social events, you need to be part of your community, just not totally because that helps you produce the digital content that will get eyes on it. To some extent, I don’t either. I don’t believe in people that are solely marketing online, even though that’s what I do. But I’m in two sectors when it comes to real estate. I think you need that person content. But you do that by engaging in events in your community, going to business events, having discussions, meeting people, and then you have your digital outreach as well.
That’s what I believe in, Robert.
That which is fair. And English attitudes and American attitudes are different. Having been to England, I can tell you that there are certain things, certain types of things that we accept here as a very commercialized country that they don’t accept in England. So you’re, you’re, you’re really showing a bit of your English flair, you know, with these notes. But I don’t, I listen, I’ve done, I love call center work. I loved it. I stayed in it for 20 years. I’m not ashamed of the first part of my career. It just was losing its efficiency to such a high degree. I saw the writing on the wall and I said, I’m going to go do another kind of marketing. And that’s, that’s how I ended up where we’re at right now. So. Because it’s just not efficient. And my job here is to educate people on the numbers part of it. Because the number. There’s just no touching the numbers. John and I could show you a way to get in front of like. And even if we could. So here’s another idea. I spent $160 on YouTube advertising. My first expenditure ever. And I got 30,000 views on a video.
$160. 30,000 views. If I was better at making commercials, which I’m not, it would have done really well for me. But in the meantime, I got in front of 30,000 people for $160. That’s crazy. All right, moving on. We’re number two on John’s list. Last list, last subject, last show of the year. Did you hear me the first time, ladies and gentlemen, which is many realtors fail to understand that you are now totally self employed. John, shed the light on us, baby. What does that mean?
Well, it’s been like being a school kid and then going to college, isn’t it? You know, school, kid, everything. The teachers there are, they will pest you if you’re not doing your work. They would talk to your parents. If you’ve got parents that care, they will get concerned. Your day is measured. Then you go to college and nobody f cares. Nobody f cares that you get your assignments in. Nobody f cares if you turn up. Nobody cares about anything. They don’t. They get you into debt, probably. And if you, if don’t get anything out your degree, that’s your f problem, isn’t it? Well, that’s the same working for somebody and being self employed, isn’t it? I feel.
And I look good. Like, nice analogy. I like the analogy. Yeah, yeah. You know, I have never understood. John, here’s a great exercise. The second that anybody ever, ever, ever becomes a salesperson, I’ve always said I bought into heavily when I was 17 years old, and I buy in heavily now that it’s the lowest paid easy work and the highest paid hard work that you’ll ever find. And the decision is mine, all mine. And guess what? That would mean that that is basically the same principle. Like, I love salespeople that walk through the door when I’m. I’m hiring and they’re like, the first questions are about the salary. How much are you going to pay? I’m like, in my brain, every single time, every single salesperson, I go, well, nothing if you’re so concerned. If you’re not asking me about the bonus structure or the commission structure, and those aren’t the first words off your tongue, you’re not a salesperson, full stop. You got to believe whether it’s true or not. You got to believe that you’re going to sell something. Like you got to believe it at the core of your being. And then you got to look at it and go, can I really do what I want to do?
Anybody that’s walking in and asking about the salary is coming in to make the salary, like so. It is a terrible, terrible thing. And that should educate everybody listening to the show, what this is truly about. When you’re a real estate salesperson, even if you’ve managed to convince somebody to give you some kind of draw versus commission or something like that, man, oh man, you’ve got no safety net. You’re dancing on a tight wire. You will learn a lot of respect for both money and time if you’re, if you’re going to experience success. I couldn’t agree with you more. What the. Whether the analogy school or walking on a tightrope or whatever it is. Boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, what a learning experience being self employed is. John has five more amazing subjects. I’m going to read them to the audit. Four more. They need to be self made.
We need to go for our break first.
I know. I’m telling them what they’re gonna, they’re going to face when they come back. For religiously and considered consistently using easy to use CRM. Doing a great job for your clients and don’t become one of those invisible agent types. So that’s what we’re gonna cover when we go. When we come back from breakfast. We will be right back. Did you hear me the first couple of times? This is our last show of 2024. All right, can’t wait. See you soon. Everybody. Stay tuned. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, episode number 456. We are back from our break on the last show of the year. And the need to be self motivated month in and month out is our subject. How do you keep yourself motiv motivated? John, what’s your secret?
I don’t want to end up on the street. It’s a very strong motivation because I live in a small town of Carson City and every month there’s more people on the street and this is just a small, pretty middle class, not super wealthy but not poor. And there’s more and more people on the street in this town. And if you go To Reno. There’s a larger amount of people and I don’t particularly want to be one of them. And real estate, you know, you’ve got all these glamorous shows, haven’t you, with these top producing agents and their top producing lifestyle, where the reality is just grind, isn’t it? Grind and more grind and more grind on top of that.
Yeah, yeah. So I agreed, agreed, agreed. You know what? I’m gonna. I’m gonna capitalize on what John said. Fear is a big motivator for me too. No, I wish I could tell everybody otherwise, but I’m gonna be really honest with everybody on the show. I’m gonna be really honest with you. I’m neurodivergent. I wake up anxious. I have been homeless twice. I’ve been in jail. It’s generally terrifying. Like, it’s just terrifying in LA is harder than where you’re at if we’re both super honest. So fear is a decent motivator. On my good days, of which there are less than my bad days, I focus on not. Like I’m just not a money person. So I usually focus on a task list and I keep myself motivated by having things. I try to make sure that I have one exciting thing on that list and it doesn’t matter what it is, just anything I’m excited about. And it could be meeting with somebody. You’ve worked with me a long time, John. You know, I get excited about weird things. Like sometimes I just get excited about a particular person you have on the show. And those days light me up.
They’re really fun to do those podcasts with people that you’re interested in talking to. And I love good conversations with good people. It kind of sends puts wind to my sails for the rest of the day. And so that’s one of the ways that I motivated my motor. I motivate, I find little tasks. And then last but not least, the main task for my business that I do consistently myself is I hold on to the thing that I’m good at, which is sales and talking to people. I’ve spent a lot of time getting good at it. It motivates me to be on a phone and know that I did an amazing job, probably better than most other people could have done. I like doing good work. That usually gives me a little bit of motivation for later in the day. And I carry that through to other tasks that I really hate, like accounting and bookkeeping and operations. And I can go on and on because I do it all now because I am self employed.
Can I say so add something to it.
Of course.
It’s a bit like our last podcast where we were interviewing Steve and I did like this concept and that’s why I asked him to come on the show this. Are you the favorite or are you the fool? He’s very traditional. He’s very intense, isn’t he? I mean, obviously knew what he was talking about, but he is intense. He’s more intense than you and your pr. You could be pretty intense. I can be, but not. I’m not generally as intense as you, but he was pretty intense. But that I believed in this concept. Are you the favorite or are you the fool and the video? You know, doing the video you are already when they ring you, if you’re doing video, you’re producing content, especially the video you are and they’re ringing you. You are the favorite. You know, even I. I’m not very good. I am very good at getting out of a cell, but even I bag the cells if they’re watching a lot of my videos. Because you are already the favorite.
I do like that concept too. Steve was a fun guest for those of you who didn’t catch him.
That fun, wasn’t he?
Yeah. You go to episode number 455 and you can check out Steve. He’s got a lot of good things to share. He is very proudly one of the very first performance coaches for Realtors. If not the first. He claims the first. I wasn’t sure about that, but I wasn’t going to say anything religiously and consistently using an easy to use CRM. Yeah, okay.
Which I don’t, I don’t. But I think if you are in real estate, I think writing notes and keeping information about is important, but I think it’s not gonna. It’s gonna help you be more efficient when you’re talking to people. But a lot of agents don’t follow through. They don’t touch base with previous clients. They don’t do a lot of real outreach. So ain’t gonna help them. But those that do it will. But the. And I forgot who said this. I think it was Tom Ferry Ferris. The best CRM is the one that you use. And a lot of these systems, unless you’ve got somebody in house that’s working with it 247 in your brokerage and that they godforsaken difficult to use, that nobody uses them.
When I was using like I use CRMs at Sprint, I use CRMs when I was selling computer surprise. I used CRMs throughout my entire career. And I Had the simplest system ever. I used Last Action, Next action and opportunity grading. That’s it. That’s really what I use my CRMs for. So last action is what, what did you say and what was discussed. Next Action is what did you agree to talk to about the next time? Usually these things can be small and then depending on the grade. So I forced myself to give the client a score of 0 to 10 based on my perception of the match between us. Like how qualified they were as well as how excited they might be about my specific offer. It’s two of those things and so like a 10 of 10 when I, when I moved that call, the call opportunity was always at the top of my list because I graded it the highest and kind of. And then there was a rotation downwards. I’ve experienced more success with that very simple system than most people ever have.
Can I ask you about this? I’ve been thinking about this for a long show. You might have because you’ve got more experience in the real estate. I’ve been at it now for six years, so I think I’ve got some reasonable. You’ve got almost 20 years. Right. There’s a, there’s insane amount of discussion about CRMs. It’s, you know, it’s probably your most favorite videos that get watched are your reviews, the CRMs, blah blah blah. There’s a lot of miss terms about what is a CRM. We’ve got episodes where we’ve discussed the total wackiness. You know, a lead generated platform is seen as a CRM. I see a CRM as the way in the parameters that we’re discussing it. Right, right. But there’s so much talk. But when you look at the amount of agents that don’t ring up old clients, don’t do any follow through, don’t, don’t keep in touch with their old. It is mind blowing. So you got all this talk about CRMs, which is about to some extent mixing lead generation with CRM. And then you’ve got these industry surveys show even now that most agents to keep in contact with their old clients, they just don’t do it.
What’s all this about? Robert?
Well, call reluctance, sales psychology, you know, my fear and anxiety I discovered would put me at a standstill. John the only reason I like, I’d love to keep telling people stories about my drive and my motivation. I have legitimately been top one through 5%. That’s true. What I did though is I learned to use my neurodivergence to some degree in my favor. I walk in the office, if I have nothing to like, if I don’t have a list of people to call and there’s a cold calling list over here, I’m probably not calling anybody, John. That’s just the truth. I’ll figure out a way to waste time. And I think a lot of salespeople do exactly that. But if I walk in and I have a small, like, little list of people to call with the graded opportunities I already told you about, for some reason, it kind of generated me into the habit. The motivation, the cold call reluctance was. Was diminish. And so I would then hammer out a few hours with cold calls. And that made all the difference in the world because the cold calls led to more opportunities which you grade and put into future days.
And it’s a system that builds on itself so that you walk into the office and you go, oh, fantastic, I’ve got 10, 20, 30 good calls. And then you’re like, okay, I ended that. You know, I still got an hour left before I’ve been here for eight hours. Might as well knock out an hour of cold calling. A lot of really driven, disciplined people do all their cold calling in the morning. I could never do that. Ever, ever, ever, never, never.
No, I couldn’t do that.
So I think that what it’s about is that this psychology.
Yeah, but I’m not talking about cold calls, am I? I’m talking about people that they’ve done, They’ve met, they’ve got. Might have bought a house with them. They might have done a open house, they might have had a conversation. They don’t even outreach to those type of.
I have no idea. A will, a desire to fail, a lack of organization and not understanding what the basic principles are of, like, taking their. Like, usually when I talk to salespeople and you’re coaching them, right, and you come down to, okay, how are you going to get back in touch with this person? And they look at you blankly, and you’re like, let’s say somebody’s doing an open house. You go, you do have their contact information, right? No. What do you mean? You don’t have their contact information?
No.
What do you, what do you say to somebody? You got them there, you paid for hors d’oeuvres, they’re in the house, and it’s like, I didn’t ask for it, or I didn’t have a signing sheet or whatever the freaking is.
And you’re like, yeah, can I interrupt to be. If you, you, if you’re new to the Industry, you find a mentor, you find somebody, you be a junior with you. Do you say, well, for six months, I’m not going to have a social life. I’m going to be doing open houses every weekend, Saturday and Sunday. I’m going to be available to this mental agent, I’m going to do anything he wants or she wants me to do. And I just do religious open houses. And these open houses are for me to build relationships, to get these people’s phone numbers, emails, put me my bloody CRM and then call them.
Yeah, exactly. Call them, message them, whatever it is. Right. But one way or the other, do outreach. And obviously calling them is the best process. Calling them and starting to try to generate a relationship. But honestly, a lot of realtors just lack process and they lack the intuition that you do as a business owner, which you think is basic, but it’s not. It’s not basic. Getting phone numbers, names. The very basic stuff that we is the dribble of being a marketer, the dribble of being a business owner. At the end of the day, you and I both know you can’t make a sale with if you don’t have somebody’s contact information. That’s basically business 101. Even you in your English frame of mind are going to be like, well, I would at least like your contact information. We can email, we can push out, we can not call them, but we need their contact information to do anything at all, like, full stop. So it’s basic process stuff, I think, John. Lack of. Lack of knowledge, lack of training, lack of confidence, doing a great job for your clients.
This is basic stuff. But it’s true, isn’t it? You look at Bill, you look at me, very successful in real estate. You know, some clients are. You never make them happy, you never make. But there should be a basic line of service. And when you start getting busy, that’s when the hit. Sorry, I’m gonna swear the hits the fan.
You already have to edit this one. I. I started off the episode, Chris.
Yeah, because that’s when your quality standards start going all over the place because you’re busy, you’re stretched. But that’s when you know you’ve got some processes that actually work. You only know that is when you’re under stress and being consistent, when you’re being pushed is the sign that you’ve worked out these practices, isn’t it?
Yeah, it really is. So, my goodness gracious, doing a good job. I’m just going to give one tip here, ladies and gentlemen, to the Good doing the good job part. You want to know if you’re doing a good job? Try to get a. Try to get your clients to do a report card. There’s no more like dual proactive thing than to ask somebody for a review, to prompt them with a template to say, will you leave me a review? If they say yes, you send them a template while you’re standing in front of them. I don’t freaking care what part of the process you’re in. If it’s a prospect, somebody you’ve talked to spent a few hours answering questions, this is a great time to ask for reviews. It’s a report card.
I know a platform. I know a certain real estate platform, marketing platform, Robert, that has that survey system in. Built into it. Robert.
Oh, really? No kidding. You led the shit. Share it with the audience, please.
Oh, it’s something called Bill, Right?
Okay. All right. John is taking off from the podcast, but he’s not shutting the doors of his business. So, should you want to reach out to him before the end of the year?. To talk to him about a real estate marketing system, call him, call him, call him, call him, or reach out. All right. Don’t become one of those invisible agent types.
Nobody’s coming to you. Nobody cares. They don’t care that you’re a real estate agent. Nobody’s knocking on your door to give you a commission check. Ain’t going to happen. And if you’re like 80% of agents, the invisible agent that does one or two transactions a year, a lot of. Many brokerages love it because of the split they can give to these one and two transaction agents. But if you have a proper career, you aren’t going to happen if you’re the invisible agent, right?
Yeah, I agree. Well, ladies and gentlemen, invisible agents like not being seen or heard. That would be 101, but we’ve covered many fundamental things. And honestly, when it comes to real estate agents and why they fail, I will go back to something essential that Tom Hopkins said long ago when I was in a training class with him. And it was in the 80s, it was. That’s how long ago this was. He also said that the willingness to fail is the willingness not to be trained. And he was talking to a room full of wannabe real estate salespeople. I was taking a sales course, knowing I would use the information for telephone sales. And I had to go out to Arizona, where he was Training, to take the class in the first place. It was revelatory, though, because he basically kept saying repeatedly that being a salesperson is similar to being a doctor. You get out of it what you put into it in terms of your learning. Granted, he was selling training, but he had an extraordinary amount of people in the room who were successful salespeople attending the meetings, his training, the second, third, and fourth time, some of whom were selling real estate.
He made half a million dollars a year in real estate back in the 80s. The 80s. So, the guy knew how to sell. When you’re thinking about what you can do and what you know, do you want to fail? I’m so sorry. But even more than me and John or digital marketing or anything on this list, I will tell you. Go back to basics. Read some books, listen to some audio tapes. Start becoming a professional salesperson and understand what you want to do; being trained creates confidence. I don’t. I don’t like, lack, or understanding. John, what would I say if I knocked on the door? I know what I’m going to say and what I’m going to do. I know what my elevator pitch is at all times. Like for, for inbound rem, for anything. I know what the elevator pitch is from the Mail-Right. I know what the elevator pitch is for half my competitors. Right. I know it, and I am not scared to say it. But all that came down to training and repetition and practice and drilling and becoming very good at something like 10,000 hours.
There’s that old, super old training principle. It takes 10,000 hours to be an expert at anything. I’ve got my 10,000 hours on the real estate marketing side and actually on sales, way more than that. So that’s my advice to everybody listening to the show and closing it out with training yourself. Read some sales books. Read them from sales professionals and read them from people who are not sales professionals. Read little ebooks that famous salespeople have written in real estate because they all have Ryan Sirhant. The list goes on. Read their books. I read their books. I don’t like what they say. A lot of times, I read their books. You should do it because you want to know what they’re saying works, and then you want to practice it if you think it would work for you. That’s all I got. John, how would you like to sign off for the year? The year?
Well, I believe in the Hybrid system. You need to get out there and go to business events, kinds of community, social events, and discussions. Don’t be one of those agents that keeps handing your card out, but have discussions and, you know, do video, have some digital marketing strategy. And if you combine, you know, you might have to. If you’re new and haven’t minted, you’re not doing open houses, which you should do. You’re going to have to buy some leads. You’re going to have to go to reiter.com and buy them. But I don’t need to because I think as a newer agent, I’ll be a mentor with an agent, and I’ll do open housing. But I would do a video. I would have a decent website. I’ll get the package up and running and be at it. I won’t be doing cold calling because I don’t. If I thought it worked, I would do it. If it meant success or failure, I would do it. I’ll do anything. Right. Rather than end up on the street.
Right, Right. But I don’t believe it works now, so I don’t have to do that. Right. In my opinion. Right, Right.
Right. I find no better way to sign off the show. I would like. I hope everybody listening to the show will mentally do what I’m going to do and wish you a farewell or success. Whichever. Whichever is more appropriate depends on what you end up doing, whether you visit your family where you stay home and get some stuff knocked out. Could you take a break from the marketing schedule? I have had a lot of fun in 2024.
I’m looking forward to 2025 and wish you well, sir.
All right, we’ll see you later, folks. I wish you and your family a happy Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year, and we’ll see you in 2025.
Same, same. All right, take us offline.
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Difficult market? No problem! Learn how realtors can achieve a full six free with expert tips and innovative tactics to stand out.
With Special Guest Steve Shull From Performance Coaching.
Are you feeling the pinch in a complex real estate environment? This video is here to help! We explore practical methods for realtors looking to maintain their hard-earned full 6% commission despite market challenges. From leveraging technology to refining sales pitches, gain valuable knowledge that empowers you as an agent. Take charge of your career—tune in now and uncover strategies for thriving in any market!
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode 455 of the Mailright Show today. We are ecstatic and blessed to have a guest with us. Steve, we’ve been very particular over the last year about the people we allow on the show. So today’s guest is Steve Shuhl. I’m not sure, and this is my wrong; I wonder if you’re the founder or if you merely work for performance coaching. You could start there.
I am the founder.
Okay. So you’re the founder of performance coaching, and the subject that we decided to talk about today was how realtors can still get a complete 6% in a challenging market. Before we go any further, Steve, why not introduce yourself to our audience and explain why you feel you can give advice that would get that result?
Awesome. Again, thank you for having me. Again, my name is Steve Shoal. I grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I attended the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, on a football scholarship. From there, I had the good fortune of playing four years in the NFL for the Miami Dolphins, playing under Don Shula, the winningest coach in NFL history, and a knee injury ended my career. From there, I went back on an MBA at the University of Miami. From there, I went to Wall Street, spent five years on Wall Street, and worked for Solomon Brothers as a fixed-income institutional salesperson. Then, in 1991, I changed everything in my life and I moved from the East Coast to the West Coast, moved out to Southern California, and started selling residential real estate in 1991. With a partner in my first year, we closed 53 transactions. And then, in my second year, I was on track to close 100 transactions Connections. And I went to a gentleman, Mike Ferry, who was putting on real estate seminars at the time that I had been attending, came to Mike with the idea of starting a real estate coaching program.
And Mike liked the idea. And in 1993, we launched the first real estate coaching program in the country, in the world, whatever. And I’ve done that ever since. I went out on my own in 1996 for performance coaching in 2007 and opened up with two partners. My brokerage, TELUS Properties, was there for five years. That brokerage ultimately sold to Douglas Element. And here we are in 2024. I’ve been coaching for 32 years. I’ve logged over 60,000 hours of one-on-one coaching. I can safely say I’ve coached more real estate agents than anyone on Earth, and I’m here today.
Copy you. Well, we’re overjoyed to have you, Steve. Your history makes you a legend, for sure. Just the fact that you were there with Mike before his son Tom split off and became the guy that he is is astounding. And for those who missed that, I referenced Tom Ferry, who is Mike Ferry’s son, for all of you following along. All right, John, why don’t you introduce yourself? A hard act to follow. I’m going to go last.
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Rob. I’m the joint founder of mail-right. Com. We are a digital lead platform for real estate agents who want to do their campaigns, or we can do their campaigns. It’s a CRM, an email text platform. We also produce a fantastic-looking website for our agents. Back over to you, Rob.
It’s funny, Steve because I usually get to say on every single podcast that I am the most experienced SEO guy in the US because I still, to this very day, talk to three or four real estate professionals every single day. And I’ve been doing it for 16 years. That’s only half as much time as you’ve been doing it. I am no longer the most experienced anything. I may know more about SEO, but I have yet to talk to more real estate agents and have not logged 60,000 hours. You win the prize, my friend. Thank you for this particular session. You feel like you’ve got some good advice, and it sounds like you would have some great advice. So why don’t we dig into it? John, why don’t you lead us off since you’re the one who did the show notes?
Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Rob. So Steve, after you agreed to come to the show, I watched some of your previous and recent interviews. You did an interview on a panel show about a year ago, and one of the topics was how you prove your value. I think it was around when you were discussing when you do a presentation, and I think you used a concept… Use a specific concept about you being the apparent choice when presenting.
Yeah, I thought it had always been my favorite.
Yeah, the favorite. That was the concept that you used. And then it got around And that concept led into really proving that you can get your full 6 %. And you were quite passionate in some of your statements in that panel show around getting that 6 % and the process of proving your value around that. So I just wondered if you’ve had any more thoughts about that particular concept, because everything that’s occurred afterwards, there’s a lot of agents that are very concerned about them not being able to get anything like that because of all the changes in the industry. Like I said, I don’t know if you got any new thoughts about what you stated during that roundtable.
Yeah, absolutely. Along with Chris Voss, who’s a former FBI hostage negotiator, and Chris wrote the book, Never Split the Difference, which I’m sure a lot of your listeners may have read. And I hooked up with Chris a little over eight years ago when I read that book because everything in that book, everything about hostage negotiations, applies to the world of real estate. And we adapted all of his material into the real estate world. And one of the concepts that we talk about is the favorite or the fool. And the entire real estate industry, and this is where what we do is very different from the rest of the real estate training world. The entire real estate industry is built on a false premise. And that false premise is that you win or lose business, a) based on your value proposition position and b) on your ability to articulate your value to a potential seller or a potential buyer. That’s not how it actually happens. When that seller calls you up, the call that every real estate agent wants to get, hi, we’re thinking about selling our home and we’d like you to come out and talk to us.
When you get that phone call, that seller already knows who they’re going to list their home with or they’re leaning strongly in a direction. And so they have a favorite. Now, it’s not 100 % of the time when you’re the favorite, you have an 80 % chance or better of getting that listing. When you’re the fool in the game, you have a 20 % chance or less of getting that listing. So what we’re coaching agents to do is find out, am I the favorite or am I the And in a 15 minute Zoom call or phone call, you can get to that outcome. You can find out whether you indeed are the favorite, you’re the person they want to work with or you’re the fool in the game. It’s not about telling them all the things you’re going to do for them. It has nothing to do with anything. And the kicker here getting to your question, when you’re the favorite, when you’re the favorite, they’re going to pay you what your fee They’re going to pay you what your fee because they want to work with you. And it’s based on trust, not value.
And this is where, again, agents go down the wrong path when all they’re trying to do is preach their value and convince people with what they’re going to do. It’s not about value. It’s about trust. And people pay a lot more for trust than value. And so when I know I’m the favorite, when I find out I’m the favorite, then I know, again, it’s not 100 %. It’s not a guarantee. They’re going to pay my full fee. They may push back once. They may push back twice. However, there’s a difference. They’re only fishing. They’re only making sure that they’re not leaving any money on the table. When you’re the fool in the game and they bring up the commission objection, they’re going to try and make you wrong. You have to be able to hear, are they just fishing for why you cost more, or are they trying to make you wrong for why you charge more? There’s a big difference. And now we wrote this book before the NAR settlement. Now, the way I view this, and this is not polyam in any way, shape or form, everything that’s happened since the NAR settlement is really an opportunity for agents to get a pay raise, whereas most agents think they’re going to get a pay cut in this new environment.
Look at it very differently. Pre-nar, the way it’s always been, the whole system bought into this 5 to 6% range on commissions, and 90% of the agents probably were charging somewhere between five and six. Obviously, it’s been going down and down and down. And everyone just accepted that’s the way it is. The most you’re going to get is six. And the average would be five. And Obviously, some people would work for less than five. What the NAR settlement did, it basically decoupled the commissions. In essence, the seller is going to pay their agent, the listing agent, And the buyer is going to pay their agent, the buyer’s agent. And now you’re free to charge whatever you want. You’re not confined by this five to six %. Now, most agents act like they’re still part of that system. However, they’re not. They’re doing that to themselves. And for the longest period of time, the agents I work with when they were when we were charged, they were charging six %. They were keeping three and a half on the on the listing side, offering two and a half on the buy side. Now, as a listing agent, my fee is going to be three and a half % on the listing side or more.
There’s nothing to stop an agent from charging more. And oh, by the way, the reason I say this is an opportunity for a pay raise, most sellers are used to hearing Earning five or six %. When you say to them, my fee is three and a half or my fee is four %, that’s not going to shock them. That’s not going to shock them. So A, on the listing side, three and a half minimum and on the buy side, three % minimum. So now if I’m a top agent, I’m looking at if I understand what I’m doing, I can be earning six, six and a half %. And the agents we work with, they get this consistently. It’s a standard. It’s what they charge everyone. And so that’s why I look at this as an opportunity to get a pay raise.
There’s a lot of… There’s many questions, but I’m going to ask Robert to come in. So what’s your response to that, Robert?
My response is everybody has to wait for my response for exactly 30 seconds while we go to break. And when we come back, I’m going to dig into some of the many points that Steve touched on in his commentary. We’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It is episode number 455. If you missed the first half of the show, let me tell you, Steve is already demonstrating why he coaches the best of the best inside the real estate industry. He was explaining how basically, the way that I interpreted it, was numbers is a mindset. Every time you break free or the standard gets shaken, top agents will figure out ways to make more, not less. Jonathan, just so that you know, I agree with that. It’s been my experience. You have a large amount. Let’s see if you agree with these numbers. Steve, I think you have 20 or 30 % of the bottom performers that will probably end up surrendering their licenses. I think you have probably 20 to 30 % of the top realtors that will make more through this opportunity. They’ll figure out ways to… You use the language uncoupling from the system that NAR put in place.
I just think that they’ll look at all the shakeup as an opportunity to figure out ways to make more money doing what they probably already did well.
Yeah, change is always the seed of growth. And this is a massive change. This is a massive change for everyone. And a lot of people are just looking at, they’ve already resigned themselves to making less. However, that’s self-imposed. They are doing it to themselves. No one’s doing it to them. And as a real estate professional, no one’s ever going to understand your job. Everyone thinks you’re overpaid. Everyone thinks they could do your job better than you. They just don’t have the time or they’re not inclined to do so. And everyone is always reaching into your pocket. And not only do they reach into your pocket, they think they’re entitled to reach into your pocket. And so it may be my biggest passion as a real estate coach, that is getting you paid what you’re worth. And you can absolutely get paid what you’re worth, assuming you do the work. You’ve got to back it up. You’ve got to be competent. You’ve got to be trustworthy. You’ve got to be a straight shooter. But if you put in the work, you can absolutely get paid a full fee in this environment.
Yeah. So, John, I know you served it up and probably you would think I was going to give Steve a Robert special in terms of a question, but to be honest with you, he’s doing stuff that I would say, Anyway, I’m going to revert to a Warren Buffet quote. Be greedy when other people are running or retreating, and be conservative and cautious when other people are being greedy. And this is one of those moments for real estate. I’ve been saying it a long time in certain ways on the show, desperately, anxiously awaiting the real estate slowdown that has been headed our direction for years now because, one, the real estate market needs an adjustment. Two, the real estate sales force needs to be trimmed, not because I have anything against realtors, but because there are people that are not treating it with the level of sincerity and dedication that they should be that have real estate licenses, and they will get shaken out of the business. Three, the opportunity will be greater for true professionals who take everything with a high degree of pride, like trust. That’s what I heard What does Steve say. Did I get you wrong?
Trust is a big thing, right?
Again, my coaching has evolved over 32 years. When I started out, again, I was new to real estate. I had moved from the East Coast to the West Coast. I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t know anything. I was the classic person starting literally at ground zero. What What I benefited from in the beginning was one, getting coaching in terms of the seminars I was going to. And as a former athlete, I understood what it meant to be coachable. So when I got into this business, what I was told, simple things. You have four choices. You have four ways of making contact. Cold call, door knock, expired listings for sale by owners. That was it. You have to do one of those four things. Those were the four choices I was given. I wasn’t going to cold call and for sale by owners didn’t seem I just didn’t vibe with it at all. By default, it was knock on doors and expired listings. And I knocked on 200 doors a day and I called every expired listing every day in 14 different cities. So I was literally spending a minimum of 4 to 5 hours every day prospecting and following up.
Back in 1991, CRMs did not exist. Top producer wasn’t around. There was nothing. I had to hire a computer programmer paying them $10,000 to create a CRM like program. And that’s what we did. And every lead went in there and we created a system and followed up on every single lead. And again, from playing football, I knew what it meant to be coachable. You do what you’re supposed to do. And it’s not about liking it. You talked about realtors leaving the business. There’s another category where they quit and don’t leave. And that takes up another big segment of the market. They don’t leave physically, but they’ve given up. And And so another book that I wrote is called Real Estate is not Rocket Science. I call it that because guess what? It’s not rocket science. It’s not rocket science. The way I got into real estate, I heard an interview that Mike Ferry was doing with two agents in Long Beach, California, Kim and Darryl Rouse. And they were in their second year of business and they were doing 100 deals. So I was listening, what are they doing? And what I got out of that interview is real estate is a progression.
Contacts equal leads, leads, equal appointments, appointments, equal listings, listings equal sales. That made perfect sense to me. And so that’s why I went out. And the thing I was told, again, back then, I was fortunate because Mike Ferry had this thing, if you didn’t do 50 deals a year, you were worthless. You were worthless. In my head, I had to do 50 deals a year. In order to do 50 deals a year, you had to talk to 50 people a day. It was all very straightforward. So that’s why 200 doors a day. That’s why I was calling expired listings. The goal was to make 50 contacts a day. And again, this is completely by coincidence. I ended up closing 53 deals in that first year in a market that was so horrible. If you could get something sold in 90 days, that was a miracle. Here I am, a rookie. Imagine this first year in real estate, 40 listings, no escrows. That’s how different the market is, especially from today. Anyway, the story here, in the beginning, it was all about prospecting. It was all about lead generation, lead conversion. Where my coaching has evolved to today, it’s all about building a repeat and referral business.
So in the beginning, most people have to lead generate. You have to do it. You have to figure out how you’re going to make contact. And again, there aren’t that many ways. You can cold call, you can door knock, expired for sale by owners, open house, network, marketing. There are only so many different ways to generate leads. You’ve got to figure out what you’re going to do, and that’s up to you. There’s no one size fits all. However, now where the coaching is evolved to is making sure that all everything goes in your CRM and CRM is very simple. There’s three parts to CRM, get the right people in, organized, grouped and tagged in the right way. There’s It’s four main groups, active clients, leads, past clients, sphere of influence. And there’s definitions for each group. You get the right people in, get them set up on the right cadence. And then you got to make your calls every day. Again, this is not rocket science. And in order to do that, you have to time block out your CRM time every day, minimum one hour. And so that’s what we coach people on building a repeat and referral business, staying in touch every 90 days, reaching out by phone or in person.
You can follow up with text. You can follow up with email. It’s still a people business. You still have to talk to people. And going back to what you brought up, what you’re working to do every day is to position yourself as a trusted advisor. And what that means means is you put your client’s interest first. When I teamed up with Chris Voss, the methodology that they had come up with in the hostage negotiation world was called tactical empathy. And tactical empathy is the skill of influencing others by articulating what they’re thinking and feeling. What that means is making people feel understood. And this is the missing piece in all of sales. You get a lot of training about how to understand someone, how to ask questions, how to find out what’s going on. However, there’s a missing piece. Once you understand what’s going on, then you have to make them feel understood. And the way you make them feel understood is by labeling back to them what they’re thinking and feeling. It sounds It’s like, it seems like, it feels like, you’re probably thinking, you’re probably feeling. So there’s a way of labeling back so they get that you get what they’re thinking and feeling.
And so we call that mirroring. But I understand what you’re saying.
And mirroring is one of the tools that we use in tactical empathy. Now, again, we’re not trying to manipulate people to our advantage. That’s not what this is all about. Tactical empathy is about making people feel understood. What we’re trying to do is uncover the truth. Am I the favorite or am I the fool in the game? And the way we do that, we have a little framework that we go by. One, is there a deal here? That’s the first thing we’re trying to figure out. Is there a deal here? Secondly, is Is there a deal here with me? And third, do I want this deal? And within this framework, there’s a progression of questions, labels, different tools in the tactical empathy toolbox that we’re going to ask to uncover what’s true. Again, we’re not trying to convince anybody of anything. I’m not trying to get someone to do business with me. I’m finding out who Who wants to do business with me? And again. You can do this on by phone or on a Zoom call in roughly 15 minutes or less. Nothing magical about the 15 minute mark. However, the agents we coach, they do not go on listing appointments.
Right now, when you get a call, the call I mentioned earlier, you’re thinking of selling our home, we’d like you to talk to us. You say, great, you set an appointment Then you’re going to spend 2 hours minimum preparing for that appointment. You’re going to drive out to the house. You’re going to take a tour of the home. Then you’re going to sit down there in the living room. You’re going to take out your presentation and you’re going to spend an hour to 2 hours going through your presentation, either formally or informally. After that two hour meeting, they’re going to say to you, wow, you’ve given us so much to think about. Let us get back On the way back, you don’t know, did I get it? Did I not get it? You’re replaying the whole meeting. I should have said this. I should have said that. You’re on pins and needles for 24, 48, 72 hours. Then your phone rings. You see it’s them. Your heart starts beating. Oh, my goodness. They get you on the phone. They say, Steve, you did a really tremendous job. You gave us so much to think about.
However, we’re going to go in a different direction. And your heart stops and you feel defeated. You can barely say thank you and hang up the phone. We could have saved all of that and gotten to that same conclusion in 15 minutes or the opposite conclusion. You got the listing.
So I agree I’m with you, but Steve, I’m going to have you put a pin in it really quick because we break this show into segments. We’ve done 30 minutes. We’re going to do 10 bonus minutes. If you’d like to continue on to the subject, we can definitely do that in the bonus section, assuming that you sign up with us for the extra 10 minutes because we’re going to post it to our YouTube channel. Yeah, you’re good? All right. John, I’m going to ask for a small favor, Steve. You’ve been going down this path with the response for for a listing point, which I think is great. I think it’s a great piece of information. But I would like to give John… John does all the donkey work for the show. He does a lot of research. He probably watched a couple of hours of your video, so he’s probably got a few things prepared that he may want to ask before the show ends. So if you don’t mind, I would just like to give him that opportunity to ask any remaining questions and give you a chance to respond. Is that okay?
You got it.
All right, John.
You answered one of the questions, which is finding out if you’re the favorite or the fool. What’s your opinion of how all clients are different? But in general, based on your experience, what are the key factors that in the client’s mind makes the agent the favorite?
Great question. Based on the work that Chris Voss did, we break people down into three types: the assertive, the accommodator, and the analyst. And most real estate agents are accommodators. They’re people-pleasers. An accommodator is someone who puts relationship first. The assertive is the bottom line guy. And the analyst, it’s all about data. And so it’s important that you understand who you are and what your style of communication is, because if you really want to be effective with a client, you need to be able to adapt what you’re saying to how they hear things. So you can read based on responses, is someone an accommodator? Are they an analyst? Are they an assertive? And adapt how you communicate to them. Because, again, what’s important is making them feel understood. And what’s going to make them feel more understood is speaking their language. The accommodator speaks the language of hope. The assertive, it’s all about respect. And the analyst, it’s all about the numbers. So knowing who you’re speaking with gives you an idea of how to tailor your communication communication to that person.
Yeah, I think they’re great points, but I might be being a little bit slow here, but are you saying that the agent, they communicate in one of those styles and through their website, through their social media, through all the marketing mediums, when they’re meeting people at events, they’ve got one of those communication styles, and that’s what they attract similar possible clients because of their communication style. Is that what you’re saying?
What I’m saying is you want to be able to do business with everyone. And you need to understand your personality type, because if we just say there’s three basic types, that means two thirds of the world is not the same type you are. They’re going to hear information in a different way. And the beautiful thing about tactical empathy, it’s not a business thing. It’s a life thing. It’s a way of communicating. Making people feel understood is something you can practice all the time in every conversation with the kids at home, with your spouse, your partner, whomever, work associate, work associate in business. It’s a way of communicating that focuses on making it always about the other person, always making it about them. In fact, what you want to do to be the most effective communicator is you want to take yourself out of the equation altogether. It’s not about what you want and need. It’s always about what they want and need. And when you’re able to do that, when you’re able to detach your needs, your wants from any interaction with anyone, that’s going to build that trust that we talked we talked about earlier.
And ultimately, that’s what’s going to end up resulting in more business.
But I have it here, Rob.
So we’re going to head towards a windup. And when we do, Steve, we’re going to ask you for some contact information. I’m just going to give a very brief synopsis of what I heard you say, but I am going to move it slightly out of the territory that you’ve been talking about it in. Our show and our focus is oftentimes on discussions surrounding digital, and you are very much a traditionalist, which so that you know, my personal history is 100 % everything that you said. I’ve knocked on tens of thousands of doors. I did so for ADT among many, many contracts. I’ve done massive amounts of cold calling. And in the last part of my career here, I’ve moved into inbound marketing, mostly because I did so much cold calling and so much door knocking. I just got a little bit tired of it. So I moved. I shifted as technology caught up to my my philosophy, which is a Zigler thing. If you help enough people get what they want, you’ll always get what you want. I moved that skill set into digital. I moved it into answering really important questions for people. And you’ve been talking a lot about tone, and personality types and things like that.
So, for those of you listening to the show who are long-time listeners, I will say this: when you decide on a persona online, which I decided long ago, I’m just going to be myself, Steve. I’m not anybody else. I’m just me. And so I’m a fast talker. I’m much younger than I look. And so I gravitate. The people that call me tend to be younger, tech-savvy people.
But interestingly, my experience is more towards Mike Ferry. I am much more inclined to talk to a Mike Ferry guy than I am to most other people because when somebody tells me I’m on the phone four hours a day, God, do I ever get that? So, for those listening, decide on a persona and then speak to that persona on your social media. My advice is not to try to be all things in one to everybody. Be one thing and decide, and you’ll appeal to that market segment. But digital is vast, unlike picking up a list and calling 50, 60, 70, 80, or 100 names. It’s vast. It’s 10,000 people, 100,000 people, 1 million people.
A single video can speak to God knows how many people. But the only people who will call you are those who automatically gravitate to your particular tone and personality type. That’s been my experience, at least. So thank you so much for coming on to the show, Steve. Undoubtedly, we still need to gain the voice of experience on the show, especially regarding great traditional sales wisdom. There’s nothing that will ever stop a determined sales salesperson from making money. All you got to do is Tom Hopkins used to call it get belly to belly. You’re calling it something different. Everybody had some way of saying it. But, if you have the drive to get in front of people, you can sell it, full stop. If you want to knock on doors, it’ll work today, just like 20 years ago. The numbers might be slightly higher because of the way that people answer doors and rings and stuff like that. But it doesn’t matter. If you’re determined to go out and knock on doors, you will make some money.
How would you like people- The thing I would… Sorry to butt in a little bit. You can take everything I say and adapt it to digital, meaning not making it about you, making it about them, seeing the world through their eyes, inviting them to get to know you, to make space in whatever you do for them to want to know more about you, know who you are. The great thing about digital is that it’s a huge amplifier for this foundation of building relationships. It gives you the ability every day to set the foundation with personal contact; now, you can amplify that foundation in an unlimited way.
I love that. All right, we’re at the end of our time today. Again, I want to thank you very much, Steve. I have yet to hear your name directly, but your work history industry suggests that you are a legend in the industry. I’m so thrilled that we got you on the show. Thank you, John, for having arranged that. I appreciate it. Steve, if you wanted people to reach out to you, talk to you, or do whatever it is going to be, how would you like them to do that?
You can go to the website, www. Performancecoaching. Com. If you would like to ask a question, please email support@performancecoaching. Com. And we’ve got books on Amazon, the full-fee agent, real estate is Not Rocket Science, and the real estate team playbook. So go on to Amazon. We’ve got three books for you.
Beautiful. And John, if you wanted people to do the same with you, how would you have people reach out to you and get in touch with you, research you, or do whatever you think they should do?
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Rob. Just go either to the mail-right. Have a look at the Com website. You can book a free chat with me or go to the Mail-Right YouTube channel. We have many videos and cover many of the concepts discussed in the podcast. Back over to you, Rob.
Beautiful. For those of you who liked my way of podcast-helping you through this episode, you can always do more research about me at Inboundrm. Com. I walk my talk. Every lesson I’ve learned, everything you need to know about SEO, is all there for you to read and engage with for free. If you want to talk to me directly, email me at robert@inboundarium. Com. All right, guys, it’s been a great show. I appreciate it. John will take us offline, and we’ll spend 20 seconds talking to you, Steve, about some wrap-up stuff after the show.
We discuss with our special guest Greg McDaniels the importance of quality photography connected to being a successful real estate Read more
Agents need to do more than blogging to get results in 2016. We discuss this during this show with our two Read more
Greg McDaniel literally began his career at his father’s knee. It would not be an exaggeration to say he has Read more
Personal agent photography is really important but usually semi-forgotten. We have a great guest "Preston Zeller" on the show who recently Read more
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Make the phone ring with powerful digital campaigns! Unlock proven techniques for engaging audiences and driving conversions now.
Unlock the secrets to crafting digital campaigns that generate leads and make your phone ring off the hook! In this video, we’ll guide you through proven strategies for targeting your ideal audience, creating compelling content, and leveraging data analytics to optimize your outreach. Whether a small business owner or a seasoned marketer, these insights will elevate your campaign game.
#1 – Standing Out in a Crowded Market
Priming
Scarcity
Surprising Statistics
Curiosity
#2 – How Do You Build Real Trust With Your Customer?
#3 – Attracting Quality Prospects Without Chasing
#4 – Maximizing Your ROI
Here we go, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 454. We will talk about some general rules that will work on creating digital campaigns that will make your phone ring. As usual, my co-host, Jonathan Dinwood, has done the research for the show. He’s chosen the subject for the show. He’s given the show notes for the show. He’s going to put them up on the MailRight channel. This is his second or third podcast. I always need to remember how many he does. It is a labor of love. I hope some of you will thank John because he is the engine that runs this thing. Before I go any further into anything about you, man, why don’t you explain to people who you are?
Oh, thanks, Rob. I’m the joint founder of mail-right. Com. We’re a marketing platform. We provide great websites, CRM, email, and SMS messaging campaigns. We combine that with Facebook. It’s a great platform. Back over to you, Rob.
So, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve never done this on this show before. John has asked me to do it for years. I’m a bizarre guy. I look at the market as a whole. This platform that John built is extraordinarily well-positioned right now. It’s a minimal investment. It has a lot of functionality. It is on the lower side, with a higher engagement from the founder. It may or may not work as smoothly as some of these other platforms. However, it is less expensive. It’s built on WordPress. And if you are thinking about learning the skills that will lead you to substantial digital success, this would be the tool that might do well for you. I am not making any guarantees. It’s possible. If you were going to think about ever, if you’re a new realtor, first year or two, and you’re tired of getting quoted $500 to $1,000 a month for any marketing system you look at, this is a no-brainer. It is. You’ve got an engaged founder who will probably, again, I don’t know for sure, I haven’t worked with him in this capacity, that will probably hold your hand walking you through the platform, make sure you know how to use it, which is also incredibly hard to find out there.
Any of you guys who have bought new systems or are new realtors already know what I’m talking about because sometimes it’s not a matter of having a good tool. It’s learning how to use it and having somebody properly give you the structure to use it. Having said all that, my name is Robert Newman. For those who don’t know me, I’m one of the industry’s most prolonged-standing and experienced voices regarding SEO and search engine optimization. I talk about CRMs and other things on my website, inboundrem. Com. It makes me qualified to talk about campaigns that will make the phone ring and stuff like that. I’ve been doing it for 16 years, making me one of the longest-standing founders still doing content like this. While we will get going on the subject, I apologize to those who bore through that enormously long and very advertising-like intro to the show. It’s just the industry is just this is the perfect time. Make the phone ring with a robust digital campaign to unlock proven techniques for engaging the audience and driving conversions now.
And, John, you usually look at something behind the scenes. You didn’t link me to the thing behind the scenes that you looked at this particular time. Before you jump into, because I’m going to have you do, number one, standing out in a crowded market, I will have you take that and run with it. But usually, you have inspiration. Usually, you look around and go to this person, person, or site.
That’s a polite way, folks, to say I’ve nicked some ideas of somebody else, which is true. I look at the content out there and whatever I think the audience would be interested in, and I try to manipulate it so we add some additional value to it.
Is there somebody who inspired this?
Yeah, it was an interview. I’m surprised I didn’t send you the link. It was an interview, and I forgot their names, but I’ll include them in the show notes. Jimmy, he’s Jimmy. He’s been on the podcast quite a while ago. Burgess.
Jimmy is brilliant.
And he was having an interview with one of the founders of Curator, and they were going through some of these basic concepts of branding and marketing that work. And it’s a bit further along than our last podcast, which was very 101. This moves the discussion to a more sophisticated level.
For those of you who don’t know them, and I’m sure most of you do, because he’s bigger than John and I combined. Jimmy Burgess is an actual real estate broker who is creating and building a platform because I think ultimately he’s trying to let agencies It’s number one, I think he wants to do good by agents, and number two, I think he wants to let everybody know that there’s an option to move to him in his brokerage and get the help and training that a lot of agents need. I will say that Jimmy Jimmy is one of the very few voices I listen to. I read his content; I listen to his content. He’s got some creative, brilliant ideas. John and I accidentally nicked one of his ideas without knowing it was one of Jimmy’s. We did that three years ago when we discussed a generating method, which was 9 million or 90 million. An extraordinarily high number of people, using this prospecting method, used Google Earth. Jimmy came up with a thought about prospecting that was just brilliant. It’s just brilliant. We both thought it was clever, and we did a show about its brilliance.
So today, we’re going to do something else. We’re going to talk about standing out in a crowded market. Here’s the one thing I want to say: John and I probably have more experience directly in the digital space than Jimmy might. And that’s perhaps the spin on our show that we’re going to take on this subject, which is the digital elements of this.
Oh, so I also think he’s one of the more credible voices in the training influencer market. It’s like three or four that I think have some credibility, and I think he’s got some real credibility, and he’s a decent guy, isn’t he?
He really is. He’s a great human. Well, I don’t know how good of a human he is, but I know he’s a good guy, and he’s done our show, and he seems to really have some… He is the sales manager and sales leader that you’d want to work for if you were a good salesperson, because he’s going to give you ideas that you don’t already have yourself, and then he’s going to also inspire you to go out and utilize those ideas. That’s just real hard to find, and I think that Jimmy does bring that to the table. What’s more, he is a generalist, which there are very few of those out there. He is good at talking to you about all the elements of being a real estate salesperson, psychology and digital and how to actually go out and do the deal, how to knock on a door. He’s a generalist. He has a lot to say on a lot of subjects, and he generally tends to know what he’s talking about. I think that’s very rare, actually, John. I think he’s one of a kind when you take into account that he’s a really high-performing real estate broker.
Him and Kyle Handy, maybe, I think, are the two that And I think he strikes me as being a little more experienced than Kyle. He seems to have more to say on more subjects. So having said all that, why don’t you lead us into scanning out in a crowded market?
Yeah, I think some of the basic marketing psychology principles, and I’ve just put down four, and one is priming. Priming is the language, the photographs, the subliminal messaging that you’re transmitting to your target audience. I think a lot… I don’t know what Rob is going to think of this, but I think priming, I think when it comes to real estate agents, The most direct example that a lot of agents gets is around marketing to luxury market. But this applies to other sectors, but they get it a bit easier when you talk to the difference between the luxury market and the normal market, where you’re going to need better photography. There’s a higher expectation of the website. I think you can apply this, and you should apply it to non-luxury market. But I think this is just my observation, Robert, and you might have a different view on it. But I just think agents accept it when it comes to luxury a bit easier, the concept of priming. That’s why I’ve brought that example. And then we got scarcity. Well, you find that with a lot of marketing, online marketing is people, they tend to feel that there’s less of a risk in doing nothing, where the The reality is there’s a big risk in doing nothing, missing opportunity, time goes quickly.
But as human beings, I think instinctively, the easy option is to do nothing, where scarcity, you utilize the principle scarcity to just move the person to actually take action. Because as human beings, I believe that in built into our psychology is there’s a benefit of not acting on anything. It’s the more secure position that most of us take subconsciously, all right? And then using surprising statistics. Well, we have a view of the world. We all have this internal view of how the world works. And surprising statistics can challenge, be disruptors. They can challenge how we see something. I think. It’s like with animal behavior. If you’ve got a dog that barks a quick snap of the fingers or quick movement, can shake an animal out of a mindset. Well, When it comes to human beings, surprising statistics can shake us out of the norm we see a situation. That’s how I view it. Then you got curiosity. Well, I think we are curiosity machines. I think that’s one of humanity’s strengths. We are always curious. Well, most of us are. There’s a few people I’ve met done as they come, and they’re not very curious, but most of us are curious.
So if you can induce that in your marketing, I think that would be beneficial. And so that’s my basic outline of these four basic principles, Robert.
So all of these things are correct, but I think that oftentimes… Here’s a surprising trend in my own videos, John. I’ve been discovering that the videos that I do, just me in a desk and a talking head, and showing people specifically how I do something I have been getting a lot more traction lately than my whiteboard videos and my general knowledge videos. I think that the reason for that is simple. I just really quickly googled Jimmy Burgess, and I found hundreds of posts that he’s done. I use the word Jimmy Burgess in Prime trying to look up something for this podcast that we’re doing. I can’t find it easily. And nor did AI help me, did not get me to the place I wanted to go. And that’s because he’s I’ve done a lot of content. I think everybody’s done it. So I’m going to do something I don’t generally do. When you’re talking about priming, you’re really saying you want a good introduction or a attention-grabbing photo to start your campaign off, or an attention-grabbing headline is what we use to focus on in AdWords. And with SEO, we talk about attention-grabbing metadata, which is the sentence below the subject header When you get a search result, you get the search result and then you get the sentence, the metadata is written by the SEO team.
So we do have the chance to basically advertise even in organic results. It’s called priming or attention-grabbing. Jimmy, God bless his heart, is using his own language to do the subject, to do the content. I would probably call it something different. But one way or the other, it is grabbing somebody’s attention. John is not You could do that through a photo. You could use AI for these photos. You could use whatever for the photo. But what we cannot teach you is creativity. Humor grabs attention. Truth grabs attention when presented in an interesting way. Last but not least, for those of you that were really following along with what John just said, a amazing photography partner will grab attention every single There’s a photographer whose name I forget in Colorado who is the most in demand photographer in the entire real estate world because he takes these extraordinary pictures of Colorado homes in the mountains He has this way of lighting the homes. He hides all these colored lights, John. It’s crazy. What he does is he enhances the natural colors on the outside of the house, and he somehow puts lights in the environment surrounding the so that the trees are lit.
When you see these photos, they look fake. They’re so good, but they’re not fake. They are a guy who just really understands lighting. Every time somebody lists one of the homes where they’ve used this guy as a photographer, they get thousands upon thousands of clicks. Why? The guy is taking pictures that are extraordinary, and that is priming because you want to see what’s inside the house based on the amazing photographer photography on the outside of the house. Here’s the crazy part, John, it’s not even necessarily luxury. A vertical, a very specific type of property, yes, but not necessarily luxury. So priming.
The reason why I use the luxury example, because I agree with you, there’s a lot… I just used it, Rob, is that our audience, I think they tend to bundle all other… I might be wrong here, Rob, but I just feel they bundle all into one category, and they accept luxury as a separate, and they understand the materials, the priming that they’re going to have to provide on the website and other materials is going to be different to every other property that they tend to bundle in one big category.
I agree. Hey, ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to drop a name I’ve never dropped stopped on this show before. She was put on my radar recently. She’s been put on my radar many times. She’s been doing some stuff lately that I really love. She’s doing some brand ambassador stuff. She’s got 5,000 subscribers in the hardest market to crack into in terms of digital, that would be San Francisco. Her name is Ruth Krishnan, K-R-I-S-H-N-A-N. Ladies and gentlemen, check Ruth’s site out. Check her photos out. Don’t copy her crying out loud. Understand that there is a creative process. Ruth’s creative process is simple and direct. It matches my philosophy with her with a much higher level of branding acumen. In order to make a simple brand really pop, you actually need to be an incredible brand person. Ruth is either that herself or works with other people that are. If you want to see a simple video, a simple editing, but really moves the needle, you’ll look at her. But priming. Second, scarcity. A scarcity is easy right now. Scarcity is so simple because most of you, over 80% of the people listening to the show right now, Jonathan, should be dealing with inventory crises like they’ve never dealt with before in their entire career.
So scarcity, which is what Jimmy is saying, like a pocket listing, or it won’t be available for long, or we have a rare listing in neighborhood name. And what I love about scarcity in today’s market is I live in Vanhijs. You don’t get more Metro or more unsexy or unexciting than the city I live in. And I promise everybody listening to the show right now Now, if I was listing a listing in Vanhijs, I would absolutely use the scarcity tactic. Why? Nobody’s selling in Vanhijs. Nobody’s selling anywhere. So when something came onto the market, I would say it’s not going to be on the market long. You should look Look at this now. Look at it fast before they change their mind. Scarcity. You know what the best part is? It’s truthful. Who knows? Scarcity. Surprising statistics. I loved what John had to say about this. I’m going to add my own little element to it. Surprising statistics are… One of the things I like about another name I’m going to drop, the guy that talks about statistics that I follow the most is usually Christoff, too, who does market updates every month. It’s central to his marketing strategy.
He adds it to his website. And by the way, his pages rank for terms like Bellar real estate. All right? So it’s working really well. Him just taking a look at statistics. But what he does do is he adds context after being in the business for 20 years, reads the statistics off a screen, but then says this might be like right now, prices are plummeting in Beverly Hills. I’ll bet everybody would not guess why. Well, there’s a mansion tax in LA that just came into effect. It’s 4 or 5%. And guys like stars that just weren’t paying enough attention are trying to list their home. And usually famous people can list their home for a premium. Jim Carrey has had to lower his house price three different times already, and it’s down like he’s already down about 12 million off the ask, the original asking. That is not a small number, everybody. It is down by 35 to 40 %. So when Christoff did his numbers recently, I was surprised. It was like a 20 % drop in a market that doesn’t generally see 3 % drops, 20 % in Beverly Hills. Sometimes the market does your job for you.
Sometimes. When it does, you should really call that out. Curiosity. Curiosity is like… All of you listening to the show right now might get curious. You might Google Christoff. Curiosity is a major driver for some of us because some of you might want to check my info, go, That can’t possibly be right. Once you surprised somebody, you might not go… That can’t possibly I need to be correct. I got to be honest with all of you. I did a double take, and then I verified Christoff’s information. It seemed wrong to me. It was so surprising. It turns out that it wasn’t. That’s how I got onto a rabbit hole that made me find out that Jim People like Jim Carrey, that’s how I got down the whole rabbit hole. It was the only curiosity, I can’t buy those homes. If the price keep dropping, maybe I can, but I certainly can’t right now. What’s happening is the tax This is 4-5% straight off the top. That’s what the tax is. It’s anything over $5 million in certain cities. These guys are just like, they at least have to drop their price by 5%, at at least because nobody wants to pay that tax just to buy the home.
So curiosity will take you a long way in your marketing. The thing is, you have to have an understanding of what might make somebody curious If you had a surprising number, a great photo, or any of the things that were on our list, they will already be curious. So it’s all taken care of if you get anything one through three on the campaign, right? The curiosity will be there. Now you can say, Click here to learn more, and curiosity drives the click, drives the propellant into the campaign. Another thing about curiosity, and it’s not as good of a strategy as it it used to be, but it is still viable, is curious about somebody who seems to be really good at what they do, like hundreds of five-star reviews, so on and so forth. You really want That drives curiosity, especially if you happen to be in a market where a lot of people aren’t really maintaining that reputation. Sometimes curiosity is just driven by results, like really good results. John, why don’t you take us into the neck? Well, hold on. Let me look at the time here. You know what? We’re going to go to break.
Sorry, we really over extended. We’re going to take a little quick break so that you can hear from our sponsors. No, I’m just kidding. John and I sponsor the show. We’re going to take a quick break. We will be right back. And when we come back, we will have some other great subjects for you from talking another 10 or 15 minutes about how to make your phone ring. All right, thank you so much. We’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 454. We’re talking about how to create digital campaigns that make the phone ring. We just did a really long number one with a lot of sub-subjects. Number two is simpler. How do you build your trust with your consumers? Jon, how do you do it?
Well, I think there’s two ways. One way, I’m not the on, because I think if you got good testimonials, and they’re real testimonials, and you put effort, the Melright system, part of it is getting testimonials out of people, doing surveys and identifying those that will give you a good testimonial. But I think having good testimonials, but the more not so obvious is, I think, something that you’ve touched on in other episodes about the importance of the About Us page, about story, about telling people about your background, about why you got into a particular industry, why you started your company. I think you’ve promoted that quite a bit in a couple of our episodes. And I see that as building trust as well. So there’s the more obvious testimonials, and then the less obvious but equally powerful, which is around storyline and telling people about yourself in a not in a boastful way, but in a way that if you wanted to know more about Robert, the way you would give that information over to people.
I think it’s It’s interesting that you touch on this because I need to be really honest with you, and I need to be really honest with the audience. Trust building the way that I do it, John, has always gotten mixed results. I’ve actually had leaders of companies fire me or demote me because of the way that I like to build trust. It’s too much honesty. I’ve always gotten busted for it because a lot of business owners and a lot of people in general think that too much detail is bad, too much information is bad. And I understand that sentiment. You get too personal, which I’ve definitely done on my website, because it’s my company now and I can do whatever the hell I want. But I always understood the argument. I did. I really did. I didn’t always have the highest sales numbers. I was usually one through three everywhere I’ve ever worked. But here’s what I did have that is a little more hard to articulate. I always had one of the highest profit mixes and client retention levels at every single organization that I ever worked at. Full stop, always, way up there.
Because when… And John, you own a business, you You know how this goes? We all would wish, we cross our fingers and we say, We want every customer relationship to run perfect. John wants that. I want that. Everybody wants that. We walk into the relationship with good intentions. It doesn’t always work out that way. Because of that, if you built a lot of trust in the beginning and you have a strong, integrity filled relationship dynamic with the person that you’re dealing with, I’m not saying those situations are great. I’m just saying they become more manageable. They become more navigatable for both parties because at least there is some trust. There’s the basic understanding that I’m not trying to rip you off. You may not be getting what you want, but I am not actively trying to screw you. If you come from that place, I’ve always found that business relationships really become more fruitful. Every now and again, you really accomplish something magnificent where you have something that’s really bad and everybody does poorly or shits the bed, or it’s all just one of a extraordinary situations for one poor client, and they don’t believe you because they’re the client.
Then somehow you turn it around because they stick with you. Then you have this amazing story to go along with that because you manage to pull through eventually. All of this is to say, how do I build trust with my clients? I got to say, I’m doing it right now. I always do it, John. I try to be as honest with every single person as it is within my capability. And I don’t mean just honest about giving a straight answer to a question. I mean giving all the hidden data that normally nobody would say, all the pros and cons, all the actual upsides and actual downsides. That way, nobody It’s got nothing on me at all, ever. If I could think it, if I could see the scenario going wrong in some way, I say, This is what that way might be. Now, obviously, we’re going to do everything in our power, and this is thing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 that we’ve done to try to make sure that doesn’t happen, but it’s theoretically possible it could happen. I actually have my client sign a contract that says they can make no money now because they don’t follow my recommendations.
That’s part of my contract language because that’s the number one reason why my clients don’t make money, is they don’t follow my recommendations. I protect my reputation. It’s like, have I told you that? And then have I given you recommendations? And the answer is, I made you sign a contract that says I have. And then I recorded a call that says I did. So there’s no… How do you build trust? I think it’s rigorous honesty, John. That’s all I think. And yes, reviews help and things help, but the trust comes first, the reviews come second, in my experience. You build the trust, and then when you want the review, it just happens. You say, I need a review. I want to review, we’re willing to review I mean, I’ve never had anybody say no. But that’s because I’m usually spending all that time building the trust. So that’s my… And I’m doing that with honesty, generally speaking. So number three, attracting high quality prospects. And ladies and gentlemen, we’re in 10 minutes of bonus time. So I’m going to do my best because it’s been me holding up this pony show right now. So I’m going to do my best to keep the last couple of subjects short.
But the subjects are attracting quality prospects and getting them to come to you and maximizing your ROI, two of my favorite subjects. So I’m going to try to keep it brief. John, how would you attract a high quality prospect?
Well, I think that’s one of the main pillars of this podcast is for digital marketing, utilizing video, producing good content, hiring your agency if you’re into SEO, evergreen content, If you’re into paid Facebook, paid advertising, have a look at the Melright system. But it’s producing really good content, but also the volume. I also think it’s putting yourself in the mindset of the people that you’re trying to attract if you’re an agent. It’s really having that ability to really relate to your niche audience and really be able to put yourself in their shoes and then produce the content. And I think a lot of people struggle with that.
I absolutely agree. So, ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to say that attracting high quality prospects is one way or the other. Having a high quality funnel or a high quality partner, John, who’s got somebody who’s dedicated to Facebook, who talks to you on the creative and ad placing side. And Ylopo, who’s got realtors working for them that do the same. And everybody’s talking like how you draw people into the funnel in the first place has a lot to do with what you get out of the funnel on the back when you’re using that paid advertising system. And honestly, realtors can’t afford what would be the best way, which is probably really long form commercial-like content. So if you want to do that, you got to learn it on your own. But guess what? If you manage to do a really informative video and then get people to stay engaged with you and really connect with you, there’s absolutely no doubt that’s one of the most sweetest types of inbound marketing that there is because people already feel like they know you. They just do. And when they call you, it’s a conversation with a friend, and you oftentimes have an enormous closing ratio because most Most of the time, people have gone down deep rabbit hole with you.
You’ve already got content in other places that they’ve watched or read or whatever, and they know roughly what you’re offering or what service package you offer as a real estate agent, what value you bring into a relationship with your clients. All those questions are already answered. All you got to do now is simply find or list the home and get the top value for the client, which is what every single real estate agent I’ve ever spoken to once. They want a lead that’s ready to go, and all they’ve got to do is go out and do the mechanics of the real estate transaction, like the negotiation, the listing of the home, the getting of the best price, so on and so forth. But guess what, ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to go back to number three. You know what the funny part is, John, is that in my experience, especially over the last five years, a huge percentage of what just doesn’t get talked about a lot is the establishing of trust along the way. Using funnels and things like that, if you call John, you call whoever, please make sure that you in your head think to yourself that somewhere along the way, you’re going to have to, a minimum, do a 30 to 60 second bit a video to give to your partner to let them establish a connection between the person entering the funnel and you.
That is my only complaint about paid advertising people in general, is that they oftentimes do not leverage, they don’t push the customer to make sure that there is a physical video presentation somewhere in the ad funnel.
You’re totally right, but it’s really linked to what you said about having it in your contract, that you can only encourage enough, you can only advise enough. But people, in your contract you have in it, we can’t be responsible if you don’t follow our advice. You can’t blame us if you don’t get the results that you’re looking for. And it’s a bit people… We always encourage people to do video, but it’s extremely difficult. Some people just don’t want to do it, Rob.
Yeah, and that is 100% true because we say it continuously. We have somebody sign an agreement, yet there’s a certain percentage of my clients just don’t do anything. So I feel you. Last Next is maximizing your ROI. John, I’m going to continue on with this one. So maximizing your ROI. I got to tell you, everybody listening to this show, the first step for all of you is to make sure that maximizing ROI, make sure that here’s the thing. You got to understand where your money is coming from. You know how you do that when we start talking about lead generation? Is you make sure that you talk to your customer and you make an educated guess to find out where the lead was initiated from. In my clients, I say anything that they found. If they say they found you online and you’re not doing paid advertising anywhere, it’s simple. I was responsible. Google. They found you on a Google search somewhere. They may not remember where. That’s fine. They may have followed you for years. That’s fine. If they were referred to you, you write down that they were referred to you. Then you say, Did you go to my website and use my tools?
Maximizing ROI is understanding where your consumers are receiving value from you. That’s a huge percentage of it. Who and where are they looking along the way to hiring you? That way, part of maximizing ROI is making sure that you are not wasting your money in areas that do not carry a maximum result for you. Another way to maximize ROI is make sure that you’re tracking… Like many, many realtors have 15 lead sources. And when I talk to a realtor, John, they’re usually hard-pressed to say they have one. And that’s because they’re not taking into account places like HomeLight and their Zillow profile and other places where they completely and totally list themselves with the expectation that somebody might call them. A realtor has 15 or 20 of those. Every realtor has them. And so you go, what of those sources have you ever gotten a phone call off of? And only one realtor in 100 is able to answer that question. It It’s staggering how bad the tracking is for real estate agents. And if I was a professional salesperson trying to get my phone to ring, the first question I’d want to know is, how did my phone get to ring in the first place?
I asked that question first, every single person ever calls in about an RM, how did you find me? So maximizing your ROI comes to understanding where your ROI is coming from, first and foremost. And then once you know that, once you understand where all your ROI is coming from, you You should be moving around your expenses into the higher profitability buckets. In other words, if you spent $10,000 in one marketing, got you one deal, and you spent $5,000 in marketing, and it got you another deal, the question is, can you spend $5,000 more in the place that got you the one deal? You need to look at where and how your revenue was created, and then you need to invest in the place that revenue was created more, and you need to look for the lowest cost of acquisition over time. That’s another important conversation because my clients see the best result, like year two. And so I need to tell them this strategy, but then I need to say, you need to wait. Some of my clients who are doing hyper local, they get five times ROI in the first year. But that’s not common.
And the good part about local is that while it’s not going to funnel all of your lead flow, it’s not going to probably keep a busy agent completely busy. It is incredibly high ROI, making this a very relevant conversation because the calls are cheaper when you do LSA ads. The actual acquisition of organic consumer calls is cheaper. If you do two deals and you’re spending $5,000 a year on me, but those two deals net you $30,000 in commission, guess what? That’s a 6-1 ROI. It may not be the most impressive form of lead generation that you’ve got, but it’s probably higher ROI. That’s my point on all of this, John. Take it away if you’d like to add something.
The worst return on investment is using, but it has its place. Don’t get me wrong, folks; it is paid advertisement and paid lead generation from Zillow or similar platforms. The next one is paid advertising on Facebook or Google. But combining it with organic video, content on a decent website, social media, and organic outreach is the best. I believe that there are different levels of getting the best return on the investment and the worst, but it’s still understandable why people use it on paid platforms like Zillow and then you. It’s worked down, but they tend to take… There’s a more extended return, but the return is of higher quality and is delivered repeatedly. That’s how I look at it. Well, if you’re leading flow and maximizing…
Just one last thing. So as you know, diversification amongst leads is essential. You could do three to five deals yearly if you do well with a hyper-local campaign. But that’s not enough, John. That’s not enough to make a living. It’s just a very high ROI form of marketing that gets the phone to ring occasionally. You may still need to look at Zillow or anybody else to get the phone ringing more regularly. If you’re a broker, holy cow, You have to be in paid advertising. You got to make the phone ring a lot. You damn well should know, Yeah, I understand, Robert, that it’s low-quality leads. I get it. My people need to be calling something. I have 50 of them. They have to have me make them get out there and go through the sales activity process because they will stumble in some business as long as I can get them in motion. And so that is a different subject. And maximizing ROI inside that process is really about funnel optimization, scripts, and everything that 99% of all sales trainers talk about.
And there’s no There’s no problem with that. It would help if you also were blending it with higher ROI types of marketing, such as SEO, which will deliver 5:1, 10:1, 20:1, and 30:1 on average. But It isn’t the driver of a full-time outbound Salesforce. It’s not because you’d have to build your business from the bottom to make that happen. In other words, create a well-performing organic site and a Salesforce around it over time. And that does seem to work for me. I’m doing it with InboundREM, but it takes years. So, anybody interested in growth would do it differently. They paid advertising. Anyway, maximize your growth. I’m an excellent call for everybody watching the show if you’d like to talk about your ROI if you’re deep in that conversation with yourself. It would help if you were talking to me. Could you call me at… Could you just go to inboundrem? Com, schedule a call with me. Could you not call me directly? Schedule a call with me on my calendar, and you can do that on my services page or my About page. Both have links to my calendar galore.
Or you can email me at robert@inboundrem. Com if you want to ask questions before booking an appointment. Jon, if anybody would like to reach out to you based on any of the subjects we covered today, how would they do that?
Oh, thanks, Rob. Yeah, the best thing to do is go to the mail-right.com website, and you can chat with me on Zoom. We’re one of the platforms that offers two choices. Our system is maximized in utilizing Facebook, but we offer the tools you can use to run your Facebook campaigns yourself and utilize our tools for that, or we can do the campaigns for you, so you have two options. We believe in giving options. Back over to you, Rob.
Beautiful. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that’s been today’s episode of the MailRight Show. John and I are so thrilled that you are joining us. We have a lot of conversations, which is just the two of us. It’s easier for us to get excited about guests if they’re super duper rock stars. So we have yet to do as many guests as we have lately. Having said that, if you feel like you’re a super duper rock star and you’d like to come on to the show, you can go ahead and email John at… Please do me a favor and drop the correct email address for these guys.
Yeah, it’s Jonathan, [email protected].
Beautiful. John is the one who handles the booking, the questions, and things like that, but he’ll go ahead and sign you up for the show. We always appreciate all of your patronage. We appreciate you listening to the show. We hope that you continue to get some value from us. That’s all I got, John.
We’ll see you later, folks. Bye. Bye.
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Provide real value as a realtor in 2025! Learn innovative strategies to enhance client relationships and stand out in a competitive market.
This insightful podcast explores the essential strategies for realtors to provide digital value in 2025. Discover innovative ways to engage clients, leverage technology, and build lasting relationships beyond mere transactions. We’ll discuss branding, personal touches, and market trends that will set you apart in a competitive landscape. Don’t miss out on these valuable insights.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 453 of the Mail Right show. Hold on to your seats, and grab your coffee cups. Today, we will talk about how to provide real digital value as a realtor in 2025. So before we dive into this incredibly meaty, unique topic, let’s ensure that all of you know who you are on this ride with John; why don’t you introduce yourself?
Thanks, Rob. I’m the joint founder of Melrite.com, a real estate lead generative platform. We provide a great-looking website, landing page, text, email, and a ton of other functionality to be your digital platform for 2025. Back over to you, Rob.
All right. And ladies and gentlemen, as I get ready to introduce myself, let me just say to everybody, including John, that while it’s been a tough work day, it is my favorite day of the year. It is October 31st, Halloween. I’ve always loved this day. It has always been a personally good day. Work aside, I love giving candies to kids and getting dressed up in costumes. My name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of Inbound REM. You can look us [email protected], and if you want to learn anything about the digital market, you’re going to market, and you’re probably going to do precisely that. All right, let’s. John is just fucking losing his goddamn.
So your cats like today as well.
It’s just he has a hard time being English on this show. I’m letting you all know that if you watch Slow Horses, that’s John’s sense of humor. So, all right, what is real digital value? I don’t know. John, you wrote this down on the sheet.
I have written some show notes; I’ve given you some topics.
You and number one were asked what real digital value is.
What isn’t real?
Oh, what isn’t real? Oh, it isn’t. Okay, I was reading that wrong. So, ladies and gentlemen, what isn’t real digital value? Well, that’s a little bit subjective. But I will tell you what a pet peeve of mine, John, is, and then I’ll hand it over to you. I do get a little bit annoyed because I do a lot of coaching, and some people, you know, hire me, and some people don’t. But regardless, I’m on the phone a lot with realtors, and I’m telling them, you know, do this and do that, and then now and again, somebody Calls me back four months later, and what they’ve done is they’ve like copied almost identically something that they saw as a competitor do. There are ten things I hate about the city. They went down and did their version, but it wasn’t noticeably better. It was pretty much just the same thing that they saw somebody else do. And it’s a bit of a pet peeve because is there real value when copying identically? I don’t know. You and I both know that commentary video sometimes comes down to the commentary, the person commenting because some people only trust you.
So if you say the same thing that somebody else said, it can have value to a small audience. But I would still say that in my brain. I’m going, and I wish that they had said something unique. Yeah, that’s what I got. What do you want to say about this?
I see where you’re coming from. It’s the best. But I, I, I always try and look at the competition, try and work out what their business model is, what their edge might be. And if I’m gonna go down the same route, I try and find the top three and I try and rationalize what I got to do to try and get to some similar level. And I just aim at that to start off with and then I try and review it and then try and be better if I can. I’m a plodder at heart. I just plod along. Didn’t always want to admit that, and it’s been some ways difficult for me. But I am a plotter by nature. But I don’t give up very easily either, which is a two edge sold. So, yeah, I see where you’re coming from. Being original and doing something and not totally copy. I think totally copying something is something to be avoided. I think if you can do a mishmash and add a little bit of something to it, it’s much better than just lifting it. Totally. But the thing, I think there’s a lot of messaging in the real estate digital area that if you do A and B and C, D will happen.
There’s a lot of recipe marketing, as I call it, and I have my concerns about that because recipe marketing is okay to a certain level if your budget can only afford that in time or money or both. But it’s not going to compare to full Avocar marketing where the message is unique. And you’ve worked out your proposition and done all the things that we’ve discussed in these videos over the last Year. That makes sense.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, well, there’s a couple of no nos from us. Generic, generic digital value. What is it you kick us off on this one? John?
Well, it’s the kind of thing that a lot of people do and it has some value, but it isn’t as good as the next one we’re going to discuss. But it’s a, it’s, it’s a lot of what agents do when it comes to providing digital value on their website and social media. And it’s like general local market news that’s real estate focused. You know, where the market is, where your town or city is in the last quarter, what’s coming up in the next quarter. It’s community news. You know, what’s going on in your community, in your town, your city. The concept around that we’ve discussed a few times have been the digital mayor of your community sharing other people’s content and hopefully they will be more receptible to share your content. You know, virtual. You know, one of the great benefits of being in real estate is people are not bored unless you’re talking about yourself constantly. But if you’re talking about the end product, which are homes, people can’t get enough of it. So if you do kind of virtual tours, walk throughs using your phone around video, we’ve discussed that endlessly over the year, haven’t we?
And then market finance, you know, where the market is, where the mortgage rates are, this is all good stuff. But it’s all generic kind of content, isn’t it?
Rob? It is, it is. And it’s very, very tough in a crowded market to be generic. It is very tough to be a pine tree in a forest full of pines and have somebody pay attention to your particular needles. So it’s oftentimes a better idea to be the lone elm tree. I’ve always talked a lot about specificity and this is, this is goddamn, this is a marketing message that I lose consistently. John and it doesn’t matter what I, I’m an amazing salesperson, I’m an amazing storyteller. Three of the wealthiest people I’ve ever met in real estate were specificity people like they worked single neighborhoods or a single type of property. It doesn’t, it doesn’t hit right. So many people have built their careers through sphere of influence, talking to friends and family, going wherever to do a real estate deal. The idea of focusing on a niche is just so far outside their experience, they don’t even know where to start. I was on the phone the other day with a cop and who’s now a real estate agent. And he was, you know, we were going through a consultation and I don’t know that it ever occurred to him to leverage security inside.
His conversations about real estate was such a natural segue. And we’re, we’re entering a very uncertain time. I can, it’s so easy for me to imagine, like if I’m a super security conscious person and he, he’s working in Orange county, which is a fairly like conservative security conscious area in, in our part of the country. I was like, God, it would be so much more interesting for you to talk about security because it’s so your background and you could just leverage the heck out of that background. And so that would be what I mean by being in Elm Street. Does every single person buying a home care about security? Of course not. But if you’re the only guy that’s a copy, that’s, that’s a former law enforcement officer is. And you’re the only person saying it. I kind of feel like, well, the 10 people out of a hundred where it’s a really top priority. I think you’re going to be the only tree in the forest they want to look at. What do you think, John?
Yeah, I think that’s a really great example there, isn’t it, that you, you know, if people are concerned about security and you have a background from security, talking about different neighborhoods, different types of housing, how you can make them more secure, you have the credibility because you’re ex police officer. And then it is a subject that a certain percentage of the audience will be interested in, won’t they?
Right. And then there’s not everybody in the world talking about that specific subject. And if you decide to focus on it, I could just see so many different ways. Orange county does have a couple of military bases, has a huge police force. You start going on and on and on with all the people. There’s an FBI office out there, there’s an IRS office out there. When you start talking about all the people that have somewhat of a touch with law enforcement in Orange county, all of a sudden you start to realize, well, maybe the audience is really there. Like, maybe. So anyway, we’re, I’m gonna continue the roll here, but after we go to an early break, we’re gonna go to a break because I don’t want to start a whole brand new subject without going to break. So, ladies and gentlemen, I’m gonna go to break a little early. Stay tuned to the show. Always offer us your thoughts, your notes A thumbs up on the videos wherever you see them, whether it’s my site, John’s site, his YouTube channel, my YouTube channel doesn’t matter. Give us a little bit of commentary. We live for it.
We live for it. All right, we’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Today is Halloween and we’re doing episode number 453. It is a small miracle that I am not neck deep in a bowl of candy instead of on a podcast.
So we’re. Where are you taking your cats out tonight then?
Tonight is a club called Charlotte Never Sleeps. And it would be the fourth Halloween event themed event I’ve gone to, the only one on actual Halloween, and I’m meeting some entertainment friends of mine there who should be dressed to the nines. So I’m super excited about it.
So are the cats looking forward to it?
Oh, the cats are looking forward to me opening the office store right now because they have gotten so annoying. I can’t allow them in the podcast anymore. That’s what. That’s their Christmas tree. But I will be giving them some to extra tuna tonight for sure. All right, there’s specific type of clients. Number three. Okay, Relocation. We kind of touched on this first time. Home buyers, military, family, kids, investors, and seniors. These are all subjects that we’ve, that we’ve talked about. A specific type of person that you’re trying to appeal to now, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, if you weren’t realtor and if you had ever picked up a marketing book, you had a marketing degree, something like that, you would discover that one of the very, very, very, very, very, very first things that they talk about in Marketing 101 in any college course is understanding your vertical, like who is the market. Identifying the market. That’s what it’s called. And then you have something called market segmentation, which is another thing you’d learn shortly thereafter in that class. And market segmentation is where we identify pieces of our market. But here’s the thing.
In digital, because that’s what we’re talking about today. Digital is really not when it. When it started to become popular 20 years ago. Sure, you could be a massive generalist, but everybody’s been a massive generalist for 10, 15 years now. That’s not interesting to anybody. Hopefully the only reason you’re listening to the podcast with me and John is because we’re real estate specific commentators that we’re living by this rule. We’re talking to a very defined audience segment and we’re doing our best to educate Ourselves and then you, so that you don’t have to go out and do it yourself. We’re suggesting to you that you do the same thing that you find teachers or relocation people. If you’re in a college town, for crying out loud, make some content for some teachers, for some university people. Talk about why you’re fascinated with tenure, why you may go back to school and study whatever, take anything, go to a, an open. Every now and again professors do like open cattle call kind of like lectures. Go to one of those, you know, I know because I’ve been to one. Go to. Go to go to a lecture like sit down, immerse yourself in the environment for one day and make content about it.
Because if you’re in a town full of teachers and students, what would I be talking about? Something that’s relevant to them, teachers and students. And the only way that I’m going to know what’s relevant to them is either by talking to a lot of teachers or students, seeing what they’re seeing online like in their YouTube channels or Instagrams or Facebooks or option three, the one I just gave you, going and joining in person. Like I love this specific type of client thing here. Like it is probably one of the most relevant things a Realtor could do. And by the way, you missed a few. A specific kind of client is people looking for brand new home development in a certain price range are almost always going to be first time homebuyers. That is a specific type of client. The person who’s building their future, who’s bought into the American dream, who’s going to look for that specific house, has the wife and the kids. Granted they’re only about 60% of the population these days in most parts of the country, but they’re still huge. They’re still big. They’re going to fall into a certain age range usually and a certain economic status.
It’s the same kind of client that you’re looking for over and over again. So what would you do to provide value for that client? You would go and talk about things that concern those clients. That’s it. John?
Yeah, I thought your example of the show that we do was fantastic because that’s why the people are hopefully getting value from this show. Because we’re talking about general marketing and digital marketing principles and fins in the episodes. But the reason why people are listening to us is that we have a, a focus. Well and I think I get the feedback that I do get. People tend to say that we, they push back a little bit and Say that they’re in the area or where they can’t focus or they feel unhappy about choosing a pacific niche. And the truth of the matter, folks, is if you choose a pacific niche, you. You’re not going to turn around the general clientele anyway. Actually, in a very strange way, you’re going to attract more general clientele. I know that sounds counterintuitive and I think Robert is nodding because that’s how it works, doesn’t it? I’ve found it the more unless you get very, very, very niche focused, you know. But in general, finding a niche, you. You do better in the kind of general clientele anyway, don’t you?
Consumer psychology is something that most people don’t understand. Number one, you make something scarce, people want it more. Basic Psychology 101. Okay? So if you tell everybody in the world that you do X, but then you have 50 five star reviews, they’re like, yeah, but why won’t you do Y? Because you’re in demand. That’s marketing. It’s marketing one on one. You always make yourself in demand. And one of the ways that you can do that is by saying, I specialize in these things. John is right. Being specific and making sure that you’re very vocal about what you’ve done well in those categories is going to always get you more calls from other categories as well. I’ve got a guy that only rehabs homes that he can walk to in South Pasadena and he’s turning away deals every day, all day. Well, maybe that’s an over embellishment, but he is turning deals away. And, and the funny thing is, is I think he’s just. Because he’s so vocal and so demonstrative about the fact he only does a certain type of real estate transaction, it is p in people’s nature to ask you to do something different.
Now he does this in a specific area and that’s why people want to work with them, is because they go, well, you’re the guy in this area, South Pasadena. And he’s like, yeah, but you don’t. You’re not doing a kind of transaction that I’m really super familiar with. And so that surprises everybody, including the people that are talking to him. And you get that on his reviews, like on his actual commentary from the world at large, because everybody is so surprised. This idea that we as salespeople are supposed to sell everything is false. Okay? I can’t say it any louder or more in your face. It’s false. Be choosy about your clients. Be definitive about What? What you want to service? You cannot go to Los Angeles county and sell. I sell in la. What? Like, huh? No. Do you sell in Hancock Park? Do you sell in Mountain Washington? You can do deals for friends. That’s what Christoph Chu does. You can make exceptions, but you specialize. Everybody in real estate makes exceptions for friends and family or people that are referred to them. Why? Which is, by the way, for most of you listening to this show, that’s going to be about 50% of your business is you’re already working with your sphere and you’re trying to learn from John and I how to do digital.
That’s probably why you’re listening to this show. So let me clue you in. Your sphere of influence isn’t coming to your website or really checking your digital channels out in the same way that other people is checking it out Anyhow. It doesn’t matter what you say on those sites, but it does matter to the stranger that does not know you. Making specialization on a website in digital format an unbelievably important thing to do. It is completely and totally irrelevant to your existing business. And if anybody stopped for a second and thought about it, John, they’d realize it. It doesn’t make a difference. Like, because when we say specialize, like first time homebuyers, military, family with kids, investors, man. And I don’t say this like it’s going to sound like I’m poking fun at somebody. I’m really not. Let’s just say you’re Mormon and you’re part of your spiritual religious belief is to have many kids. Okay? That’s part of what you are doing. Church of Latter Day Saints. You’re helping populate the world for the Latter Day Saints. So great, then you should absolutely pay attention to what John said on number five here and go.
Family with kids. And I would add a defining factor to that. Do they happen to be Mormons? Like, because if you’re really living that lifestyle and you’re doing like your world is about family and raising many children. Wow. Are you a specialist? It’s not that common anymore to have four or five kids. It is an unusual thing, which means that you know unusual things. Even if what you feel like you do is mostly raise your kids, like, even if that’s the case, you have a lot to talk about. You’re just going to appeal to the small handful of other people that are building very big families all simultaneously. The house has to have specialized needs. God forbid should any of your children have specialized needs. All those things are so Deeply important that you talk about them as a realtor. Because what if somebody has a handicapped child? Do you have an unlimited amount of handicap inventory? Probably not. So should you perhaps check that out and make that part of your specialist? Because now all of a sudden you’re not. You do three cities and you say handicapped or probate or any of those things and you really start to say, there’s about 300 houses I’m repping and these are those houses.
I’m going to tell everybody, I’m going to say, share one more thing. And we’re going to move on to this because it’s a perfect intro to this. So I apologize, John, but one of the guys that I always refer to to Luxury because he, he’s a classy dude. I like him. Christophe Chu and Christoph Chu is, has, has done something for years that I’ve said on the show before. It always blows my mind. He has six or seven areas. He, he will sell a home in Wilshire corridor, Bel Air. But he’s always said, John, that he’s a Beverly Hills specialist. He’s a specialist. That’s what he always says. He thinks that he has been in 80% of all the inventory in Beverly Hills. Every single time a listing comes up for sale, every time. And he is allowed to go look at it, he goes and does a personal tour. It is part of his routine and his schedule. Every single house. Think about that. He’s been doing it for 20 years. When people ask him about his inventory, he actually knows what the inventory is. Not just because he looked at some pictures or he looked at a video, but because he walked into the property.
He knows what the drive is. He knows if the sun hits the hills. He talks about this a lot. He says that some of the times that he does sales, it is because he is able to not only talk about the inventory, he’s able to talk about the drive, the weather. Do you get sun all day long in this particular property? Because he knows. Because he put boots on the ground there. I always find that to be so impressive, John. Like, so impressive. That’s a whole nother level of specialization. Like, tell me that I’m going to walk into every home Van eyes. I’m like, I don’t think so. So that’s a good segue into number four on your list. And you should pick it up because I’ve been talking for a while. Luxury.
Yeah, I was thinking about it, comparing it to my other business, my other digital business. We’re involved in enterprise level sales software as A service. And in some ways, I see luxury in real estate to the equivalent of enterprise level in sas. The timelines tend to be much longer. The amount of discussions, the amount of zooms, the amount of back and forth, the timeline from being hired to actually the. The cell tend to be three to four times longer than the average cell. The upfront costs in time and just the upfront costs tend to be considerably higher. I think all what I’ve just said you can apply to luxury cells. You know, the upfront costs are going to be higher. The timeline’s gonna. Not always, but normally it’s going to be longer. And just the back and forth, the year is going to be at a much higher level than the average transaction. So a lot of people look at the pluses for understandable reasons. And it’s the same in enterprise level sales. Obviously, the profit, the financial possibilities are very attractive, but the amount of effort and work involved, don’t underestimate it. And that applies to the amount of digital value you’re going to have to show and give to attract those type of people.
I agree. It took Christophe a long time to get his luxury lead generation going. And that’s one of the reasons I. You said at the very beginning of the show, and this word implies that it’s bad, you said, I’m a plotter, Robert. I’m a plotter too, John. I am. I don’t do everything I should do. I don’t do every marketing trick or tactic that I’m aware of. I don’t work 12 hours a day. I don’t fit the normal mold. This is my seventh business. I know I don’t want. I knew when I started it, I didn’t want to work too many weekends and such. Well, one thing that I do do, though, that I agree with you 100%, is I am a plotter. Like, I do something, I just keep plugging away at it. I keep taking calls, I keep sending emails. I keep my team on staff. I keep. I keep. I keep keeping on with the stuff that I’ve got going. I just keep going and I figure out ways to make it sustainable. And here’s the important part about that story, is that Christophe was the same way. It took him 18 months to get his first lead.
Now his first lead in luxury turned into $26 million in sales. Okay, I really need to make sure that you all hear me on this. Most of you don’t rep homes that are 10, 20, 30, $40 million. Most of you are thinking of luxury is 2 or 3 million, if that, maybe a million. Who knows? Just depends on where you’re at when you’re listening to show. But I gotta tell you another story that that was on this show, I think, and if it wasn’t, then it was on my own personal channel. Was Gary Gold okay? Gary Gold took 10 years to close the Playboy Mansion and he didn’t use any digital marketing. So you might wonder why I was. I am referencing it because honestly, Gary transferred his career into Beverly Hills thinking that because he’s a world class salesperson that he was going to be able to set the world on fire. The market’s highly saturated. Every single realtor that is skilled. Some of those realtors, like Jade Mills, have an actual budget that they apply towards marketing. And they’re everywhere. They’re on radio, they’re on tv, they’re in newspapers, they’re collaborators with news channels.
And you’re competing against them to get deals in Beverly Hills. It’s complicated. And most of the time sales really comes down to what Jonathan and I have just said twice. It comes down to the plotters. You have yourself a marketing structure. You stick with it, you plod along, you keep doing the doing of the thing. Luxury is the same, except longer. It’s just longer. It’s a longer timeline. People who have money are a little bit more complicated to get in front of and a lot more people are trying to do it. It’s that simple. Really smart realtors are going to figure out ways to get in front of those people in any way, shape or form. Jade, one of her many strategies is she puts her advertisement in the back of the LA Opera magazine. Now, I’ve been to the LA Opera, John, and I know you haven’t and I don’t think you would ever want to. It’s full of geriatrics, okay, who are all enjoying classical music. It’s a dying art form based on the audience.
Actually, I was a member of the Covent Garden Opera Association. I used to go once a month to the office. I did.
Good on you. It’s a beautiful art form, which I was, I’ve been gotten into by my, my family, which is inner. They’re entertainment focused and they’re not famous. So everybody knows they’re more like entertainment. Like they’re the behind the scenes people. Like we’ve staged ballet, but it’s the.
Ballet opera house with confident. But I always, I’ve always loved Puccini and opera. Such a. Yeah, there we go.
I say that because Jade puts her advertisement there. And who is she? Appealing to, like, not me and my dad, but she is appealing to probably one person out of this audience is a billionaire, and we don’t know it. You cannot tell. I promise you. Like, it’s so difficult. Nobody’s there wearing a million-dollar outfit with the other geriatrics anymore. Opera has changed. It’s like. But yet Jade is there in that magazine advertising to those people. And I have to believe that after 20, 30 years, and $3.5 billion in sales, the woman probably knows a little about where her market is. And so, you know, it’s. I say this to all of you because when you decide to target luxury, and I get this conversation almost weekly, John, it makes logical sense to say you will go for the most expensive inventory in your marketplace. But the next question you must ask yourself is, who is already there? I will give one last story, and then we’ll call it a day. This is your bonus, everybody. I’ve got a story about a luxury agent that focuses on Aspen.
And this guy drives me a little bit nuts. He was selling luxury real estate in Aspen for a long time. Then his wife had an accident, and they had to go to, not Aspen, but some like Durango or something like that. Another, but much, much, much smaller Colorado ski town. And this guy was super funny because he was a record-holding salesperson, and he didn’t do fucking squat. No marketing. You know what he did? He skied, fished, and hung out in the cafe. But the thing was, he was part of the original Aspen community. He was an epically good skier. He often ended up teaching other people how to ski. And, of course, he’s a gregarious guy. So, as they’re sitting here talking about skiing, he’s also mentioning I’m a realtor. And, of course, he sold. I don’t even know what the number is. He never specifically told me. I did get the impression, John. It was no joke; it was hundreds of millions of dollars worth of real estate. I’m telling you why he had an accurate natural entry into the primary entertainment avenue that all these people were leveraging.
And he was a fucking normal. Like he was a rock star of the slopes. So everybody’s sent to this guy, and he’s a realtor. So your kids are skiing with this guy. You’re skiing with this guy. He’s very charismatic. Of course, he sold a lot of real estate. You got to know who your competition is. They are probably not generating their business the way you think they are. You want to make sure that you have a solid way to introduce yourself to everybody, which John and I are talking about in this whole episode is the digital introduction. So, when you think about your digital handshake, try to go back to your skills and history, and if you don’t know this stuff off the top of your head, watch some of my storytelling content. Read a book on storytelling. Read a book on knowing yourself. Read a psychology book. If real estate is slow, take the time to know yourself. Because when I tell the average person, you should tell a story about yourself and, and make that part of your, you know, your digital presence to a man and woman.
They’re like, I don’t know what to say.
Well, I think the good news, I guess the good news to wrap it up, Rob, is if you’re listening to this podcast and we’ve made you feel a bit, you’re. You will be in the top 20 to 10% anyway because the great majority are not being disparaged. They wouldn’t even listen to something like this. They wouldn’t. It wouldn’t trigger the kind of faults, the way they need to look at their digital marketing and how we’re trying to influence them. They just wouldn’t even think about it, would they?
No, they would not. All right, John. John called it. We’re going to sign off. I’ve been Robert Newman from Inboundrem. You can look me [email protected]. You can email me. That way, you can go to inboundrem.com. I have 140 videos, most educational, talking about digital marketing. I’ve got some reviews about all the major lead providers. I’ve got some case studies about people who use us for our services. They’re all on our website. Good, go there. John, how would you like people to reach out to you?
Oh, thanks, Rob. Just go over to the mail hyphen wright.com website. We’ve got great information about the platform, plus some fantastic videos, articles,, and all sorts of content. It’s been building up, and I’ve been working daily to give you the stuff to help you succeed as a real estate agent. Back over to you, Rob.
All right, well, we cannot tell you how much we appreciate your earballs. Thank you so much for tuning into the show today. It makes John and I so happy when we hear from you. So please just. I don’t care what the comment is; just leave us one somewhere. We would appreciate it, and we wish you all the best today. October 31, 2020.
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