Every once in a while I get to talk about one of my favorite things.
I have two big loves in the world. It's marketing, of course, and it's applying that marketing to real estate, because that's how I started out my business. That's how I learned a lot of the marketing things that we talk about today and where I developed a lot of the principles that became the 8-Profit Activator.
Today we're talking with Thomas March, a real estate agent from California. We had a great conversation. I'd love to apply the 8-Profit Activators to real estate. I think you're going to enjoy this as there are a lot of transferrable lessons because real estate is such a relatable business. Everybody's had a real estate experience. It translates well into other businesses.
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Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 053
Dean: Thomas March.
Thomas: Dean Jackson, the one and only.
Dean: How are you my friend?
Thomas: I am honored and I am wonderful.
Dean: Awesome. Where are you?
Thomas: I'm in Sacramento, California.
Dean: Sacramento? Okay. Perfect. Love it. I appreciate you doing it a little earlier for me. We're recording right now. We've got the whole hour to ask some evil schemes for you, so why don't you take just a minute and kind of tell me where we're at and what you think the biggest opportunity for us to talk about would be.
Thomas: Like I said, I've been following you for a long time, in and out of involvement with some of your ... What you've done, everything from buyer referral only through a long time. What was the name of the ... You actually introduced me kind of to the idea of internet lead generation.
Dean: Oh, good.
Thomas: It's been an interesting road with glory days and not so glory days through the past 10 years. No, I mean I ... Things like your nine word email and a lot of what you teach are ... I think you're amazing, so-
Dean: That's awesome. That's a good start. Thank you.
Thomas: As far as what you do and your influence and everything like that, I mean very high regard, so I'll just get that out of the way.
Dean: Perfect. I appreciate that. You are a real estate agent, for people listening?
Thomas: Right.
Dean: What kind of real estate do you focus on? Are you primarily residential and focused on a specific segment of the-
Thomas: Yeah. Uh-huh (affirmative). I would say 95% residential to 99%, and then there's some commercial that just comes its way. Everything from condos to office buildings.
Dean: Okay. Perfect. What's working for you right now and what's maybe not working or could be optimized a little bit?
Thomas: With lead generation Facebook marketing is ... That and pay per click, that's pretty easy and we have that outsourced through a platform that we're using called Commissions, Inc. It's kind of like a BoomTown, one of the larger platforms. I would say the lead generation is less of a problem. It's the conversion. We do ... Some of our initial email follow-ups are ... Using your nine words email is one of the initial ... Are you an investor? Are you looking for a home to live in? That's one of our first emails. I would say the lead generation is not difficult. It's the lead conversion.
Dean: Okay. I get it, and that's not an unusual sentiment. There's a lot of people ... I just was talking about a post that I saw in a Facebook group, and you see these all the time. But it just kind of struck me the other day that they were saying ... Basically they're saying Zillow and Realtor.com leads are a waste of money. Don't waste your money on it. I did it for three months and I got nothing.
It was very funny to me, because what it really demonstrates is that they're gauging the success or the quality of the leads by the amount of transactions that they did with a 90 test of this, you know, which shows you that in real estate especially ... In all businesses, but in real estate especially people are really focused on ... They want the right now buyers. That's what they're focused on and that's how they gauge whether leads are good leads or bad leads.
The general consensus is when you get that lead you've got to jump on it right away. You've got to call. You've got to call them back. You've got to hang up from that phone call and from the other phone at the same time, all those actual things ... I heard one guy talk about a bulldog technique, like three calls in two minutes to get them to answer the phone, so three different lines, all that stuff, to thinking that the quality of the lead is going to improve by somehow you jumping on them right away, and it's really interesting to me.
What would be your experience with and how do you measure the conversion of the leads? How do you measure it? How do you do with that?
Thomas: We have some Excel sheets. Right now we're using a program called CTE. It's an Excel sheet which is basically online. I would say a lot of the top agents are utilizing that as one of their tracking sources to-
Dean: Organizers? Yeah.
Thomas: It's an organizer, business management kind of platform. You can't even call it a platform. It's just really a glorified Excel sheet, but it's good. The conversions rates where we're at, I would say we're between 2 and 3% on our internet lead conversions, which isn't good. It's not bad considering the industry, from an industry standard.
Dean: So you get ... How are you gauging that? You get 100 leads today you are saying that you will convert two to three of those? Is that right.
Thomas: Within I would say ... Yeah. I would say within the year. We see our internet leads as always being six to 12 months out.
Dean: Perfect. So you got at least that in your mind, right?
Thomas: When we're looking at these leads, I mean we're ... The Realtor.com and Zillow leads are a little more now kind of leads. They tend to be a little bit zero to six months, more three to six months. But everybody is a little bit time out. In fact, I'll be honest with you. I think most of the leads work ... I just converted one this month from a listing and sale that we had been nurturing for four years.
Dean: That's the thing. The biggest shift that I try and get realtors to make is to shift their thinking about buying the leads as ... Away from an expense and thinking of it as a capital investment with a longer term payoff from that. When you look at it, I actually did a study with some of our clients too, because we do all kinds of lead generation things through GoGoAgent.com and got lots of realtors everywhere that are using all of our lead generation programs.
We actually did a three-year study, because it took three years for us to get one year's worth of people through two years of tenure. It's interesting, because people often will gauge their numbers by this year's expense. They will say I spent $5,000 on lead generation this year and I made $55,000 and I got whatever the ROI on that is, without really taking into account that the leads they generated in January had 12 full months of gestation and the leads they generated in December are really brand new, so they're not all ... It's not comparing apples to apples that way.
I look at it as kind of Warren Buffett's idea of snowball, that you're building your prospects snowball in a way and it becomes more valuable year after year, because the only way that you get somebody who pops out four years later is that you were generating leads four years ago. That's the only way that happens. Each year, the cumulative effect of you generating and nurturing leads is more and more valuable.
But here's what we did. It was based on this lead conversion study that was done ... They basically ... This company, the Inquiry Handling Service, they handle all kinds of inquiries on corporate levels from home shows, trade shows, magazine, websites of corporations. If you go inquire about faucets from Moen, this is the company that will manage the lead. They'll send out the information and stuff.
They would do what I thought was really neat. They would do what they called Did You Buy surveys, where every ... They were constantly checking in with a sampling of people at 90 days, at six months, at nine months, at 12 months. Every 90 days for 18 months they would track the cohorts, track the group of people. They would just call people up and ask one question. They'd say, "Thomas, you came to the home show, you inquired about faucets. Have you bought any faucets?" That's the only question that they would ask.
What they found was that just over half of the people who inquire about anything will buy what it is they've inquired about within 18 months, and only 15% of them will buy within the first 90 days. So 85% of the value of a bundle of leads generated today is more than 90 days from now, and that's true with what you're saying here, right, like six to 12 months is about your average?
We did a version of that specifically with our realtors. We had a group of them track all of the transactions that they did, and when they did the transaction go back and see how long it had been since they initially generated that lead. We did it for three years. We extended it out to get two years' worth of data, and what we found was that in the real estate side only 5% of the people bought in the first 90 days.
There was a bump between 90 days and six months of about 20%, and 25% between six months and 12 months, but here's what was really interesting, is that 45% have been more than a year, so into the second year, so the value of the leads in the second year was almost equal to the value of the leads in the first year.
So that really changes the way that you kind of think about things. When you couple that with the nine word email, that's exactly where we came up with the nine word email, was for that instance, to be able to go back to people and say, "Thomas, are you still looking for a house in Georgetown?"
You mentioned the nine word email. Have you had experience doing that and gotten results from that?
Thomas: Yeah. We utilize the email. It all came from you and it was basically ... Because actually really no one else I find is doing it other than people that have either kind done by referral or listened to Dean Jackson. I don't really see it ... Sometimes people come up with their copy, something similar, but it's really funny when you talk about that or I see it occasionally on Facebook where we got this great email and we just send it out and it's, "Are you still looking?" I just kind of laugh, but I know where it came from.
Yeah. No, we use it and it stirs up ... It stirs the pot a little bit, and I mean it's just like actually anything. It's I'll say one of our ... Sadly, we also get the response, "Yeah, we bought already," but then it turns out-
Dean: Yeah, I know. That's sad, isn't it?
Thomas: Those are the ones that hurt. I had two of those yesterday. It hurts, but at least you know, and you look back and you go like do I have to do a better job with follow-up? Absolutely. I don't really hear of anybody that says like I'm just the bomb at follow-up. Everybody can be better.
Dean: What's your follow-up procedure? How would you describe your lead nurturing system here? What's your approach?
Thomas: That's an interesting ... We bounced through ... We've had I'd say in the last ... Especially in the last three years, part of our malaise has been the shiny penny syndrome, going from Top Producer to this, to that, to Infusionsoft, and what I have to take a look at is that that shiny penny syndrome is actually hurt me more than it's helped me. Because as we've said okay, this is a better system, let's get this, and then you spend three to four months on really trying to set up the system and then you're really not doing the intense follow-up like you should.
I mean something that you predicated a lot was just keeping it very simple, and we've always got caught up in ... Over the past three years caught up in technology a lot. Actually we're working right now on ... We've given up a lot of stuff. Infusionsoft is a great program, but it's more ... I think it's more in use for someone like yourself that's actually selling a digital product or along those lines. For us ... I mean it's a great thing once it's set up and everything, but having staff or team members or agents work within the environment, it didn't do well.
Actually this year I've gotten rid of ... Actually fired everybody, gave them the chance to rehire, and I didn't like the answers they had, so ... If people aren't committed to the follow-up and committed to what they're actually supposed to be doing, they're wasting the lead sources in that sense.
What I'm doing now is we're going through the platform that we have called Commissions Inc. and we're actually right now ... It's actually funny, we're going through and adjusting the follow-up campaigns within there. We're starting to integrate now, trying to do more video follow-up with short little videos, because I truly believe that that's a big thing right now in converting leads, is having just the little video saying, "Hey, this is Thomas March. You made a great decision in signing up on our website and registering on our website." Then really that's it, just really short little videos going with that, and that's what we're setting up right now.
Dean: How often do you email that group? Do you have what we call a flagship communication? Do you have like a weekly flagship email that goes out every single week with updates on the market and new listings and what's going on?
Thomas: We were using for a while a company called Viral Marketing, which is ... They're basically ... They do ... What we're doing is pretty well a Keller-Williams 33 touch campaign. The campaign that we've been doing is two video emails and one other form of a touch a month, so one market update and one real estate related video which anything ... What are disclosures or what's a home inspection for? Something along those lines. So one hey, here's what's going on in the market, and sending that out, and then one I would say email.
I'm actually thinking maybe ... I almost want to just send out the same kind of an email of what we just talked about and just be it's the same email every month, "Are you still looking for a home in Georgetown?"
Dean: I think that that's part of it. That is part of the thing of every now and then sending out a message like that to engage, but I think that if you really think about what would this buyer be really interested in getting ... We want to think through what are they going through? What's the psychology in their mind?
They came to your website. What did they opt in for? Was it to search homes you had them register, or was it a specific offer for a free report, or how are you getting these people in your list here?
Thomas: Right now a large portion of our marketing is towards buyers. I would say the idea behind that is because of the fact that amongst those buyers there are a lot of sellers, and in the recent past I've been distributing these leads to buyers' agents. I would say the majority of the leads are for buyers, and the others are home valuation leads, people looking to get what's the value of my home, so very stereotypical kind of approach to that.
Dean: Sure. How many buyer leads would you say that you have?
Thomas: In the database I would say right now we have about 3,000. Of those 3,000 who are active, I would say we have about ... They come to the website at least about once a month, I would say we have about 800 to 1,000.
Dean: Okay. Those are people who you're getting to see that they come to your IDX to search? Is that what's going on?
Thomas: Yeah. Uh-huh (affirmative). Exactly.
Dean: Okay. Perfect. So you've got the advantage then that also you can see what they're kind of looking at and see what they're interested in. Now with that group, that would be the perfect group to send a weekly update of all of the stuff that's come on in the market, because here's the thing that has to happen, is that you want the people to sort of bond with you. That's really the thing. They want to know that there's a real person behind this.
One of the biggest things that I see happening with this automation is that people are relying on the automation too much and not getting any personality into it, because everybody and anybody can set somebody up on an IDX and send them property updates for January 20th or here's your property update for January 19th, which feels and appears very automated. It doesn't feel like there's any person behind it, so it doesn't get a sense of bonding. It doesn't make me feel like this Thomas is really going out of his way for me here. He's given me some insights on the market.
That could be ... I mean you're a personable guy. You like to do the videos. You could even do a weekly video for people if you just imagine, and do a weekly update every Wednesday and say this is Thomas. This is what's been going on in the market this week. We had this many new listings. We had this much sales. I've been working with some people in this area, so I've seen a lot of these homes. This is one of the best ones that I saw this week. Here's a link to search all the homes. Just kind of like a weekly personality driven communication, that you're really-
Thomas: Chuck Charlton style, huh?
Dean: Exactly. That's exactly where I was going to go. Chuck does a daily email, has been doing that for probably five years now, maybe even more. I don't know how long it's been, but quite a while. That's a dramatic difference, you know? You get fans that way. People will ... They wouldn't dream of working with anybody other than Thomas that way. That's what happens with Chuck.
The first time he meets people, they're like you've been in bed with us every night for the last six months or whatever, because that's the last thing they do. They fire up the laptop, watch the daily video, and it feels like they know him, because he lets his personality come through.
Thomas: I wasn't sure if weekly ... Because we've been doing the market update monthly, but you're saying ... And I mean it does make sense. It's just ... Weekly would probably be not bad. Daily ... Actually I just logged into Chuck to see what's he doing on his website, and it's like he's trying to get to it as much as possible. What you see is, "Oh, we haven't been on for the past four days, but I was sick," or whatever.
Dean: Right. Exactly.
Thomas: Yeah. Actually it was just ... We did that, I think it was two or three days ago. It was funny, and then your assistant had sent the message to me, and I went isn't that funny that ... Because I had just been thinking about doing exactly that, trying to figure out how Chuck does that and working on that kind of a thing. But weekly you say would be enough?
Dean: Weekly would be ... I'll just say that to you to get you to feel like that's manageable. I think once you see how effective it is and how easy it is, that you might go daily. But the fact is you want to be right there when people are getting ready, right when they're making that decision, and making it easy for people to take the next step. We're not just saying ... So much of this lead conversion process is just ... Especially on the real estate side people will just send listings, send listings, and just say to people, "If you have any questions or any way I can help you, just feel free to give me a call," just very, very passive like that on one end, or on the other end they're very aggressive and constantly calling people, "Are you ready yet? Are you ready yet? The market's really hot. It's time to buy right now," trying to convince people to buy.
The best thing, the best approach that you can have is to be really sort of neutral about it, but very hospitable. You're saying ... If you notice that in every email we will say to people, "Whenever you're ready, here are three ways we can help you." You can say, "Join us for a daily tour of homes," or "Come to a home buyer workshop on Tuesday night at the library," or "Get a free home loan report and see all the different loan programs that are available."
We're making very specific offers to people, not just kind of leaving it up to them to take the initiative so that we can respond, nor just chasing them, hoping that we can tie them down into buying. It makes a big difference. It makes a big difference in that approach, when you kind of take an approach that if you were a buyer what would you like to see. You can get the data from anybody, but what you can't get that you can only bring is insight. You've seen some of these homes. You know whether this one is a better value than another one. You know what the market is doing. You can sense all of those things, so you've got valuable insight to share with people, and they appreciate that, your personality.
Now it's not just I'm getting automated updates from your robot, I'm getting your personal email from you. Yeah. I mean it's so funny. I'll tell you a quick story, because they are so personal ... Chuck actually, Charlton sent an email ... One of the things that he offers to people is to just get together at Starbucks and talk about their move, if they've got any questions or anything that they want to strategize.
So he sent out one of these short emails, personal emails, to his list and said ... The email that went out had their first name, but it said, "Maria, I set aside some time on Thursday or Friday if you'd like to get together at Starbucks and talk about your move. Chuck," and sent that email, and he got a call from this angry Italian man saying to him, "And you invited my wife to Starbucks. Nobody takes my wife to Starbucks. I'm taking my wife to Starbucks." He thought that Chuck was moving in on his Maria, you know.
He got to the bottom of it, but it was just so funny, that that's the way that people read their emails. They read their email alone, so when you send an email that sounds like you're only sending it to them it gets very special attention. Can you see yourself doing-
Thomas: Okay. Let me interrupt you.
Dean: Yeah. Can you see yourself doing something like that, like a weekly email?
Thomas: Yeah, because I was actually ... Like I said, I was looking at that and just ... I wanted to see ... Is he still doing that?
Dean: Yeah. Of course.
Thomas: Because I remember a while back ... Because we're kind of doing every month a market update, or every two months, and I said I've got to get more purposeful and consistent in doing that.
Dean: Sure.
Thomas: Setting the goal once a week I think would be ... I mean if nothing else it's just saying we were in this area and here's what we were showing homes at, and just actually even do some more videoing of just that. Hey, we're out here at this house in XYZ town, and then build on that from there.
Dean: You have such a great opportunity now to even do live videos while you're out-
Thomas: Facebook Live.
Dean: Yeah. Like when I think about it, when I was a realtor in Toronto we would have the weekly MLS tour, so you'd see all the new listings and stuff. I just think now that would be the perfect kind of thing, to be live from the MLS tour, right at the source. Because I would often go and look at a new home ... I had all the people that I was working with and I'd often call them right from the house and say, "I'm in this house right now. I think you'd love this one," and set up an appointment for them to come and look at the house. People are very, very excited about the newest, freshest stuff, you know.
Thomas: Yeah. I think that that ... Because we were thinking of ... Just like you had set up years ago, what was it, Cyrus?
Dean: Project Cyrus. Yeah.
Thomas: Project Cyrus. Yeah, when you're done and you set up your list of 200 to 300, 300 to 400, 400 to 500 and stuff like that. What I was thinking about doing is just a video out here and then to those people looking at ... Just get out there and do a video of okay, here are a couple of homes in this area, 200,000 to 300,000, do a couple 3 to 4, and so on up the ladder, and do that kind of a video where we're showing homes or we're out there talking about a home, and doing this more on a consistent basis, on that, because it's a world that we're in right now that it's amazing. Think about it before, and having to take video on film and then bringing it there and you could send it to people.
Now we can do our own ... We can actually do it without having to ... And I think people have become ... Tell me if this ... Because my feel is right now is that like it was before, people wanted that slick, nice video and now people want more real live, my hair is kind of messed up, but this is the real world kind of video.
Dean: I think there's definitely that, where we've made ... We've come back around to where the live ... Like the real stuff is valuable. I think that too.
Thomas: Yeah. Like I said, it's ... I would call it Project Cyrus Live almost.
Dean: Okay.
Thomas: You've got your ... Because when you'd set that up, and that was a thing where you're looking Wednesday ... Homes, you know, 200 to 300, 300 to 400, and that was ... At that point in time, that was a very I think new concept even in selecting your IDX to weed out or make it ... If you give people too many choices they tend to do nothing, but if you-
Dean: Yeah. Now with the IDX they can easily ... They all have knobs and dials that people can customize their search in any way they want. Give them access to that tool, what you're really doing is highlighting stuff, bringing their attention to stuff. And the most important thing is that it's really a carrier for the next step.
I've worked also with a company that has the top real estate app in Canada, and each week we send out just the simplest, simplest, crazy simple email with two articles of ... Sort of real estate related articles and three links that say, "Here's what to do next. Find out how much your house is worth. Click here. Join us for a daily tour of homes. Click here. Get a free home loan report. Click here."
That email goes out every single week and it generates a 150 plus responses every single month, and it's just ... It's so crazy simple it's ridiculous. So it's not through going through all of this production of creating a super finely tuned and edited video per se. The execution is in the email, of being in communication with people. Even Chuck will tell you that. We would joke how Lance Armstrong wrote a book called It's Not About the Bike or something. That's the thing, it's like the daily video is not about the video. It's about the intention and the communication.
Thomas: Okay. We go back to ... I think this is a ... I mean I do not think, I know this was a mistake that I made. What I had at that point in time was with Cyrus or the landing pages and what we had, and there was ... Why I didn't continue with it, well, shiny penny, and it came down to what I ... I loved the idea, loved the concept, loved about it, but didn't like the ... I'll call it the skin. Didn't like the front, because at that point in time it was going like the Word Press sites and that looks cool and that's what's going to draw in these ... Don't take this the wrong way when I say this, because you know how much respect I have for Dean Jackson, because at that point in time I was going but these are antiquated, the landing pages.
Actually I just had this conversation about four or five months ago with a realtor/web developer, because we talked about this. What we needed was the Dean Jackson material with a modernized landing page.
Dean: Yeah, which is what we've done now, which is funny, because we went for almost 10 years with no change. We still have people who, even though we've got the new models now, will not switch because it works so well. That's the funny thing.
Thomas: And that's exactly that point I made. I think that was partially, again, ego, chasing shiny pennies and stuff like that with that. But I still feel that from the bottom of my heart the ideal situation is Dean Jackson marketing with a cleaner, modern landing page to capture us. I mean that's just ... That's how I feel.
Dean: Yeah, and that's what we did for our whole money maker website platform, was switch to a Word Press model, the more modern looking thing. That's exactly what we did. It's funny, but that's the ... I always look at the money. When I really get down to it, that's the thing that we're looking at, is does it work? That's kind of a ... That's actually why we call it money maker websites, not great looking websites kind of thing, you know?
The exciting thing is to see how well the offers, the underlying things that we do ... How much longevity they have, how still the response rates that we get are phenomenal. So that's kind of exciting. But all of that ... Right now there's so many ways to get leads, like in terms of even outsourcing or buying leads, having that provided for you. That's really a science. There's lot of people that can generate leads, and that's part of what can be sort of digitized as we're going to this future here where everything is being disrupted by algorithms and all that stuff.
The great thing about real estate is that you can't digitize the last hundred feet of a real estate transaction, and that's what's going to save it from being completely disrupted by online, is because it's still a personal business. You still are, no matter what, in every transaction dealing with at least two or more completely irrational people negotiating the market value of the only property like this one in the world at this moment.
It's not like the market for 2011 Honda Civics or something, you know. Every situation is completely different and requires soft skills. That's really where the advantage comes down. If you can take those leads that you can generate from a provider or from an algorithm or from search related things and you can personalize that, get into a communication with them and bond with them, that's really what's going to have the biggest impact for you.
Thomas: Yeah. I mean that's kind of ... I mean still taking a lot of your concepts and your ideas and what you're doing and just putting them more into place as far as it goes. I mean that's really ... That's actually what I've been ... What we're working on actually right now is getting our direct campaigns up and our follow-up campaigns, because we want a higher conversion rate, and the only way we're going to do that is by making people feel comfortable enough to work with us, and especially since I've now gotten rid of people ... I mean this really is ... And going back to being a sole agent for right now, and then I'll build the team on a different basis.
I don't fault the people I got rid of, I fault myself, because I can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink, just like you showed me all this stuff from Project Cyrus and then I gave up looking for the shiny penny and going through the Infusionsoft, but in the up and down time in all of this stuff if I had just kept on doing the idea behind it, I probably would have bottom like, what you said, made more money than going here and going there and doing this.
Dean: You're completely not alone in that. I mean I constantly have that conversation with people. Real estate is a very, very interesting thing in that there's lots of shiny objects, there's lots of stuff to keep you entertained is what I call it.
Thomas: Oh, and we realtors will buy anything.
Dean: Of course. That's the thing. It's like keeping ... At some level it has to come down to a choice between whether the business, the core of it is to entertain you, or to sustain you. People are making ... It's kind of boring relatively speaking, comparatively, to run a business that is completely optimized for the sustainment side, because that's about just the disciplined execution of tried and true principles, not nearly as exciting as the full emersion into the latest, newest thing.
Thomas: Right. I'm actually going backwards totally and just going like you know what? Let's keep this totally simple and ... Because this ... Yes, integrate technology where it really is ... It brings something to the table, but it's just like the website, the platform that we have right now. Although there's lots of different platforms that are supposed to be newer and better and everything else like this, we've stayed almost three years now with this platform just because I don't want to spend the time and stuff like that.
We did that like way too much, so going from by referral only and going with this, and then going with that, and that's why ... But, like you said, the big thing, what we're working on right now is our conversion, because lead generation is not the problem. I mean now with pay per click and Facebook it's pretty easy. You just pay someone to set up and drag the traffic and it comes in. The leads we get, we're doing about I would say 250 to 300 leads a month right now.
Dean: That's awesome. Good for you.
Thomas: Which is more than really what I can handle, so that's not the problem. It's funny, because like I said, we were just working on our email campaigns and what I was pulling up is a lot of our ... And going back and listening to Dean Jackson and More Whiskers and stuff like that, and going okay. So taking little ideas and step-by-step working on the drip campaigns, and then going back to video, and then I watched the Chuck Charlton.
You'd think this is all Dean Jackson, and I'm not saying this just because you're on the call. It's just really funny that if you still say the universe aligns-
Dean: All roads lead ... Yeah, exactly.
Thomas: Because it's really funny that, like I said, I mean I was on Chuck's website just to see what's he ... Is he still doing that thing? Because I thought that was kind of cool, but ... And I figure out how does he actually do that with using Jing or something like that and then just recording himself like on this property.
I tried to do it just a few years ago and I was like ... The technology, and I'm just not getting it. It's really funny, because last week I was thinking like you know what? That would be a really good idea, is doing the market updates but doing Chuck Charlton style. It's funny, then your secretary or your assistant sent that email out. That's so funny.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, that's funny. I mean I'm ... I've enjoyed our conversation. I think that the clear thing is you've got the right mindset now. I mean you know kind of what to do. I would definitely start this as at least a weekly thing. It can start out as an email. Set the bar low for yourself, where you don't have to overthink it. Start out with every ... I like either Wednesday or Thursday because you've got enough time to set something up for the weekend and you've had enough time that the new listing that came on over the weekend are out. Get into that routine of sending out that email, but always ending it with the opportunity for somebody to take the next step. Not sort of just leaving it up to them to take the initiative.
Thomas: A call to action.
Dean: You want to add into every one of those emails ... Yes, every one of those emails should have a very specific call to action, and those are the ones that I described. Rather than have somebody initiate sending you an email to ask you to go out of your way and show them some homes, make it clear that you've got a solution for them, right?
You're saying join us for a daily tour of homes. We do tours of homes every day at 10:00 and 1:00 if you'd like to join us. That makes it okay for them to respond to that, because it feels like it's already being done. I always describe it ... You may have heard me talk about it, that it's the difference between bringing you into my house and saying, "If there's anything that you want there's lots of stuff in the fridge. Go ahead and help yourself."
Thomas: Yeah, I remember you describing it like that. Yeah.
Dean: And me bringing you into the living room and bringing out a plate of freshly baked cookies and saying, "Thomas, would you like a cookie?" It's very easy for you to accept that because I've clearly already made the cookies, but you would never in a million years if I asked you would you like anything ... You'd never in a million years say, "You know what? Would you bake me some cookies?"
Thomas: The same thing with using the apples, like put an apple in front of you and you don't take the apple, but if you cut it into little pieces then almost everybody takes the apple pieces. Yeah, I remember you talking about that.
Dean: Yeah. It's so much psychology, you know. That's exactly how it all works. I think you've got such an asset there. You've got those 3,000 people, you've got 1,000 of them that are actively searching, they want to hear from you. I would start like really building that relationship with them.
Thomas: Yeah. I think that that's essentially ... Like I said, this is like a lot of ... It's just going, if you will, old school with a new environment, with Facebook Live and the videos and stuff like that. It's really just ... That's what I was saying that I've got to get back to, is just ... Especially now with the ... You know, just going back and doing the emails more Dean Jackson style.
It's not going to happen this month, but as far as in the months ... What is your ... I've gotten the emails about the strategy email sessions that you do and stuff like that in building-
Dean: Uh-huh (affirmative).
Thomas: What is that composed and what is the ... As far as-
Dean: The email mastery program? Is that what you're talking about?
Thomas: Yeah. I mean ... Go ahead.
Dean: Go ahead.
Thomas: No, no, no, no, you go ahead.
Dean: Okay. I was going to say that would be probably a perfect thing for you. I do have a program called Email Mastery and we've got all the ... I've done lots of training modules about specific email follow-up campaigns and approaches and everything from the initial ... When you get a new lead, that period of time, to engage with people as an opportunity, going back to revive the old leads that you have, and working and advancing with the current leads that you have.
I've got a couple of case study groups that are going right now where you go through all of the materials and then I do specific calls where we brainstorm Wordsmith, specific emails, and we document what happens, so that I'm building this library of email campaigns that we'll have access to, so when we launch the program as a standalone, it'll be loaded with all of these case studies. That's what we're doing with that program right now.
Thomas: Yeah. Have you ever thought ... It's just something that I'm throwing out there? There's a commission platform or a BoomTown, and then you have Dean Jackson's follow-up campaigns for this platform, and then selling ... To get that it's $1,000 and you get-
Dean: Oh, I see what you're saying. All of my real estate programs are in GoGoAgent.com. That's where all of my getting listings program, finding buyers program, all the lead conversion things, the listing multipliers, all of that stuff, that's kind of the home base for all of my real estate stuff.
Thomas: Okay. Is it pre-built with Dean Jackson follow-up campaigns?
Dean: Yeah. That's the whole thing. It's not ... I don't ... On top of ... We have newsletters and all follow-up materials for both buyers and sellers, but what I really encourage people to do is to do exactly what I'm describing to you, not a pre-done like on day 13 send this message and then this message. Even though we've got that going through it, the driver of it is doing the weekly like real time practical update for people. That's what they really want, is what's going on in my market. It's not really ... Learning what is title insurance isn't motivating somebody to pick up the phone and go and look at homes this weekend. Just educating them isn't enough.
Thomas: Okay. We wanted to do like what we just talked about, is then doing the weekly video market update, I'll call it Chuck Charlton because it's just that kind of style kind of a thing, weekly with that. We do that, and then just really that's all ... You're saying that's it? That's all you really need to do, and just sending that out, or-
Dean: We've spent this hour just talking about one narrow thing, which is a lead management system for buyer leads, but there's so much ... That's really the foundation, but then you get into all the things that you can do in your after unit of nurturing lifetime relationships and orchestrating referrals and leveraging all of your listings and every buyer that you're working with. This lead management is the real core of it, and you've got a great asset in that you've already got 2,000 or 3,000 people, and 1,000 of them sort of active. That's the asset that really needs to be optimized at first, you know
I was just going to say that the great thing is that there's so many things that you can do to leverage those buyers once you've got them. Once you're working with them, there are so many cool things you can do to get listings from working with those buyers.
Thomas: Right. It breaks down to always that concept for any business it's your before, your during, and your after unit.
Dean: Sure.
Thomas: That genius ingenious, because it's just ... It doesn't matter what business you're in, and I mean I know that's why just watching what you've taken ... So here's your business, carpet cleaning, or something like that, what you're after unit and stuff like that.
I thought that was genius because it's simplicity, but what every business needs is okay, what are you doing for your before unit, what are you doing in your during unit, what are you doing in your after unit? I got that. It's one of the things where actually you left by referral only and then it kind of changed for me. I know Joe was going in his different direction with his neurolinguistics programming and then-
Dean: We just stopped doing the live events, which was really the primary thing that we were doing together, but I still like the programs and stuff.
Thomas: What I loved about that was, especially in the letters from the heart, the after unit and things like that ... All of that ... I had gotten ... These are all things that ... What I was talking about is like, you know ... Because that was the big thing ... We were trying to do that in Infusionsoft with better landing pages, and it's time consuming, and I think I lost almost a year in trial and error of getting the Infusionsoft in setting up before, during and after, and bottom line we blew it all up. That's kind of in the process of what I'm at right now, is going through that and-
Dean: It's a journey. Once you've got the blueprint, that's the thing. That's your blueprint, is working on it as that, as a before unit, during unit, after unit. There's so much great stuff to continually work on and build out, but this is one of the flagship things for you, is that weekly communication to buyers.
Thomas: Because I've looked at the ... But, again, if I'm doing another ... I've got the one platform that we're utilizing right now, that we're trying to focus on that one thing. How would we ... I mean what steps ... Let's say being able to utilize Dean Jackson, leverage Dean Jackson, what are we doing that we could do with you ... I mean okay, so we've got the Email Mastery. What other things can we leverage from you, knowing that I think so highly of you, but still without going essentially ... Where I take clients that we identified as actually being not just totally cold that was on the website, being warm, and then moving them into GoGo clients? I mean I hate to have a second database.
Dean: Yeah, I understand that. The most important thing about GoGoAgent.com is the ... That's where I'm building the community of all of the realtors, the member’s area, the member’s blog, and all the new things that I'm working on. That's the foundation of it, so that would be the place to start the process here. We can ... I appreciate that you have been on this journey for so long, you've been in and out of our world, and I'd love to help you kind of craft the blueprint for you.
Maybe what we should do is let's ... If you come to GoGoAgent, then let's connect and maybe ... I do a podcast within GoGoAgent as well, and maybe we can do an episode where we can talk about exactly what you're talking about, how to go from shiny object ... In turn kind of retrofit, combine this stuff that you're already doing and create the optimal process for you without having to blow everything up. Does that sound good?
Thomas: Yeah. I mean like I said, as far as ... Like I said, I think you're the cat's meow.
Dean: Thanks, I appreciate it.
Thomas: But from what marketing is and ideas and breaking it down and simplicity in certain things ... I mean alone the concept of before, during and after unit is absolutely ... I mean everybody when I talk to them about that, everybody ... A light goes on and so I know this, but it's just ... It was nice in the days because it was already ... You had the material there for that. Is that same kind of thing in GoGoAgent now?
Dean: Right. That's exactly ... Yeah. That's what I'm saying. All my programs are in GoGoAgent, including all the things I've-
Thomas: For $79 a month?
Dean: Yes. That's the one.
Thomas: All right. Well that's kind of a no-brainer, even to just pay for that and then take the material ... I mean just ... Let me put it this way.
Dean: That's exactly what it is. It's like the ... Look at the tool, the CRM and all that stuff, as secondary to it. What's more important is all the programs and the tools and the access. That's really what it is.
Thomas: So if I took the materials just as I took ... Because I mean I'm thinking like Dean Jackson for $79 a month? I mean-
Dean: It's almost unbelievable, isn't it?
Thomas: I mean I'd be going like ... I mean taking the material ... If I was to take the material out of this ... And I don't want to hold your time up, especially for $79 a month, but if I'm taking like that material and then feeding it back into whatever platform that we're kind of utilizing, is that a possibility in your-
Dean: Yeah. I mean there are a lot of people who do that. Yeah, there are a lot of people who do that.
Thomas: So getting this kind of material, like the days for today, before, during and after, that's all within GoGoAgent?
Dean: That's exactly right.
Thomas: I mean I'd be an idiot not to sign up today. Seriously, I'd be like the dumbest person on Earth if given that. All right, so deal. I sign up for that, and then we'll look at in the next little bit ... So the Email Mastery ... What other little-
Dean: I think GoGoAgent is the thing for you right now.
Thomas: Okay. Just focus on that?
Dean: Yeah. I think that's it.
Thomas: All right. I'll do that. I'll play around with that. All right. Well thank you. Thank you so much Dean. I appreciate your time. Sorry we went over a little bit.
Dean: That's okay.
Thomas: Amazing. I'm excited. All right.
Dean: Thanks Thomas.
Thomas: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for your time and hopefully we'll talk very soon.
Dean: Okay. Talk to you soon. Bye.
Thomas: I'll keep you updated.
Dean: And there we have it. Now if you are a real estate agent and you're listening to this, one of the great things for you to ... For us to continue, is to go to GoGoAgent.com. That's the platform where I have all of my real estate programs, all the things that you need to get listings, to convert leads, to find buyers, to get referrals, to multiply your listings. All of those things, every program that I've ever done for real estate I've bundled up and put into the GoGoAgent platform and wrapped it around all the tools that you need to be an online marketer with landing pages and auto-responders and email broadcasts and postcards and a CRM and toll-free voice mail and text marketing, all of that, all of those tools combined with all the programs that we have to help you get more business.
You can try it out for free at GoGoAgent.com. If you'd like to see how you stack with the eight profit activators right now, where the big opportunities are in your business ... I'm speaking to any business now, you can go to profitactivatorscore.com, try the profit activator scorecard, and it'll show you exactly where the opportunities are in your business right now.
Then if you'd like to continue the conversation, you can go to MoreCheeseLessWhiskers.com. You can download a copy of the More Cheese Less Whiskers book, and if you'd like to be a guest on the show you just click the Be a Guest button and let's see if we can hatch some evil schemes for you.
That's it for this week. Have a great week. I'll talk to you next time.