WEBINAR REPLAY
CRM Content Fails and How to Fix Them

Webinar Transcript:

Dan Stewart (00:00:11): It is now 2:00 PM guys. So, welcome. Thank you so much for attending today's webinar session. This is great. Gosh, I've got so much to share with you today. I really am committed to helping you get the very best value you can from the relationships that you build throughout your life. Those of us in business, we know that relationships are everything. Right? We understand that, we agree with that. If you agree with that, go ahead and give me a big yes in the chat. I want to see that.
Dan Stewart (00:00:45): Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We should see tons of yeses. Steve Reese, I love that you're here, Steve. Great to see you. Hey, Barb. I love that you're here. Wow, this is so cool, so cool. I love seeing all these people I actually know and have relationships with on the webinar. So, one of my core beliefs, and those of you know me, you've heard me say this for years, is that the path to what ever we want to achieve in life, it's more easily walked together. It is, it's true. So, if we do a good job of building relationships, and a good job of taking care of people over time, those relationships that we've nurtured can get us through literally anything. Right?
Dan Stewart (00:01:27): Now, most of you who are attending this call today, you're in the real estate profession. Right? So, a typical real estate agent, as if there is such a thing. But you guys get it, you're so busy. You have a client who needs so much of your attention, you get them through this either wonderful or horrible or wonderful experience of transacting real estate, often many of those things at the same time, and then that transaction is closed, you're moving on, you're super busy doing the dance with somebody else, or multiples at the same time. Before you know it, you look back and you go, "Wow, I didn't stay in touch with everybody like I should." And that hurts. Right? It's easy to feel a little bit guilt, a little bit of guilt about that.
Dan Stewart (00:02:13): Now, we are here today to talk about CRM content fails, and all of this is only understood if we put it in the right context. The context is that, your CRM exists for one reason. Right? That is to allow you to build and maintain relationships with people that gets lost. It drives me absolutely insane that people forget about how important the relationship actually is. Right? So, I'm going to ask you some questions throughout the session, I'm going to ask you to comment in the chat. So, we are going to talk about the four primary problems that exist with CRM. We're going to talk about the content fails that connect to that. But I want you to comment for me in the chat right now, on a scale of zero to 10, how satisfied are you with the way you're using your CRM? Zero to 10. Let's go ahead and get that in the chat.
Dan Stewart (00:03:18): Tom says, seven. Tiffany says, zero, six. Negative five. Steve, come on, brother. We got to talk. Charlotte, one. Michelle, seven. Ken, eight, that's good. John Luke, five. Tom, four. Right? So, part of what we see, as you're entering these scores, it's an internal relevant judgment. You may be feeling a little bit of guilt. Right? You may go, "Oh my gosh, I know I've got this great tool, I'm not using it." That's actually the largest reason that people fail with their CRMs. If you do the research, you'll see smart people like the folks at Harvard Business Review say that, over half of all CRM implementations fail. There's a reason for that. If part of the reason you're beating yourself up right now is because you haven't done a good job really using the tool that you have. Just know that you're not alone. Right? That's a really common issue.
Dan Stewart (00:04:18): Now, what I've discovered is that the reason people don't use it is not so much because it's too complex. Right? It's pretty simple, we send messages. That's what happens with CRM. The challenge is what to actually say within the message, that creates a big issue, and that's why the title of today's session is CRM content fails and how to fix them. I presume that every single person who's here whether you know me, or you don't know me, is here because you've got some issues with your CRM that you're looking for a solution with. My goal today is to provide that solution, and for those of you who don't know me, I'll give you a little background.
Dan Stewart (00:05:00): 10 years ago, I founded a little company called Happy Grasshopper, and today we're nurturing about 16 million contacts for real estate professionals. We have members in all 50 states and all across Canada. Prior to that, I was the CEO of a CRM company that was acquired back in 2009. So, I've been really laser focused on the CRM business for about 14 years now. Prior to that, of course, I was focused on it as an entrepreneur, using CRM and the building of my other businesses. So, all the problems that we're going to talk about today, I promise you, I've had them myself, I can relate to these problems.
Dan Stewart (00:05:43): So, throughout the session today, if you'd like to chime in with whatever problems, have any questions, I'll be watching this chat. My goal is to get them answered for you before the end of the session. Bill, I see your question there. We are recording. Let me check, yes, thankfully, we are recording. All of this will be recorded. So if you can't hang out, that's totally fine. It's okay. I know that you'll be able to watch it later. Those of you who are here live, don't take that as your cue to go away, because I have something amazing that I'm going to be giving you, live attendees, later today. So, stay tuned for that.
Dan Stewart (00:06:21): Now, let's dig in, let's talk about the reason people fail with content in their CRM. You can have a great writer. Oh my gosh, well, you could have William Shakespeare himself. Right? You could have the world's greatest writer ever creating content for you and still fail with your messaging. Right? The reason for that is the very first discipline that you've got to master when it comes to CRM, and that's organization. So Steve, I saw what you were saying there, and I'm going to guess that a problem for you is organization, you got to recognize the scale of this problem.
Dan Stewart (00:07:02): I was on the phone with a super nice lady in Northern Virginia earlier today. She has 746 tags in her database, 746 different tags. That's a whole lot of different groups of people to try to message efficiently and effectively. So, complexity is often the enemy when it comes to your success with your CRM. So, I'm going to encourage you to think of your database, is really just having two kinds of people in it, and no, I'm not talking about buyers and sellers. Right? The two kinds of people in your database, they either know you or they don't. Right? Write that down. There are two people alive today. They know you or they don't. So, in the know you column, you'll have your past clients, of course, you'll have your sphere, your sphere of influence should absolutely be in that group.
Dan Stewart (00:08:02): I know there's a big debate, there's a big internal question about, "Well, who's really in my sphere?" Here's a simple way to figure it out. Sphere of influence means you actually have influence over them. Right? So think of it this way. Imagine all of the people in your sphere of influence were in a grocery store with you. Okay? You've got your cart, you're walking around the grocery store, if they're not stopping and saying, "Hi." Right? If they're not, "Oh, you're here, it's great to see you." You don't have influence over them. Okay? So we want to have that category of people really well defined, they should be people who definitely know who you are, and if you want to get really fancy with it, you should like them. That's important.
Dan Stewart (00:08:53): Because if you're sending messaging to these people, and they're replying to it, you probably want to have conversations with people you like. Right? So, certainly keep that in mind. We want to have that one golden segment of your database that's filled with people who actually know who you are and that you actually like. Right? Now, if we focus just on that group of people, our data shows that for every 100 of those folks you add to your database, you'll find approximately 12 transactions per year. Think about that. Average agent is doing about six transactions. Is that the right stat? Somebody correct me if that's not correct. "Average agent transacts four." Thank you, Tom. Thank you.
Dan Stewart (00:09:43): Average agent doing four transactions per year, and if you've got just 100 people in there, that gets you to your one a month, which from my desk, I think of that as being the place where you've got a legitimate shot at a career in real estate. If you're transacting at the pace of one deal per month, the booth is no longer on your throat, you shouldn't be totally stressed all the time about where your next transaction is coming from. Of course, your local market dynamics are going to play a lot into this. If your average transaction value is above a million dollars, those 12 transactions are fantastic. Right? And if your ATV is 85 grand, well, you probably want to have a lot more than 12 transactions. So we'll just factor that in. Right?
Dan Stewart (00:10:30): So, organization is the first place we're going to focus. We're going to spend a bit of time here today, because it's that important. I get lots of messages from agents all across the United States and Canada. For the past 10 years, pre COVID, I was on a plane once every two weeks at events, meeting people, speaking. I have been added to untold number of agent databases. Think about that. If you meet someone, and you just add them to your newsletter, and now once a month they're hearing from you about real estate, and a couple of times a year you're telling them to change their clock, you're missing an opportunity to really experience the value of that contact information. Okay?
Dan Stewart (00:11:17): So, here's a step for you. Do not add every single person you meet to your newsletter, they didn't ask for it, they don't want it. If like me, I'm not in your local market, really all you're doing is screwing up your send credibility. Right? If you're sending a lot of messages to people who don't open them, you're teaching your email service provider that you're not a quality sender. Right? That can be a problem, particularly at scale where let's say you've got a database of 1000s of leads that you'd like to send messaging to, having a really high send reputation is important for that.
Dan Stewart (00:11:56): So, we work hard to maintain our send reputation. As an email service provider, it's important to us that our members know their messages get through and get delivered. This is one way you can help regardless of what system you're using, you should work to make sure you're sending the right messages to the right group of people at the right time. The next area that we'll talk about there would be just data cleanliness. Right? I mean, think about what a mess it is to organize your database, you've got contacts in your phone, they're in your email, they're in your CRM, they're in your different lead sources, they're in your MLS, they're in your transaction management system, they're in all these different places. What I would recommend you do is export them from each of those places into a CSV file. Right?
Dan Stewart (00:12:50): If you use Excel or a Google Sheets, you can manipulate that data very easily before you load it into a CRM. This is important because, let's say I'm in your MLS, I'm in your lead system, I'm in your phone, I'm in your email, and I'm in your transaction management system, you might have me in there five times. Right? You don't want me getting five of the same messages from you when you're reaching out over time. So when you're cleaning up your data, you want to be careful, to merge to de duplicate those files, to title case correct, you don't want all caps, shouting at people you, don't want all lowercase.
Dan Stewart (00:13:31): Let me take your pulse real quick. If these are problems that seem daunting that you're facing, give me a yes. If it's not an issue for you, give me an I got this in the chat. I want to see that from you. Okay, Michelle says yes. Tom says I got this. All right. Okay. All right. So if you're saying yes right now, I would like to reach out and offer you some help. We can make this pretty easy. We really can, because just using our technology, we've structured it to where you can take a bunch of different databases, a bunch of different CSV files, and when they're loaded in our system, they're automatically duplicated. So let's say you've got me in your database five times, it's going to recognize the common email address, and it's going to reduce that just to one contact record. That's important.
Dan Stewart (00:14:34): Now, maybe I filled out a form online and I wrote my name in lowercase. Well, you don't want to send me messages in lowercase all the time, and you don't want to shout at me in all caps. So, our system will title case correct those letters for you when those contacts are reloaded into the system. So, cleaning up the data shouldn't be a big problem. Whether it's because you're our member and you're loading it in our system or because you watched a YouTube video, and you learned how to manipulate a CSV file with Excel or Google Sheets. Those are things that shouldn't take too long. Again, I'd like to offer you my help with that. So if you need that help, I'm here for you.
Dan Stewart (00:15:17): Patti, you're asking a good question, "What if same person has used various emails?" Well, that's awesome. So, the way we've structured our system is one contact per email address. So maybe you've got me in there as Dan@HappyGrasshopper, and you also have me in there as Danstewart.com, I have both those email addresses. So I could be in your database twice. That's where when you're looking at your list, and you see Dan Stewart, Dan Stewart, two different emails, same phone, you go, "Ah, that's the same person." And you would merge those contacts. Okay? That's how I would handle that.
Dan Stewart (00:15:56): The data organization is the number one thing past failing to use the system at all that cause people trouble with their CRM. Think of it this way, I talked about having William Shakespeare writing your messages, and we've got a great writer, but we've got bad organization, it just doesn't work. If you send the best email to get people to list their homes with you, and you send it to a bunch of other real estate agents, it's not going to work for you. Right? It's not. If you have the best come list me letter to send, and you send it to a bunch of people who are trying to buy real estate, it's not going to work for you. Right? We've got to have the organization before anything else makes sense.
Dan Stewart (00:16:43): So, there's really three parts here, I'm going to stretch this a little bit. Right? I want you to see the whole picture here. So, first thing you've got to get is usage, you have to use the system if you're going to get results, period, that seems easy. Second is organization, you must have organization before you start sending messages. The third thing is automation. Automation is amazing. You can do so many things with automation. Today is just mind boggling. Our system, for example, we can catch leads that come in from your website, from a real estate portal, from iPad, Sign In and an Open House App, wherever it is that contact information is entered, it can be pulled into our system or any other system automatically using tools like Zapier and PieSync. Those are third party API's.
Dan Stewart (00:17:39): At Happy Grasshopper, we also have our own dedicated API. So, if anybody here is a software engineer and you want to integrate with us directly, you can do that in the footer of our website, you can get the API. So, we got to take this a little further, though. Right? Automation is getting easier and easier and easier. Right? Samsung literally makes a refrigerator that can text you. That seems absurd to me and yet it exists. Right? So here's the great thing about automation, it can cover your back when you forget to do stuff that you intend to do. That's fantastic. It can make sure to send a message when you forgot, or when you're in a meeting or when you're asleep. Those are all really, really good things.
Dan Stewart (00:18:28): The challenge is that if you set the automation up the wrong way, you can actually accelerate failure. That's why organization always comes before automation. We have to have the database organized before we automate the delivery of messages, otherwise we're going to accelerate failure. Nobody wants that. Right? So let's recap. We've covered usage being the most important, organization is second, automation as third, the fourth thing, and you're not ready for this until you got the first knocked out, the fourth thing is content. You got to have great content.
Dan Stewart (00:19:11): Let's talk about the real estate space today. NAR tells us, approximately 19 million digital leads per year for approximately five and a half million transactions. Okay? Most of those digital leads are not getting any follow up at all. They're created by a brokerage, they're assigned to an agent, the agent has lead fatigue, they're tired of calling, they're tired of texting, tired of writing messages to these people who don't respond. They're busy doing something else that they think will work. The lead gets wasted. Right. So some of those can be scooped up and taken advantage of.
Dan Stewart (00:19:49): The others that are being responded to are typically being responded to by the messaging that comes baked into an industry CRM. That means it's one size fits all content. Right? So let's think about that. Nobody likes to have one size fits all everything. Would you wear wedding dress that was one size fits all? When things are really important to you and to your future, you take the time to do it right, you take the time to put your best foot forward, right, you take the time to prepare for the access that you intend to create. So, one of the largest areas you can make an impact in your business, if you're generating leads in real estate, is to create content that helps you stand out from all the other agents in your market, really critical thing to be able to do.
Dan Stewart (00:20:44): Here's why. Let's imagine I'm a buyer in your market today. Right? I want to find a home, inventory is really short. So I'm on the portals, I'm on realtor.com, I'm on Zillow, I'm on Homes. I'm finding local agent websites, I'm signing up on their IDX feeds, and every day, I'm getting the same messages from everyone. They say, "Here's a new search alert, this is a property that fits your criteria. Here's a price change alert, a new listing alert." We get that kind of content over and over and over. Sadly for the industry, that tells the consumer who's receiving all this messaging, that there's really no difference from agent A to agent Z. They all wear name tags, they all have licenses, they can all unlock doors.
Dan Stewart (00:21:35): Now, that's absurd. We know the value of real estate professionals is far beyond that. And yet to the general consumer, they have a tough time telling real estate professionals apart until we give them a reason. So if you're generating leads online, there's a critical phase of messaging I'm going to recommend for you. It's called the positioning phase. This is where they get content that comes specifically from you, that teaches them what your past clients and sphere love about you. Very, very important. Very important distinction there. Your past clients in your sphere know you, right, they know what a great job you did. They're enthusiastic about you. If they're really passionate, they refuse to let their friends and family use anyone else.
Dan Stewart (00:22:25): So take the time to understand what they would say about you, and prepare content that teaches that to your new leads as they come in. We call that the positioning phase at Happy Grasshopper. Again, if you need help with that content, we're here for you. So let's see, guys, we've talked to quite a bit now about lead capture, lead conversion and automation. We want to get a bit more specific, narrow our focus now, we're going to talk about some content choices you can make that are universally good choices. So whether you're talking for your past clients or your sphere, or a brand new lead that you don't know, here's some tips you can apply that will be useful for you.
Dan Stewart (00:23:12): I like messaging that sets expectations that the automation fulfills. Okay? So for example, Where's my phone? I just set it down. Here it is. So I'm going to pull up my phone for you real quick, and I am going to open something called my digital business card site. So I have a little icon on my phone that saved and hey, that's me. Right? This is my digital business card site. So if you're a Happy Grasshopper member already, and you would like this free, just say free right now in the notes, and I will go back and I'll make sure that you get one of these. Thanks, Tom. I'll definitely do that for you. Thanks, Michelle. Appreciate it. Yeah, Love it. Love it. Love it. So, here's how this works. Right?
Dan Stewart (00:24:03): You have an icon saved on your phone, like say hi to my daughter, Emily. When I click that icon, it pulls up your site. So imagine you're out and about and you're meeting someone. Right? Well, you can say, "Hey." Go ahead and point the camera on your phone at this. Those of you who are watching this, you can do it. I'll hold it here for a moment. That will take you right to my business card site. Okay? Once you're there, once you're on that site ... I'll hold it a moment longer. Guys, grab your phones and grab that. Okay?
Dan Stewart (00:24:38): So now you've got all my contact information right there. You can email me, call me, text me, WhatsApp me. You could click here and save my contact information right to your phone. And of course ... Oops, let's say you're out and about, you've just done this. Now you want to capture their information. So you just click plus, and boom, you grab their first name, their last name, their phone number and their email, and now this is someone that's in your Happy Grasshopper database, and they'll be eligible to receive your next content sense. So, their digital business card is just a great thing. We just created this about a month ago, we haven't yet pushed out to all of our members.
Dan Stewart (00:25:22): So, every one of you who said free here in the chat, I'll make sure that you get this free as part of your Happy Grasshopper account. So, yay, we'll celebrate that. Very cool. So, coming on back here, we've talked about organization, we've talked about automation, we've talked about creation of content. I'm just beginning to share some content strategies that work. So, the idea is you want to set expectations that the automation will fulfill. So for example, if I meet you for the first time and I say "That has been a great chat, I'd love to stay in touch with you. Do you mind if I do that?" They're going to say, "Well, no, of course." I'll say, "Great, let me grab your information." Okay?
Dan Stewart (00:26:07): Then in my first message, it can say something like, "Hey, it really was great to meet you. I'm glad we had a chance to connect, and you can definitely count on hearing from me in the future." By the way, if I can ever help you with real estate, all my information's below. Right? Then when they get another message in a week, two weeks, three weeks, whatever it is that set up in your automation, they're expecting that message to arrive. Now, another thing that's really great to do is to use a combination of text messaging and ringless voicemail drops and email. Right? This is a great automation technique.
Dan Stewart (00:26:44): So let's say you just registered on my website, and you get an email from us. Right? It says, "Thank you, we've received your information, someone will be reaching out soon." Right? And then a few minutes later, you get a ringless voicemail drop that says, "Hey, it's me, Dan Stewart, thank you for registering on my website, just doing what I said I'll do, I'm following up to have conversation. I'll send a text here in a moment, and if you need me, you could just call, my number is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Right? Easy, you'll record that once, it automatically goes out to all those leads that you generated, and then a moment after that message goes out, it's followed by a text message that comes from you. Right?
Dan Stewart (00:27:27): So how cool is that? That's like having a 24 hour a day, 365 day a year, ISA who's responding to your leads. Now, when they reply, of course, you want those replies to come right back to you wherever you happen to be. Ken, I see he say, "I could have used that last week." Yeah, man. Well, I'm here to help for sure, Ken. So, I'm a big fan of setting expectations that automation can fulfill, that's a strategy you should be using. Now, one mistake I see a lot of agents making their content is that they're trying too hard to sell real estate. Or if it's recruitment content, they're trying too hard to sell the model. Right? I think about it.
Dan Stewart (00:28:17): If you're asking someone to decide to become your client in the first messages you're sending them, it's like going to a jewelry store buying an engagement ring, and then every time somebody passes on the street, you get down on one knee hoping that'll be the person who will say yes to you. Right? It doesn't work. If you want to be successful and happy over the long term, you need a strategy that first creates engagement. Right? Just like with the wedding ring, you got to get engaged first, which means you have to get to know each other. There's only one place to do that. That place is inside conversation. Right? So your goal in your initial lead response messaging should be one thing, start a conversation, get a reply. That's the most important thing.
Dan Stewart (00:29:08): So, if you have an initial response sequence today, that's doing things like asking if they're ready to look at homes or asking if they've met with a lender yet, I'm going to suggest that you change that right away. Those messages will be more effective if you ask them a question that they know the answer to, that is not a sales question. For bonus points, if you ask a question they know the answer to and it's in their best interest to answer, you'll go even farther. So, that for example would be something like, "Thanks for finding me online, can't wait to have a conversation with you. Do you prefer text, email or phone? I'll reach out again soon. All my best, Dan." Right?
Dan Stewart (00:29:55): So, I'm asking them how they'd like to be responded to, what kind of reach out they'd like to receive. I've also said, I'm going to follow up with them. I'm setting expectations, I will follow up, and I'm asking them a question that's in their best interest to answer. So, who would like the formula for instant engagement? It will work in email, it will work in text, it will work in ringless voicemail drop. If you would like that formula, just say yes. I'm seeing some yeses. All right. Awesome. Yes, yes, yes, of course. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, here it comes. So, I'm going to give that to you now, no matter what the purpose is, right, whether you're selling houses or selling aircraft carriers, right, the thing that you need to do in order to create engagement is this, raise their curiosity and leave it unresolved. That creates engagement. Right?
Dan Stewart (00:31:01): Now, the quality of the writing there makes all the difference. Think of that young person in your life, who's always asking questions, they don't often create a lot of curiosity, they just hit you with why, right? Or they come up and they say, "Guess what?" And you're like, "Oh, I don't want to guess." Your curiosity hasn't been piqued enough for you to want to guess. Right? But if they come out and they've got blue paint coming down their face, all over their hair and their clothes, and they say, "Guess what?" Now, you're interested. Right? Your curiosity has been piqued, you've got to know.
Dan Stewart (00:31:47): So, as you're creating content, think about what it is that your audience is most curious about? What is it that they really want to know? Right? Not necessarily what you know that you want to tell them, but what it is that they are really curious about. Okay? So if you can find ways through good writing to increase that level of curiosity, they're going to engage at a much higher rate. That's a critical thing to do. Now, I told you earlier, I welcomed questions, and I do. so thank you, Patti, for your question. She's asking if Happy Grasshopper uses a third party ringless voicemail provider, and we do, we have an API that plugs directly in with Slybroadcast.
Dan Stewart (00:32:34): So, in our system, we create the scripts, our members simply record the message, and then we include that as part of an automation string. So, think of it like a really concierge level service to make sure we get your messaging set up the right way. Of course, those of you who are members here on the call, you're always welcome to jump in there, create a message when you choose to, that will go the same way as to text, an email or a ringless voicemail drop. So, thank you for that question.
Dan Stewart (00:33:07): All right, so let's go a little bit further here. In content, there's one part of content that has nothing to do with your ability to write, it just has to do with your ability to be organized and use technology. The minute you get that reach out, where it says, "Hi, first name." That's kind of a fail. Right? Somebody failed to scrub their database, they didn't make sure the data record was complete. If you're Happy Grasshopper member, you know that we've structured our system to where if you have a first name, we'll use it, if it doesn't have a first name, we'll just say hi. Right? We would remove the first name tag, so it doesn't show up as Hi, first name.
Dan Stewart (00:33:52): So, whatever system you're using, please make sure that you're not addressing people that way, because that's a sure sign that's an automated message, instead of you actually reaching out to help them. So, in 2021, I think automation is fine. I don't think most of us expect every message we get to actually be written by a human being like we know people have systems and use systems. That's okay. Right? But you don't want to abuse that knowledge. You don't want to take it to the extent where people feel like they don't matter, they're just a cog in your machine. Patti says, "Oh, Dan, I love being called first name." So great.
Dan Stewart (00:34:40): All right. All right. So I am going to keep going. I see we've got some questions in the question box. Okay, those are from earlier, I will clear those out of the way. So, let's keep going here. There is a difference in content that I need to point out for you. Right? That difference will be easy and obvious for you to understand from this moment forward. Right now, I'm sad to say that many people are confused about the difference. Right? There's a difference between marketing messaging and personal communication. Right?
Dan Stewart (00:35:17): Marketing messages, we'll just use email here as an example, they look like marketing, they're HTML. Right? It looks like an art project, and it often includes words like, "Sale, 50% off, subscribe here, click here, do this, do that." It's classic call to action marketing, be super, super clear here. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. You just really need to understand the difference between that and personal communication. Right? It's a night and day difference. So, this ties right back to the organization we talked about at the top.
Dan Stewart (00:35:58): Let's imagine I'm your past client, "Patti, you helped me through this transaction, I'll never forget you, I thought the deal was falling apart, you saved it. The inspections were a wreck, and you found a way through, and oh, my gosh, you negotiated something extra at that last minute, and you sent me such a wonderful gift, and I really appreciate you as a human being I refuse to let anybody use you, or use a real estate agent who's not you, I'm sending everybody to you because you're amazing. Then you show me how much you appreciate that by sending me just marketing messages. Right?" That doesn't feel very good.
Dan Stewart (00:36:36): So if people know you and you know them, it's time to switch over into personal communication. Right? We don't need to teach those people what you do for a living, we need to simply remind them that you care about them more than you care about the commission they represent. Right? So there are all sorts of content strategies to do that, and that's our bread and butter at Happy Grasshopper, that's what we do every single day. Now we're going to go a little bit further. Again, I'm just checking the chat here to see what other questions we have.
Dan Stewart (00:37:12): So, let's do a quick recap. Right? We've talked about four big things, we've talked about failure to use being the number one problem people have with their CRM, and then we talk specifically about what creates content fails as organization, automation, and the actual content itself, like those three things are huge. We've given you some really constructive thoughts about how you can string your content together to get better results. Now, I'm going to share my screen, and I'm going to show you how we do this for members at scale. So, I'm going to share an account type with you we've recently created here at Happy Grasshopper called Chirp.
Dan Stewart (00:37:57): Chirp is an account type that's only intended to go to people who know who you are. Right? These messages should never go to a stranger, they should never go to a lead, they should only go to people absolutely know who you are. So when you log into your account, you're seeing your next messaging opportunities, like I have a message, I'm due to send today. Right? We're going to see that it's time to send a lead harvesting message on the 16th. Those should go out four times per year, and that's text as well as voicemail drops. Then, of course, we got holiday messaging coming up. Right? So, our members get to choose up to six holidays per year that they send messaging for when they're using Chirp.
Dan Stewart (00:38:42): Chirp, by the way, is a 41 message per year contact plan, 17 emails, 12 text messages, and 12 ringless voicemail drops. So, once every three weeks, we remind our members it's time to choose an email and send it. Right? So here on the dashboard right now you see, these are all fresh messages our writers have created and they're only available until the 16th. We'll have all fresh new messages loaded in there now. Now, when you're previewing the messages, we ask you to rate them. Maybe you'll absolutely love the message, maybe you won't. That's okay. There's plenty of content in there for you to choose from.
Dan Stewart (00:39:25): Now, this is a message that's intended for past clients and sphere. I'll just read this for you. Subject line is home office update? It says, "The past year has taught the world to work from home, and this means buyers are placing value on properties with designed workspace." Excuse me. "The good news is that even if your home isn't set up for this now, there's some simple improvements that will make your space shine." Ask me if you need them. There's a link here to an article. Then it says, "Do you know anyone who's thinking of selling? The market is very strong right now. In fact, if you'd like to know what your home could sell for, just let me know, and I'll pull together some numbers for you." Right?
Dan Stewart (00:40:08): So this close here, this is what we call a call to conversation, and we have tons of members who report that they're able to pull listing opportunities by having that kind of close in the messages. So, I see a question coming in here. I'm going to answer that. "How do you create a ringless voicemail drop?" Great question. So I'll click here in this area, and you'll see we have scripts that are pre loaded, ready for you to choose from, then you can also see some things, if there were messages scheduled, they be here. I have some messages saved and then messages sent as well. So, the way that we actually create one, like I'll click here on this quarterly lead harvesting message, we provide a script, and our members simply click the record button.
Dan Stewart (00:40:55): So, here we go. I'll click allow. "Hey, it's me, Dan. I was just out your way. So I thought I'd say hi, hope you guys are good. Anyway, you know what? Let's catch up. I want to hear your voice. Tell me what's going on. You've got my number, you can reach me directly at 727-533-5175. All right, talk soon, bye." Okay? Notice how I did that. Here I am in the midst of a webinar, right, I want to pretend I'm actually leaving one message, I don't want to try to make it sound like a radio commercial, it does not have to be perfect. Right? It just has to be me, because the people who are getting this message actually know me. I don't have to try to be anybody I'm not, I just use that.
Dan Stewart (00:41:47): So, if I like that recording better than the previous one, I'll just click to use it, the system updates and that message is now available. So that when I'm on the dashboard, and it's time to send that quarterly lead harvesting message, I would just click voicemail drop, boom, and it's ready to go. I just choose it and out it goes. Right? So we have a similar methodology for email, for text messaging, and for voicemail drops where we're providing the scripts for you. So like here are some messages. Let me find this one. You guys may have seen this if you're members of LabCoat Agents, we had a member of ours post there recently that he used this exact text message and it pulled in a half a million dollar listing for him. Right? That's like two weeks ago.
Dan Stewart (00:42:37): So, even in these crazy market conditions, there are still people who want to sell their homes. So, I would say just go ahead and screen grab that, whether you're using my system or you've got a system of your own. That's a message that you can send that will produce results for you. So, definitely you want to jump on that. Now, you'll see in our system, whether it's email, it's voicemail, or it's text, we're telling you on the dashboard, what's coming up. We're reporting to you any unread text that you need to reply to. You have a section here of tasks that you create yourself. Right?
Dan Stewart (00:43:17): Ken, love it. That text landed him a listing in a sale. That's awesome. That's the one. So scrolling down here a little bit we see contacts with revaluate score. Within the Chirp account type we have an integration available for you with revaluate. So reevaluate, it's in the business of predicting when your contacts will be ready to move. We see that here. Brett and Derek are very close to be ready to move. This is not a score from zero to 100. Anything above 80 is considered highly likely to move. Let's see here. Agatha, I love your question. "Does Happy Grasshopper integrate with CRM, or are you a CRM?" Okay. We are the CRM, we're a very simple CRM, we're not trying to boil the ocean here. Right?
Dan Stewart (00:44:15): So, we have literally 1000s of members who are using other CRMs, and we have 1000s who are using ours alone. So I'm going to click here on settings and profile, come to integrations. You can generate an API key with our system very easily. You see I have my calendar and Zapier integrated, Follow Up Boss integration, revaluate, PieSync and LionDesk. So between PieSync and Zapier, we're connected to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different applications. Now, I'm also going to show you some reporting data here. We'll look just an email, I want to show you this. Look at these open rates, like 43%, 60%, 50%, 49%, you're going to see very high open rates when you're sending messaging to groups of people who know you.
Dan Stewart (00:45:09): By the way, in this account, notice the number of contacts, there's only 51, you don't win a prize for having the most contacts. Right? You win a prize by having conversations with the right people at the right time. So, I definitely recommend a content strategy that helps you get there. Now, I told you guys a little while ago, that I had something special, and I'm going to share that with you now. So let me go ahead and switch to panelists and attendees, I'm going to grab a link and share this with you. There we go, putting that in the chat right now. I'm going to pull this, and I'm going to put it up on the screen, again, I'll share my screen with you.
Dan Stewart (00:46:00): So I have put together a doc for you. It's a Google Doc, that shows you all different content fails and how to fix them. So let me go ahead and share that screen with you now. I just dragged it over here to my other screen, and you can grab this, you've got the link there in the chat, you go ahead and click on it, you can come here. I see a bunch of you already are. That's fantastic. Feel free to share this doc, if you'd like to, if you know people that you think this would be valuable for. Let me just walk you through a few things here. What we've covered, organization, automation content, and then this misunderstood purpose. Right?
Dan Stewart (00:46:43): So many people feel that the idea of having a CRM is just to have a CRM. Like, "Okay, I need one I've got it, I'll just send messaging to people because I have to check a box, no, and I sent messaging to people." The only reason this technology exists is to help you have conversations with people. That's what you really need to be doing. As you scroll down, and you look through the doc, you'll see my suggestions here for how to organize your database. There's also a link where you can take our online assessment. If you'd like our help with that will certainly reach out.
Dan Stewart (00:47:18): Then here you'll see some good general tips when creating these messages. I've talked about each of these things in a roundabout way today, this is the roadmap for you to follow if you're interested in trying to create content for yourself. Now, you'll see here further in the doc, we've got directions specifically how to use it. So, here's an example of how we use this methodology to create our messages. That's a sample message that we would send to you guys, right, it's right there in the doc for you. Then down below, you'll see how our writers create content for our members. Right?
Dan Stewart (00:47:59): This is the process we go through in order to create a team of professional writers, and you'll notice this whole first message they've crossed out. Right? Don't be afraid to kill your darlings, it's okay. You never get the best message on the first draft. So, you want to write more than once if you need to. There's all kinds of great content samples here for you, ready to go. Then further down, we're going to get through the email section. Which by the way, we have content for people who know you, and then here you'll see content for leads, people who don't. Right? So it's a little bit different kinds of content.
Dan Stewart (00:48:41): Then coming down here, we have some social media posts. So, inside our application, we put these on the screen for you, you can just copy and paste to social media. But here you'll see some of the examples that you could just copy and paste from this doc right to social media. So Kevin Cooper, are you here today? I'm curious. I don't know if Kevin is here. He's a member of ours that is a buddy. I'm just going to use him as an example. So, let me jump over into my Facebook account, and I'm going to search for Kevin Cooper. There he is. I'm going to scroll down here a little bit. Lots of dogs. Right? See this Yoda post? This is a message that we created. This was copied and pasted from our system into his social feed.
Dan Stewart (00:49:42): Part of what we want to do with social media content is create conversation, and we would coach our members to do exactly what Kevin is doing. He's liking their replies. He's replying to their replies. Right? So if we look at all these comments, this is a bunch of engagement that he's been able to create in social media, and there's even seven more of them, it's an important thing to be able to do that. I see a couple of questions popped in, I'm going to go ahead and answer those. Let me turn the screen share off. Let's see. "Do you have emails and texts and voicemails all with the campaigns, or do we have to type our own?" We have both. So you have the ability to create your own.
Dan Stewart (00:50:31): We generally have three classes of accounts here, we have Chirp, which is only for people who know you, and it's capped at 250 contacts. We have Nurture, which is a 500 contact account, that includes some content for your past clients and sphere, and for leads, but it doesn't have all the lead capture, that's a Pro level account, where we technically do the integration for you, we actually assign one of our writers to interview you, to create all the messaging for you, and in that case, you end up with messaging for your past clients, for your sphere, for all the leads you generate, and specifically all the lead sources that you have.
Dan Stewart (00:51:15): I have clients who specialize in probate or divorce, right, they need different content than say a traditional residential real estate client would. So working with a professional writer gives you the opportunity to have that. Let's see here, Patti says, "You've said that Chirp is for people who know you, is there a separate system for leads prospective clients?" Yes, there is. That would be the Nurture plan and the Pro Plan, that covers that. Let's see here. Oh, Steve, I love it. More personal profiles than biz pages. Yeah. So if we're talking specifically about your social media strategy, as a real estate agent, you are a human being first. Let's recognize that your clients, they don't really care too much about which brokerage or brand that you're with, they're your clients because of you. Okay?
Dan Stewart (00:52:12): So, you need to have a business page on Facebook, if you want to buy ads. Right? But most of your social engagement is going to take place on your personal page. That's where I recommend you post the content that I've just shared with you. Let me do this, I'm going to pull up another account, and then I'll share my screen again, I'll show you some of the live social content that's in there right now from this send cycle. So I'm going to turn my screen share back on. John Luke, absolutely. You can use the text and the images from the Google Doc. I see what you're saying, the access is restricted. Yeah, we're trying to avoid having anybody mess with the content there. Sorry that that's locked down. But let me show you some of the content here on social.
Dan Stewart (00:53:12): On a scale of zero to 10, how would you rate your last real estate experience? What went right? What would you have changed? Right? We want to create conversations about real estate on social media. How old were you when you bought your first home? What did it look like? What's your favorite room in your house? Why? Right? Now all you have to do is copy the text, download the image, and then paste it to whichever social media platforms you'd like to use. Here in the menu, we show you what it looks like in Facebook, and Twitter and on Instagram. Right? So we just display it a different way. You don't have to copy it, you can just paste it right into to wherever, you don't have to change it for the different social networks.
Dan Stewart (00:53:54): What's your favorite room in your house? Why? Right? So lots of real estate content, and then also lots of just fun content. That's great to share that people will actually engage with. Here's the message Kevin shared. Let's see, the last thing I'd share here about social media. You really want to have a regular post schedule, you want to create engagement consistently over and over in social, because you're teaching the social media platforms that you're the kind of person people pay attention to. That way when you are sharing a listing, when you are sharing an open house, they're more likely to share it with more of the people who follow you. Right?
Dan Stewart (00:54:38): That's one drawback of social media is that you don't have direct control over how many people are going to see your message. Where with email, at least you can send it to them directly and know that you're getting it. Same with text. Same with ringless voicemail drop. So let's see. Ken, I love it. Ken is using Chirp, and he says, "Where do I find the social content?" So here's another super cool thing. This has not been included in Chirp. This has only been available for members who have a Nurture account. But today I'm going to go ahead and give Chirp to ... or excuse me give the social media content to our Chirp members.
Dan Stewart (00:55:23): So, if you're on the call today, this includes you Ken, I will go ahead and enable that in your account here later today. So let's see here. Yes, yes, yes, I love it all these yeses. That's great. Agatha, if you sign up today, welcome. That's great. We'd love to have you onboard. We're going to include the digital business card site for you free, we're going to include the revaluate integration for you free, and we'll include the social media content for you, like I've shown here today free.
Dan Stewart (00:55:54): So, all you have to do is just go to happygrasshopper.com, you can learn about the different systems that we have there. But let me just turn that screen on again, here we'll make this easy for you. So I am going to jump out of this page, we're just going to come to happygrasshopper.com. If you need help with your past clients and sphere, this is going to take you to Chirp, you'll learn all about it here, you can learn more or buy now. If you want help with recruitment, click here, will take you down and teach you all about recruitment.
Dan Stewart (00:56:28): I'm really proud of the work that we do with recruitment. This book a consultation comes directly to my calendar. So if you need help with recruitment, you'll work directly with me. Then of course, for lead conversion. This is where we'd recommend you take our online assessment, definitely want you to take that assessment. Our pricing, of course, is on the website as well. So you can see all of that, and whether you go monthly or annual, that's of course up to you. Everybody who chooses the annual option gets those bonuses that I've talked about. We have to pay for reevaluate a year at a time, so I can't include that bonus for you if you're on a monthly account.
Dan Stewart (00:57:13): Chris Layton [inaudible 00:57:14] Happy Grasshopper. Awesome. Love it, Chris, welcome. Glad to see that. I hope I pronounced your name right, is it [Vipon, Vipin, Vipon 00:57:23] I'm struggling. Sorry, buddy. But that's how much it is. It's 47, 97 or 119 a month. The Pro account by the way, you only need that if you need us to create custom content for you. So, I hope that this answers all your questions. We have a couple minutes left, I'm happy to hang out and answer any other questions you have. Ken, I see your question, "Where do we choose the six holidays to connect to our email blast?" One thing inside all of our accounts ... let me turn my screen back on, I'll show you this.
Dan Stewart (00:58:04): Inside all of our different Happy Grasshopper accounts, no matter which one you have, we have a bunch of training videos here. So it can show you exactly where you need to go, to do and find anything, including that information. The training that's here is on how to use the system. Right? It's literally instructions on how to fly the plane. If you need help with organizing your database, setting up your spreadsheet for import, here's a video you can watch that teaches you how to do that. Practically, everything you need to do is laid out here. When you start with our service, you'll land in the dashboard. This tour is going to run for you automatically. It will walk you through the steps you need to take to get your account set up.
Dan Stewart (00:58:57): So, there we go everybody. It is 2:59, let's see what other questions I can get answered. Ray is asking, "Nurture and Chirp, two different platforms to purchase, or does Nurture include Chirp?" Great question. I'm so glad you asked that. All of our accounts nest inside each other. So if you bought Nurture, you have Chirp. If you bought Pro you have Nurture and Chirp. Right? It's all there. So we scale the number of contacts. Now, one question I get is, "What if I know 1500 people and I want to put them all in Chirp?" I promise you. You do not. Maybe you do it right. Most people do not know that many people.
Dan Stewart (00:59:40): There's something called Dunbar's law that says we have a really tough time as human beings, keeping track of more than 150 people. Really hard to have more people in there than that. Looking across our entire membership of agents all across the U.S. and Canada, the average number of contacts in the account is about 350, that's including leads. So, no matter how large or how small your database is, it's the right number. The idea is, let's improve the quality of the relationships that you have there. All right?
Dan Stewart (01:00:15): So, thank you. Thank you everyone for attending. I love that so many of you are still here this late in the webinar. I hope you enjoy those freebies. I'm going to circle up with next steps here, just so we are all on the same page. I have a great team of people here, Ben, Lorna, Marco. They are going to reach out and call you and make sure that you're getting everything that you need. If you're already our member, and you're wanting that social media stuff turned on immediately, I've got your back. Right? I'm going to do that personally.
Dan Stewart (01:00:49): Right now I have another meeting that I need to go jump into. So it'll be later this afternoon when I get to that, but I promise I will get it done. So, let's go start some conversations, everybody. Thanks for attending. Hope we get to talk personally soon. Bye now.