Why A Good Market Can Be Bad For Your Business

In a hot market, most real estate agents tend to get complacent and start making common mistakes that can literally have their business grind to a halt.  Are you avoiding those pitfalls? Discover how to stand out in a crowd of cookie-cutter real estate agents and what you can do to keep the gift of a hot real estate market keep on giving. 

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Show Notes/Links

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Your Host

Dan Stewart, CEO and Founder of Happy Grasshopper

Show transcript

Dan Stewart (00:00): All right, guys. I just switched the audio source over to a different microphone. So it's a little more comfortable for me to spend this time with you helping you. So let's dig in. We're going to first talk about what we're going to talk about. And I'm going to set some expectations here. I intend for this session to be highly interactive. So I want each of you to not be shy about using the chat. Most of you have gone ahead and commented and said something here initially, thank you for doing that. And we're going to dive in. So first question for you is, tell me about your market? I want to know. I'm going to assume that for most of you, you've got super, super low inventory, that anything that's listed is getting multiple offers well above listing price almost immediately upon being listed. If that sounds like your market, give me a yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Here they come. Here they come. Awesome. All right.
Dan Stewart (01:16): Is anyone in a market right now where you've got like 120 days of inventory and it isn't so caddywhompus? Anyone at all? I don't see anybody saying that's them? If you do, say I do. And I'll know that your market is a bit more normal. Okay, I don't see anybody saying that. So the topic of our session today, the reason we're together right now is that sometimes a really strong market can be ultimately bad for business. There's several reasons this could be the case. If you're a buyer's agent, you're probably working harder than ever. You've got the opportunity to write lots of offers, which feels great. And yet, the transactions are not always easy to come by. That can be really stressing. One of the reasons that people will find themselves in a situation where they're struggling to find business, is that they haven't done the work to really shore up their database.
Dan Stewart (02:25): So there's a guy some of you may have heard of him. His name is Gary Keller. Probably heard of Gary Keller. He said that your database is your frontline offense and defense against anything that can happen. That's absolutely right. So if you're an agent right now in a market with super low inventory, you have to know that the homes that are being listed are being listed with agents that maintain a relationship with the seller. Okay? So let these current market conditions serve as a reminder to you that you really need to build and maintain relationships with people over time. Most agents are fantastic at jumping into a new relationship, building a really good understanding, helping them achieve the victory of a home sale or a home purchase, and then they're kind of moving on to the next one.
Dan Stewart (03:21): If that sounds like you, give me a yes in the chat. If you're the kind of agent who quickly builds relationships, and then moves along to the next one, give me a yes in the chat. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay. Here they come. Here they come. All right. So let's just recognize that that's a very human thing to do. Being a real estate professional means taking people on this highly emotional journey. You've got such a limited amount of time that you can spend with each person, and you're spending it with them oftentimes at peak emotional states, that creates the bond that exists between you and your clients.
Dan Stewart (04:10): Now, sadly, too many agents surrender the value of that bond in search of the next transaction and the next transaction and the next transaction. And then at some point you're 7 years, you're 10, you're 15 years into the business and you think, oh, my gosh, all these people that I've met, all these people that I've served, why am I still chasing new business every single day in my life? There's one reason and it's because you did not have a strategy that allowed you to stay in touch with those people over time. So 10 years ago, when I started Happy Grasshopper, that was the one problem we set out to solve. How do we help these sales professionals? Most of the world view sales people as insects. And you're like grasshoppers, you jump from one relationship to another.
Dan Stewart (04:59): So we said, well, how can we help those people be really happy? How can we help them build their business? And we did that by building the right communication plan for past clients and sphere. That's what we started with. That's what we've been known with for 10 years. And then along the way, our members said, "Hey, what about leads? Can you help us convert these leads into clients? Can you please help us with that?" And the answer is, yes, we've become very good at doing that over years, we've learned a lot of things along the way. Now, my goal for this session is to give to you everything that you need to survive based on your existing circumstance. And then it's to empower you to do far more than just survive, it's to thrive to like really spring yourself forward and get after your big goals.
Dan Stewart (05:49): So I want to know, I've got some questions for you guys here, I want to know if your business is based mostly on lead gen, put leads in the chat, if your business is based mostly on relationship, put relationship in the chat for me. And please, everybody answer this question. Bob says leads, April says relationship, Brian says relationship, relationship, relationship, relationship, I see a lot of relationships here. Maya says both. Okay. One thing that I loved about my pre-COVID life was getting on an airplane every two weeks, traveling around the country, meeting people, hugging people, high-fiving people, and getting to ask a question from the stage, just like I asked you.
Dan Stewart (06:41): So the way I do it if we were in a live auditorium is I would say, raise your hand for me if most of your business comes to you through relationships and referral. And invariably, 60 to 70% of the room raises their hand. And that's what we're seeing here. Like most of you work from relationship. And relationships can really take you anywhere and everywhere that you want to go in life. You can absolutely find all the business that you could ever hope for through relationship. A lot of people also spend money on leads, they buy a lot of leads, they do a lot of lead gen activity. It's not a bad thing. Like it makes sense to do that in a lot of cases. And yet, the strategies that work for your past client's sphere are completely different than the strategies that work for leads. Okay?
Dan Stewart (07:35): So if you get nothing else out of the session today, take this with you and never forget it. Your leads need to learn what your past clients and sphere already know about you. So think about that. If you helped me in a real estate transaction, I can tell people what you're great at. I know. I've experienced it firsthand. If we've maintained a really great relationship, that's fantastic. Like, that is a wonderful thing. I'm happy to share you, I'm happy to refer you, I'm happy to refuse to let my friends and family work with anyone else. So you need to take all of those things that I now know about you and you need to teach them to your leads. That's what works with leads. So think about how this works. Think about how this works in your database.
Dan Stewart (08:31): I'm reading, guys. I'm paying attention to the chat as your comments come in. So, Bob, thank you. He saying most of his business is from leads, but he also generates business from relationships. Yeah, most people are going to have a combination there. And we're going to address both today. I just want to understand where people are. So back to this concept of teaching what your past clients and sphere know to your leads. I want you to recognize that there's really only two kinds of people alive today. Only two kinds. They either know us or they don't. So when you're thinking about how to organize your database for communication, keep that in mind. Your past clients know you, your friends and your family know you, your neighbors may or may not know you.
Dan Stewart (09:25): Your leads do not know you, they definitely do not know you. They may have been exposed to your marketing. You may be super famous in your market. And they may think they know you, but they don't actually know you. So when you're designing, you're planning your content strategy, you've got to keep in mind which segment of the audience you're communicating with. If I'm a brand new lead and I don't know who you are, the first thing that you've got to do is introduce yourself and then position yourself in such a way that I'm going to decide I found my agent. I may not have found my home yet, but I found my agent, I found the person that I want to work with. So the way you get to do that is by positioning yourself as their guide. You are the expert in real estate, you get to guide them towards the achievement of the goal. It's a really important place to kind of footnote that.
Dan Stewart (10:23): So Brian, I see your comment here. They know you, but they sometimes forget. Yeah, it's true. It's absolutely true. So I think that's where we're going to start. All right. Let's start out by addressing this group of people that knows you. Your past clients and sphere need to hear from you on a regular basis. There's so many systems that provide things you can send. If you want to send a real estate factoid every day of the week, you can do that. If you want to send a once a month super detailed market report, you can do that. There's all kinds of real estate content that gets churned out for you to send. And yet, most of the time, people hesitate to send it because it feels inauthentic. It looks like marketing, instead of looking like you actually care enough about them to stay in touch.
Dan Stewart (11:16): So if you're on this call, and you are currently sending a magazine or a calendar, and that's all you're sending to your past clients and sphere, it's time to smile, because you're missing a major opportunity. There's so much more business available to you in your market if that's all that you're doing with your past clients and sphere. You need to do more. You need to send them a message personally that truly tells them you care enough to keep in touch with them as an individual, instead of just with them as someone who can refer real estate to you. Right? The moment they see you, as someone who cares more about the commission than about the relationship, they have no reason to want to refer you. Think about that.
Dan Stewart (12:05): You know what it feels like, you know what it feels like to go to a party, you meet somebody, you discover they sell life insurance. And now all they want to do is talk life insurance, the whole party. You're just like. They have a big circle, like everybody's trying to avoid being in conversation with that person. So it's really, really, really important to communicate with them in a way that shows you care more about them as a human being than the commission that they represent. Let me break this down a little further. Like, this is the tattoo I don't have. Take this note, write it down, tweet it out, stick it on social media. If it looks like marketing, it's safe to ignore. I'll say it again, if it looks like marketing, it's safe to ignore.
Dan Stewart (12:54): I would rather get a friendly little text from you, friendly little note on social media than your magazine. I know with your magazine, you're spending money with a marketing company and they're sending that. Great. But if you actually reach out to me, it feels a million times better. The challenge is, how do you have enough time in the day to send all that content? You don't. And that's where we come in at Happy Grasshopper. So I'll show you a bit about how to manage that and what to do with that in a moment. But first, I need to give you an idea of the opportunity that really exists for you. So in the chat right now, tell me how many people you have in your database, your whole database, just put a number in there. Some of you might have 100, some of you might have 10,000. Doesn't matter.
Dan Stewart (13:45): All right, Brian's first, 2,700 are in there. Let's see some more. Every single person, I want to see how many are in there. Sheila, 830. Awesome. Keep them coming. I'll look for these answers. Darlene says 1,500 are in there. Okay. So we'll let these numbers keep coming in. Jose has 1,407. All right. Now, these numbers that you're pulling in, these are all the people in your database. So some of those folks are going to know you and some of them aren't. That's okay. What I want you to ask yourself now is thinking of all those people in your database, imagine that you were at Costco or Walmart or some giant big box store, and all those people in your database where they're with you. As you're walking up and down the aisles, how many of them are saying, hey, how are you? And like reaching out to have a conversation with you? Those are the people that really know you. Okay?
Dan Stewart (14:42): So now in the chat, I want you to enter your first number, and then tell me right next to it like first number, comma, how many of those people actually know you? Brian says no one can recognize us these days because of mass. Thank you, Brian. Don't miss the point here. Don't miss the point. Maya says 50-ish people. Okay, Brian, this is great. From 2,700 total people in the database to maybe 300 that would recognize you, that actually know you. Carmen 1,300 to 200. Sheila, maybe half. So what we've just done is it two steps, we divided the whole world into people who know you and people who don't. And then we're taking this smaller subset like the people in your database that actually know you well enough to say hi.
Dan Stewart (15:37): Now we're going to go one layer deeper, we're going to shrink this database down a bit more. So again, same supermarket, same big box store, you're walking up and down. How many of those people actually say, hey, how are you that you like? Okay. Key distinction. Not only do they know you, but you actually like them. Give me that number. How many people are in your database that you actually like? Put that number in the chat now? Brian says two. Brian, I don't know, man, I dig it. Carmen loves them all. That's sweet. Okay, Brian likes no one. Carmen loves them all. That's good. What else folks? Give me your numbers. Sheila says most of them, okay. Jenny says I delete them if I don't like them. So I like everyone in my database. That's awesome. I like that approach, Jenny. It's fun.
Dan Stewart (16:37): Life is too short to work with people you don't like. If you have to, well, you have to. But you don't have to. You can choose to work with people that you actually like. And you can structure it in such a way that those people attract a lot more people to you that you will actually like, that's possible. So Brian, that makes sense. He says he's got nine kids. So yeah, I get it. You're busy. And Robert says 380 to 320. Okay, back to the previous question. So the reason I'm asking you to pare down to this group, is that these are the most precious people in your database. Like, these are people that you can rely on, no matter what happens.
Dan Stewart (17:26): I told you about the Gary Keller quote, "Your database is your frontline offense and defense against everything that can happen?" Well, this is what we're talking about. Those relationships that you have, this core group of people, that's the group that can take you to any goal that you set for yourself. Any goal. Any path you choose to walk, those are the people who will knock the trees and the bushes and the bears out of your way so that you can walk that path. Now the question is, what do you have to do in order to structure that way. And it's really simple guys, all you have to do is communicate with them on a regular basis. So I'm going to lay out for you the ideal plan of communication for those contacts.
Dan Stewart (18:13): So here we go. Write this down. Again, that segment that you know that you like, here's the recipe for messaging success with them. We're going to start with email. You need to email them once every three weeks through the year. That's 17 messages over the course of every 12 months. Those messages are mostly just conversation starters. They're not about real estate most of the time. They're interesting topical things about things that are happening now, about holidays that are coming up that we're experiencing together. They're about current news, events. That sort of content demonstrates that you're informed, you pay attention, you care about what's going on in the world, and you care about sharing what you think is important with them. That's a lot. That big chunk of those 17 messages a year can take you a long way. And yet, it can't take you all the way.
Dan Stewart (19:14): So there's two other layers we need to put on here. Those who would be text messages and ringless voicemail drops. 12 of each. All right. 12 texts, 12 ringless voicemail drops in this cadence, their birthday and their transaction anniversary, that's 2 of the 12. Then once every 90 days, once every 90, I'll let you catch up here a little bit. Once every 90 days, you're sending a quarterly lead harvesting message. Okay. So that gets us to 6 of the 12 messages. And then the remainder are the holidays that you choose to reach out to them about. So I'll give you an example. Let's imagine that it's ... I'll pick one of you here from the chat. Brian, I'm going to use you.
Dan Stewart (20:10): So imagine it's your birthday a week from today, Brian. You're my past client, like we know each other. And it's your birthday seven days from now, so I send you a text message that says, "Hey, Brian, and by the first person to wish you happy birthday? Emoji, emoji." What do you do? As my friend, my past client, you engage with that message nearly 100% of the time. And when we have a nice, quick little exchange that helps him remember all of those kind feelings that we have for one another, like we reactivate that relationship in the span of a few minutes with just a short, quick text message. Now, one of the secrets of using text and voicemail drop is to use them together in conjunction. They're much more powerful together than they are one at a time.
Dan Stewart (21:04): So now imagine it seven days later, it's Brian's actual birthday. And he looks down at his phone and it says missed call from Dan. And there's a voicemail. He listens to the voicemail, and it's my voice telling him happy birthday. So that stands out to him on his birthday. It's not one of the zillion people on Facebook commenting happy birthday. It's a unique touch. And there are lots of other ways, lots of other ways that you can use this in conjunction. So transaction anniversaries, for example. Imagine getting a text that says, "Bey, Brian, can you believe it's been another year since you've been in your home?" If you get that from your agent, you're absolutely going to reply to that message. And then you can take it a step further.
Dan Stewart (21:57): "Hey, Brian, just reaching out to celebrate the anniversary of your buying a home. I'll give you a call later today. Would love to catch up." And later that day, there's a ringless voicemail drop triggered to go out. And that voicemail drop says, "Hey, it's me, Dan, just reaching out like I told you I would. I hope you guys are well. And again, hey, happy homeaversary. Let's talk soon." Done. You record that message once and then it can go out to all your past clients right on time. Okay. So this is where you're setting up a system, you're leveraging technology to preserve the most precious thing you have, which is your time. Instead of spending time feeling guilty about not reaching out, you're spending time actually having conversations with people. So those are two good examples of the one-two punch of messaging to past clients and sphere.
Dan Stewart (22:52): So Brian, I see your question, you're asking if we do text and voicemail drops? And the answer is yes, we absolutely do. I'm going to turn on my screen share here. I'll show you a bit more about that and how we do that. So let me just share this real quick. Can you guys let me know in the chat that you can see this, please? Yep, yep, yep, yep. Okay, awesome. So these are the only three reasons we get hired at Happy Grasshopper. Like I mentioned before, a lot of our members started with us just for working on their past clients and sphere, then we have a lot of members who hired us to help them convert the leads that they generate, and a bunch of clients who've hired us for recruitment. So right now we're going to focus just on past clients and sphere. And yes, for these folks, we send email, text and ringless voicemail drops. Absolutely.
Dan Stewart (23:50): And we do that in our system called Chirp. So Chirp provides exactly that sort of cadence that I've just described to you. There's 17 non-salesy emails. Our writing staff creates these for you in real time as we move through the year. Once every two weeks, we push that fresh content into your account, and you get to choose from the messages that you like the best. Super easy to do that and then you're ready to collect the replies from people. One thing I'm very proud of is that we actually generate tons of replies from our content. In fact, I'll share something else here with you that just recently happened. This is so much fun. I'll have that up here in just a moment.
Dan Stewart (24:40): Now, Jose, I see your question there. You're asking about the cost for Chirp. Is that what you're saying? Chirp is extremely inexpensive. It's $470 for the year or $47 per month, and that includes the entire conversation starters for both email, text and ringless voicemail drops. So yeah, if you want that, just come to happygrasshopper.com and click Meet Chirp here, just like you see on the screen and you can subscribe to our service. Take you about 10, 15 minutes to get it set up and you can be sending your first messages as soon as today. You can stop struggling with remembering to stay in touch with your database, we will make that go away.
Dan Stewart (25:23): Now the types of content we send, we have some examples of over here. Like this Mother's Day message you see on the screen, this coffee message, this wanting to share message, this is exactly the kind of stuff you'd send to a friend. It's not selly content, we're not trying to sell anything there. We're just trying to reengage and create relationships. Now, in the text and the voicemail area, you'll see we have suggested content for you. These are scripts that you should be sending, and they are highly, highly effective. I'm looking for one. Here it is. I have so many things open. So I just got this email on Friday. Look how cool this is. So Ken and Velma are running Chirp. And they sent ... Here you see they've been enjoying 30 to 50% open rates with their email. How crazy is that? Average open rate in real estate is 14%.
Dan Stewart (26:21): Here they say we sent our first mass text using the "it's been awhile" script. This is where we reengage. It's one of our quarterly lead harvesting texts. And immediately they got one listing, it just went live, they've already got two offers. And they're also going to work with that person on the buy side after they close. So that's 500 grand in volume just from that text. And then they're also able to refer a client to a commercial agent. So that's awesome. That's super awesome. So all of that messaging just gets queued up in the account, and then you're able to approve it for delivery. So questions are coming in. I told you guys, I pay attention to the chat and answer them. That's what I'm going to do now.
Dan Stewart (27:09): Brian is asking, what if we do not have birthdays and close dates loaded in our database? That's totally fine. It's a good chance to go ahead and get them. In your transaction management system, in your MLS, in your office's back end, you should have that transaction information somewhere that can be exported and imported into our system to make it easy. If you can't do that, send a simple message to them saying, hey, I'm updating my database and realized I don't know your birthday. Some of our members will hire a VA to call everybody and ask. Others will simply you know scrounge, they'll look for that on Facebook to see if they posted there. So there's lots of ways you can gather up birthday and close date information.
Dan Stewart (27:56): Jose, you're asking about the cost for texting, and what is the name. So cost for texting is super straightforward. It's all baked into that $47 per month, or that $470 per year, That's here in the Chirp account. So when you go to happygrasshopper.com, you can come here. There's a video that teaches you exactly how the system works and then you can go ahead and buy it. So I'm not going to spend a ton of time on that. Like, that's not why you're here today is just to buy our stuff. You're here to really learn how to work your database so that you can thrive in any kind of market condition. Now is a really valuable time for you to shore up relationships with past clients and sphere. So you know whether you're just taking what I'm teaching you and applying it yourself, or you're like I'm tired of messing with this, I want your help, now is the time to take action. You should absolutely do that. So let's see here.
Dan Stewart (28:57): I wanted to show you this email on the screen. I'll Zoom in here a bit so you can all read it. This is an example of a non-salesy email. This is the kind of content that you choose from, once every two weeks, you choose a new message, or excuse me three weeks you choose a new message. And in this case, it says Blockbuster Finally Pivots. That's the subject line. It reads Hi, Brian. Did you see this, Blockbuster's Last Store is Now An Airbnb Rental. They've set it up with 90s furniture, TV, VCR, and all the movies you can watch for $4 per night. Call me crazy, but I actually love this. It kind of makes me wish they'd paid more attention to Netflix and pivoted sooner. Speaking of real estate changes, do you know anyone who's thinking of moving or even someone we could convince to move if they got enough money for their home? Thanks, Randall and Vanessa.
Dan Stewart (29:53): So that's an actual message that has been sent from our system by these actual people you see on the screen. What I'd like to know now is would you send that message? Give me a yes or no in the chat right now. And keep in mind, this is only for people who know you. Only past clients and sphere. Brian says Yes. All right. And let's see, we'll keep these answers coming in. Sheila says yes. Carmen says yes to sphere exactly, it would be weird if you sent that message to an IDX lead. That would be bizarre, they'd be very confused. So this kind of content has a lot of value with people who know you. Limited, if any value with people who don't. So we say no, you should never send that to anyone outside of your sphere of past clients. I'm going to show you what happened when we sent this message.
Dan Stewart (30:48): So this is the actual response he got just 90 minutes later. "I hope that you guys are well. Your last sentence got me." He says first thing I'll point out here, "Your last sentence got me. This is where we're shifting the conversation from Blockbuster to real estate. This is a call to conversation. It's a very purposeful copywriting technique designed to generate these types of replies." So you go a little deeper into that email he got, it says, "Are you able to give me an idea of what we could list for?" Like, how awesome is that? That is the vaunted come list me reply that every agent wants to get. So Randall posted about this in his company Facebook group. "Hey, Happy Grasshopper works. This morning, I sent up the Blockbuster email. Within 90 minutes, he got that email." And then he says, "Not kidding, just got a second email from a client that closed in 2017." So now he's saying if both of those close, that's going to be between one and a half and $2 million in opportunity for him.
Dan Stewart (31:58): So guys, I'm going to stop the screen share there. The ROI on that is absurd. If he gets $60,000 in commission from a service that costs him $470 a year, I hope he tips us well. That is exactly the kind of thing that's possible for you. And we've been doing this long enough with a broad enough base of clients to where we know that for about every 100 people in your database that really know who you are that you like, and that you stay in touch with this plan I've told you about, there's as many as 12 transactions per year. As many as 12. I'm going to scroll back through the chat here. Let's take a peek. So Brian [inaudible 00:32:47] board chart. You said from 2,700 to 300. Right. So with 300, that could be as many as 36 transactions per year just from referral. Because of this messaging strategy.
Dan Stewart (33:01): How many transactions did you do last year from referral? Like, I'd love to know, if you'll share. Maybe you're doing a great job, and you're already at 36. That'd be awesome. Most people would tell us, hey, oh, my gosh, I'm leaving money on the table. I want to scoop that up. So really, really important to think about that. Another question coming in, Carmen wants to know about the benefit of using voicemail drop instead of a phone conversation. So, Carmen, I'm going to answer this question in two ways. The first thing we all have to recognize is that the most precious asset we will ever have is our time. We never get that back, we can always earn more money, we can never get our time back. So I would rather you spend your life actually having conversations with people than just reaching out to leave voicemail messages one at a time. That's why we want to automate that. Your job should be to have the conversation, our job is to start the conversation.
Dan Stewart (34:08): Now, ringless voicemail drops also allow you to really benefit from automation. So far, we've only been talking about past clients and sphere. Let's imagine you've got an IDX site that's generating buyers leads for you, or a what's my home or site that's generating listing leads for you. Imagine a lead comes in, our system receives it, they get an acknowledgment from you right away, and that acknowledgement sets expectations. Hey, Carmen, thanks for visiting my website. I would love to talk with you about your real estate needs, and I'll give you a call here a little later today. Boom. And then that message goes out. Maybe you're sending a text as well.
Dan Stewart (34:52): And then a little while later, they get a pre-recorded voicemail from you saying, hey, it's me, Carmen, just wanted to reach out. Like I said I would. I would love to talk with you about real estate, see if there's anything I can do to help. Please call me at blah, blah, blah. So you've recorded that message once. And now you know that it's always going out, it's always going to be received by those leads that you're generating. Part of the reason your past clients and sphere love you is that they know they can trust you. Right? You are their true fiduciary, they felt that, they've experienced that firsthand. Well, you can write messaging that says, I'm trustworthy, and I work really hard. And I'll be there for you.
Dan Stewart (35:37): It's considered a platitude. They won't believe it doesn't matter how many times they see that in writing, they have to experience it. And the way they experience it is by you doing what you say you're going to do. So for lead conversion sequences, it's really important to set expectations that future automated messages fulfill. So if you send a message that says, hey, I want to thank you for reaching out, it's really important to me that I build relationships with the people I serve. So you can count on me to reach out, then your content needs to show that you actually will do what you said you would do. So I hope that helps.
Dan Stewart (36:21): Brian's asking for an email to sign up for Chirp, we can actually do that for you. You could also just go to happygrasshopper.com and then click that button on the homepage. So again, happygrasshopper.com, just click Past Clients and Sphere, it'll take you right down to the Chirp section. And you can just sign up there. Thank you, Brian [Rael 00:36:44], he dropped the link in there for you. That's awesome. All right. So we've spent a good chunk of time talking about the importance of your past clients and sphere, right? That is the most foundational element of your business, those core relationships that you have, can carry you through any market condition. Think about how valuable it would be if you've cultivated relationships right now, today, be able to send a text to them and say, hey, you know what, Carmen, I could really use some help. Do you have a few minutes today?
Dan Stewart (37:19): Like, you're going to get an instant call, you're going to get instant replies to that text. And then here's my coaching for you for those conversations. This is where you get to say, I'm so glad that you called. Thank you. Here's what's going on. The real estate market is insanely hot right now. There's so many people who want to find homes to buy, and there's probably never going to be a better time to sell yours. So do you know anyone at all who's thinking of moving or anyone we could convince to move if we got the right amount of money for their home? It's that simple. It's that simple. If you have those conversations, you will have more contracts.
Dan Stewart (37:59): So write this down, conversation leads to contracts, period. Those are the two tattoos I don't have. If it looks like marketing, it's safe to ignore, and conversation leads to contracts. Those are fundamental beliefs that I have and they're present in the way that we've built this company. So that's a pretty good look at a couple of different strategies here. It's important to me on all these webinars, every time we do this, to make sure that more than just having a chance for you to learn about your services and how I can help you, that I also make available to you the things that I've learned along the way. So I want to take a moment to thank those of you on the call here who are members. We're just celebrating our 10th anniversary here this month. I can't tell you how privileged I feel to get to serve so many great agents.
Dan Stewart (38:54): We have members all across the United States and Canada. And over the years, what we've learned from our members has been so incredibly valuable. Consider that all of these hundreds of millions of messages that we send every year, they're all tracked. We know the data. We don't have to guess at what works, we simply have to help you do what works. So please understand that the way we structure all of this, everything that we do, is based on two things. First, it's based on recognizing the most valuable thing you have is a conversation. So all of those marketing levers, all of those things that you're doing, if you've got billboards, and radio, and TV, all of that doesn't mean anything unless it ultimately leads to having a conversation.
Dan Stewart (39:48): So what we're doing with our whole content approach is going straight to how can we get this person in a conversation with you about real estate. That's it. Thank you, Jenny. I appreciate that comment. Yeah, in person is always more fun. I cannot wait to get back on a plane. That is absolutely true. I wonder how many of my real estate clients feel this because you guys, you're an essential service. So through this whole pandemic, so many of you have been really on the front lines, and you've taken risks with your health. Some of you have caught COVID and recovered from COVID. And sadly, some of us have caught COVID and not. Sad. So let's see here.
Dan Stewart (40:39): I love this question. I might mispronounce your name, please forgive me [Lacrima 00:40:47]. I hope I was close. She's asking do you supply scripts in your software as well for when we call? We provide scripts in our software for these voicemail messages that you record and leave. We provide coaching on webinars like this about the sorts of things you should say in these conversations that you're having with people. I nailed it, I pronounced her name right. I'm so happy for that. That's awesome. Good stuff. Sheila, I'm glad you recovered. She's saying she's one who caught it and recovered. Just had a conversation with a brand new member who's coming on in Nashville, Tennessee today. She moved from Memphis to Nashville and she was struck with COVID. She was down there for a bit dealing with that. So I'm glad that she recovered.
Dan Stewart (41:42): Irma, and Emily, and Tara, and Keith, I want to welcome you. I don't know if you're all here on the call, but I just saw some flashes go off in this other screen, we got a bunch of new members. So thank you to those of you who've just signed up for Chirp. Now, I want to make use of our time together wisely. So I'd like to invite you to call out a challenge that you're facing, either with your market or your database. And I want to empower you to overcome that challenge. So just take a moment think of what's a challenge for you. Maybe it's organizing your database, maybe it's figuring out how to pull your contacts from a bunch of different areas. Maybe it's a sense of guilt, or shame that you haven't reached out to all these people and you're a little afraid of what might happen when you do. Talk to me about the challenges that you're having, and I'm going to help you get past those challenges. So let's see what comes in here?
Dan Stewart (42:45): This is a great question. Brian says it's all of that. Okay, those are some of the most common issues. So we'll address those. We have a question about Command. So those of you who are with Keller Williams, you probably know about Command, it's a CRM software that they provide. So we have an integration with Command via Pysync. Now, the question says, should I continue using that and just use your system? Well, I can tell you that we have thousands of members who are part of Keller Williams, and I don't know very many that are only relying on Command. Most of them seem to also have something else. The product has potential, it's just not there yet. So without knowing for sure how you're using it, I can't say whether you should continue or not. I can tell you that for your past clients and sphere, we're going to have everything you need inside our system. So let's shift gears now.
Dan Stewart (43:58): Sheila and Brian, you're both saying it's all of that. Sheila's saying she's been attempting to organize her database for months. So let me help you with this. Let me break this down to where it's not so challenging and you can get through it. Remember earlier in the session where I said we've only got two kinds of people, those who know you and those who don't? Well, so one segment of your database is going to be all your leads. They really don't know who you are. So they're going to be in a lot of places. They're in your email. They're in your IDX provider, if you're buying leads from a portal, Zillow, realtor.com, they're in those systems. They may be stored in the back end of your website. Wherever those are, they can be exported into CSV files. So that's kind of like the universal file type that most systems export into.
Dan Stewart (44:50): So the first thing that you do when you're working on organizing a database is you have to recognize all the different places that your contacts are. So they're in your phone. They're in your email. That might be Gmail or Outlook or Yahoo or AOL, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. They're in there. Many of the same people are in there multiple times. That's okay. Then they're also in, as I've mentioned, your IDX provider, your transaction system, your past clients are all definitely in your MLS. They could be in your transaction management software. All those places, you want to export, export, export, export.
Dan Stewart (45:27): When we've got all of these people in one place, it's time to deduplicate them. That means merge them. So I'm Dan Stewart. I have an email address that's [email protected]. I also have an email address that's [email protected]. You may have me as two different contacts. That needs to be merged into one. There's no reason to send me the same message twice, just because you happen to have two email addresses for me. That's the purpose of doing the deduplication.
Dan Stewart (46:00): We mentioned Keller Williams, I'll tell you a quick story. This has gotten better over the years, but it still exists. One day a month, I get the identical email from about 150 Keller Williams agents. That's a fail. That is not a good thing. Our system, and I wish other systems did this too, it's set up to where no single contact gets the same message from more than one sender. So let's imagine I were in Sheila's database, and Brian's database, and Jenny's database, you each want to send a message to me, our system is going to make sure it's a different message from each of you. So it never feels like I'm just kidding marketing stuff.
Dan Stewart (46:46): So that project of organization may seem daunting. If you're our member, I have a whole staff of people can help with that. If you're not our member join and we'll help you with that. Absolutely. But start with the exports of CSVs. Our software when we're importing contacts, it automatically deduplicates and merges them, and it also automatically title case corrects. So you might have me in there, Dan, with all caps or all lowercase, we're going to correct that so it doesn't look weird when you're sending the messages. It's important to get them in that way.
Dan Stewart (47:23): Now, then the next issue, and this is a big one. Brian mentioned all of that when I started talking about organization and then continued to talk about the guilt, the shame, the fear around what are these people I feel guilty I didn't keep in touch with, what happens when I reach out to them? So what you need, you need a relief here, and I want to give that to you. Like you've got to shed that sense of guilt and that sense of fear. Relationships require engagement from both parties. They didn't reach out to either. Like it's one thing if they ignored you, you're just feeling a sense of guilt because you know it would be good for your business to do that, you really enjoyed them, you'd like to do it, and you didn't. Stop beating yourself up, let that go, and recognize that they're going to be happy to hear from you nearly all the time.
Dan Stewart (48:20): The worst thing you're going to discover when you send that message is that they sold the house you sold them with another agent. That's the worst case scenario. So bite the bullet. And if you do find that has happened, we'll just let it be a key learning never to fail to keep in touch with people again. So get past that fear. There's a client of ours that comes to mind. Her name is Brenda, she's in the Sacramento area. And she had this same kind of guilt, this sense of not reaching out, except in her case, it was a lead. She discovered a lead in her purse that was 18 months old. Imagine this, you're in line at Starbucks, you have a nice chat with someone, you sit down and you talk about real estate. You tell them you'll reach out, you tuck that information in your bag, and then all of a sudden, it's 18 months later, and you haven't reached out. I can't imagine. I can't imagine what that must feel like.
Dan Stewart (49:25): So I think most of us in that situation would fail to send a message. We'd fail to reach out because we feel like we let them down. We can't do it. Well, in Brenda's case, we said, come on now. Let's reach out. It can't hurt. And so we sent a reengagement message, and she had less than 50 contacts in the whole system. You don't have to have hundreds of contacts. She had less than 50. And that person she spent time with in line at Starbucks replied and replied to her, and they said, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe you reached out. It's time to sell her home. We're ready." She listed the house the next day. And in her market that's like a $25,000 commission. So stop beating yourself up and be open to the possibility that there's tens of thousands of dollars of commission waiting for you when you reach out you reengage people.
Dan Stewart (50:20): So you absolutely want to reengage your past clients and sphere. And don't forget to re engage your zombie leads. Who cares if they visited your open house five years ago? If you have their information, you should re engage them, and you should set expectations that you're going to continue to reach out to them. That's how you build a system and a structure that gets you off the peak-valley cycle of revenue spikes and dips. And we need to get you away from that. So you can build, plateau, build, plateau, build, plateau. That's how we go from where we start to where we want to end up with our goal. So I hope that's helpful for everyone. I'm looking at the chat here, seeing if we've got more questions coming in.
Dan Stewart (51:07): I'd be happy to review anything further in detail if you're curious about that. Otherwise, I just want to kind of circle back to the commitments of the session that we're having today. So the reason we're together is to recognize that a good market can actually be really bad for your business, it's possible that that can happen. Because sometimes we'll see a market where agents are able to find success, they're able to create transactions, without really learning to do the work that gets them busy in a normal market. And it's possible there are agents entering the field right now that think this is normal. I got a listing. It'll be sold instantly. They don't remember what it's like to have a home on the market for 10 months and have no showings. They haven't seen that.
Dan Stewart (52:02): So the key to understanding what to do here is to be proactive in every market with all the relationships that you're privileged to have. So I really would value the opportunity to work with you personally here. This webinar that we're doing today is one of service, it's not one of sales. And yet, we've had several people sign up. So thank you for doing that. If you are interested in using Happy Grasshopper, I want to point out, there's a few different ways you can do that. I'm going to come to our pricing page here. We have a few different ways that you can work with us. click the right button. So we've talked about Chirp, that's easy, just sign up for it.
Dan Stewart (52:49): For those of you who have more than 250 contacts, Nurture is the next step up there. That makes sense. And between these two services, you're completely covered for people who know you, your past clients and sphere. That's that 41 touches per year campaign. That's really well covered in handled there. Now, those of you that are also generating leads online, we have a Pro plan. So this is where our technology is catching leads as they come in, and we're responding to them with custom written content that we've created just for you. So I'll give you an idea what happens here in a Pro account. That's where we assign a member of my team to serve as your success coach. So think of this as a project manager who gets your database in shape, who connects to all your lead sources, who gathers these leads up and sends out the right content at the right time. Like they really free you to just focus on having conversations instead of always trying to figure out how to start them.
Dan Stewart (53:58): So you have a one on one call with your tech coach. They work on importing and organizing that database. Then we interview you. One of my copywriters on staff will interview you, they'll create your custom content, you'll review that content, you'll approve it for delivery, and then we'll launch your campaigns. So this process takes us about two to four weeks to get through. And when it's done, you are fully covered. You've got your sphere and your past clients and your leads taken care of. So this is one of the like highlights of my life is creating a system like this that allows people to create prosperity. I have so many ridiculous testimonials here of how well this has worked for people. I don't want to belabor the point here, but from some of the world's biggest, most successful names in real estate to folks you may never have heard of, we have a 10-year track record of producing results for people by following this methodology.
Dan Stewart (55:01): So if this sounds like something you'd like to explore further with me, just go ahead in the chat right now, just go ahead and say, call me. And I'll make sure that a member of my staff reaches out to you, and they book appointment for you with myself or one of my staff. So just go ahead and say call me in the chat if you'd like us to reach out and do that. Otherwise, I'll just ask you guys to circle up, you can visit our website, you can find the information you need. Brian, thank you for saying that. We'll definitely get somebody on the phone to you shortly. So guys, we're coming up to the end of the session. There's two minutes left, it's going to be time to close out. So Laura, yes, you certainly haven't learned everything here in the session that you need to know whether or not you need to use our services. So thank you. Yes, we'll definitely reach out to you for that.
Dan Stewart (55:58): So Brian and Laura, I'll have staff members reach out to you today, and we'll go ahead and get appointments booked for you so that we can conserve you more effectively. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for your time and attention. Quick recap, two kinds of people, those who know you, those who don't. Those who know you are the fastest path to achieving your goals, because the quality of the relationship that you build with them is what enables you, it gives you the leverage. They're the people who knock the bushes and the bears and everything out of your path so that you can march towards the success that you've envisioned for yourself. So we definitely need to activate those relationships for your move in that direction. So I will look forward to seeing you guys attend the next session. Again, thank you for reaching out. Don't be shy if there's ever anything I can do personally. Have a great afternoon, everybody. Bye now.