Killing It With Technology – Kris Lindahl Webinar, Part 2
Kris’ real estate career took off quickly as he took a strong interest in leveraging technology and social media. He did 175 transactions by himself, and now with a team he is on pace to do more than 400 transactions. Kris is “killing it”, and he is going to share with you how he got to the #1 spot in the state of Minnesota in only 6 years!
Show Notes & Links
Happy Grasshopper Facebook page: Facebook.com/happygrasshopperKris Lindahl Facebook page: Facebook.com/krislindahlrealestateHappy Grasshopper Tour: HappyGrasshopper.com/tour
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Show Transcript
Dan Stewart: Kris has been a client now for I guess two years, maybe a little over. Maybe a little under, not really sure. I just frickin’ love the guy. He’s awesome. I had no idea how awesome he was until we really started to hang out together and go after these fish on the beautiful Kenai river up in Alaska. He’s the kind of guy who’s just genuine and authentic. There’s an enormous amount of people who need to know Kris Lindahl.
Dan Stewart: He’s a super, super wonderful guy. He’s uber authentic and in case you’ve been sleeping under a rock and you don’t know, you should definitely know that he’s also one of the most successful real estate folk on the planet. As ranked by real trends, Kris is currently the number one agent in all of Minnesota. That was for 2014, he was ranked that by Volume with 175 transactions, as a single agent. That is absolutely amazing.
Dan Stewart: Without further ado, let me go ahead and introduce my good friend, Mr. Lindahl. How are you doing today?
Kris Lindahl: Dan Stewart. Hey, I’m looking at the picture here and one thought that came to mind that probably most of the listeners don’t know is that it actually took me four days to catch a fish. I think when I caught my first fish, you had already caught 15. I remember the first thought when you casted a fishing pole, I go, there’s no way Dan’s going to out fish me. What did you do? You out fished me.
Dan Stewart: That is especially hilarious, because leading up to that trip, I knew you were a fisherman. I was like, oh man I’m going to be totally outclassed here. Ryan and Kris are just going to be getting all the fish, I’ll be lucky if I get a few. That’s how it goes sometimes. Sometimes, the fish are biting, sometimes they’re not.
Kris Lindahl: In our case, we were snagging them.
Dan Stewart: Exactly right.
Kris Lindahl: I saw that picture and I just had to laugh.
Dan Stewart: Good times. Can’t wait to go back next year. That’s right, Ryan and Bree, next year, pencil it in, we’re planning on it.
Dan Stewart: Kris, last time we were together, we covered five key activities and attitudes that are necessary to help people get to the top. I want to recap that here, just at a lightning pace. I want people to have perspective and then I want them to go back and watch the first session that we did together, because there’s a ton there.
Dan Stewart: The very first thing that we agreed people need to do is maybe a little surprising. It’s me first. I remember sharing this, people were like, really, me first? That seems crazy. I’m a firm believer that you can’t be ready to really do a great job for someone else, until you’ve already done a great job for yourself. You can’t stress enough how important it is to be prepared to do a great job. I know we talked a lot about that. Do you have anything you want to add there, Kris?
Kris Lindahl: I do. It actually has to do with, when I saw that picture of the fish, and you can see the sky was gray and overcast, it’s actually like the weather is today in Minnesota. When I woke up this morning, it was about 40 degrees, cloudy, gray. I had all the reasons to want to stay in bed, and what I did is I just, in my mind, I just change it to a positive focus. I put jimmy Buffett on the Sonos and I jumped in the shower and I said, I’m going to be on a beach today. That’s just exactly what I’m doing. Life’s good.
Kris Lindahl: If you don’t focus on yourself first, it’s really hard to make critical decisions in your business.
Dan Stewart: Love it. Yeah, absolutely right. The second thing we talked about is something I can’t imagine you’ve ever had a problem with. That would be being confident. To me, you just exude confidence. I can’t imagine you’ve ever spent a day in your life not being totally confident. What would you say to people who’re maybe still trying to figure out if they’re going to be able to make it, if this is really the career for them?
Kris Lindahl: One thing that always sticks in my mind, especially, even when we’re talking with agents from our team is, this always hits home with me, even if you don’t have the right answer, if you say it with confidence, the consumer will respect you. Just as long as you look at any leader or anyone, if they have confidence, they have everything. You don’t have to have the right answer. I can say Dan, I’m sorry, I don’t know that answer, I’ll go find it for you. Or, I don’t know that answer yet, but I will go get you the answer.
Dan Stewart: So important.
Kris Lindahl: As long as I say that with confidence, you feel comfortable that I’m leading you in the right direction, whether it be real estate or whatever it is. Yeah, you’re right, confidence has always been one thing for me, but it’s more so a state of mine. Everyone has the ability to be confident, we have to focus on me first, and that will lead us to confidence.
Dan Stewart: I love it. You talked about something last time, the confident no. I observe this, getting to know you, you’re like yep, or nope. Either way, you’re delivering it with total confidence.
Kris Lindahl: I’ll give you an example. This morning, we had the vice president of a real estate software company who’s in town that stopped by, that wanted to pitch their product to us. He got halfway done, I didn’t believe in the product, and I said, I really like you, I appreciate everything that you’ve brought today, but I’m just not interested.
Kris Lindahl: He looked at me and he continued with the presentation, and I said, honestly, I’m not interested right now. I said, I respect everything you’re doing, but I also respect your follow up, and by giving you a no now, that means I didn’t give you a maybe, so I’ve saved you a lot of time.
Kris Lindahl: Just by telling him that, he looked at me, goes, you’re right, I appreciate that, I don’t have to follow up with you for the next four months because you’re not going to use our products.
Dan Stewart: I like it.
Kris Lindahl: Sometimes, maybe it’s not always with consumers, maybe it’s in other parts of our business or our life too, where …
Dan Stewart: Hey, you know what, Kris, I’m going to interrupt you, because guess what we’re already doing? We’re losing the lightning pace, bro. We’re giving the webinar over. We got to move this along, we’re going to run out of time again. Have a part three.
Kris Lindahl: Here we go.
Dan Stewart: Next up, I know this is huge for you, is give generously. For those of you who don’t know, Kris does a ton in his community. Just touch on that for us briefly, Kris.
Kris Lindahl: Yeah. The give generously thing, for me, is a really, really important thing. It’s a big reason why I do what I do, and why I wake up every day, is because we want to do more good in our community and the way that we do that if we sell more real estate, we can make a bigger difference in our community. At the end of the day, I told Dan this earlier when we were talking, if your drive is only about money, what did you say, you’re going to have a shallow success, is what you said, Dan?
Dan Stewart: Yeah.
Kris Lindahl: It’s going to be really … once you hit a point-
Dan Stewart: A hollow victory, Kris, it’s a hollow victory.
Kris Lindahl: There you go, a hollow victory, once you hit a certain point and money was your only driver, you’re going to have a very empty feeling. For me, my driver is to continually make a difference and give generously.
Dan Stewart: Yeah. I love it. Now next up, I love this one, flock together. We’ve had a blast gettingto know each other and spending time together. I love getting to see people at conferences. I find myself in these conversations with heavy hitters and top producers from all over the country, all of North America. Sometimes, coming from as far away as Europe. I’m eternally and will always continue to be grateful for the opportunity to learn from others.
Dan Stewart: I want-
Kris Lindahl: One thing, Dan, that I picked up this last week, is there are a couple different types of friends in my life. There’s the career friend, which is high school, I grew up with, or there’s the college friend. Which are great friends, which mean a lot to me, and there’s the growth friend. The growth friend is the friend where we talk about flock together, where you’re surrounding yourself with people that are going to push you to that next level, that are maybe more successful than you are. That’s what is really pushing me today, is to have those growth friends where, I can say, okay, I want to get to that level or I want them to get to that level, and where you’re in this flock where everyone is pushing everyone.
Kris Lindahl: I don’t know everyone’s friends on this webinar, but I’m willing to bet that most people’s career friends are not pushing them as much as their growth friends would be.
Dan Stewart: Yeah. I definitely … yeah, go ahead.
Kris Lindahl: Especially being entrepreneurs, and you know this Dan, is entrepreneurs have a hard time having a lot of friends locally, because there’s only so many people trying to do that same thing locally. Sometimes, we have to look for those growth friends outside of our market area that are willing to push us, because let’s be honest, in our market, there are a lot of people that look at us and go, they don’t understand one thing that we do, they don’t know why we do what we do.
Kris Lindahl: When you find people that you can relate to, they don’t have to be in your market to be a growth friend. That’s one thing that I’ve found, that’s definitely been a big attribute to my success, is having those growth friends.
Dan Stewart: I think it’s important. I remember a poster on the wall, gosh, at one of those [successories 00:09:47] posters, remember those, they were everywhere in the ’90s. My boss had one, it was something like, eagle’s don’t flock, something like that. I always thought, that’s interesting, because when I hang out with guys like you and Gary Ashton and Ryan Tollefsen and Ben Kenny, so on and so on and so on and so forth, I always find that when you’re at a certain level, your peer group is much smaller. You don’t spend as much time with each other as maybe you would people shoulder to shoulder.
Dan Stewart: The time you do get to spend is really high quality.
Kris Lindahl: It is, I agree. It’s a really high level.
Dan Stewart: The whole point of having a flock together attitude is to make sure you’ve got some resources you can plug into, to really pull what you need. That’s important.
Kris Lindahl: The one thing is, we have limited time in a day. We need to make the most of it. When you’re flocking with the right people, that’s the number one plan for us. We have to be around the right people, because we have limited time. There’s only so much time in a day.
Dan Stewart: Yep. Totally agree. Next up is stay hungry. This for me is one that people sometimes ask. They’re like, Dan, you’ve had more than one company, why are you still working as hard as you do? For me, it just doesn’t seem like there’s an option. I frickin’ love what I get to do. Every day I wake up and I’m like yet, I get to do this stuff. I don’t feel like I have to do this stuff.
Dan Stewart: I struggle with this one, Kris. Staying hungry for me, is just an automatic thing. I would presuppose, I would guess that it’s probably the same way for you too, is that right?
Kris Lindahl: It is. I love that you said that you get to do that, because life is a privilege, and what we’re doing is a privilege. For you to realize that is so powerful, and it’s the same for me. It’s one of those areas, where it’s hard to teach. You either have hunger or you don’t. You can tell who’s going to be successful based on their hunger level, and what drives them.
Kris Lindahl: I think if you’re not hungry today, maybe you need to reevaluate why you’re doing what you’re doing. If you can identify why you’re doing what you’re doing, I think that could lead to some hunger. If I wake up in the morning and said, okay, today I want to close on five houses or 10 houses, I’m not going to be very hungry. If I wake up in the morning and go, I have the opportunity to make a difference for 20 more kids today, if that’s how I wake up, it’s painting a picture of why I have to be hungry.
Dan Stewart: Yeah. I love that you’re saying it that way, because our expectations really do influence our reality. We get to choose how we look at the world and how we get to see our lives, and how we get to see what we get to do each day. I choose to frame it in a positive perspective. I like to live, get a little woo woo here. I like to feel grateful for the opportunity that I have. I mean that sincerely.
Dan Stewart: If I say I try to live my life from gratitude, it’s not like I’m trying to have a séance or pass rocks around. I just really do feel sincerely grateful for being able to get to work with the people I work with, to serve the clients that we serve. I think a lot of people would feel that way if they just took a moment to reflect on it.
Dan Stewart: For me, that’s just a hugely important attribute. Kris, I’m going to go ahead and do our best to keep us on pace here, because we’ve got a ton of stuff ahead.
Kris Lindahl: Let’s roll.
Dan Stewart: Little bit of housekeeping here. Just momentarily I want everybody to leave this webinar, go to Facebook right now, go to Facebook.com/happygrasshopper. There’s a post up there that Erin has put on our page, and we want to know what makes you happy. I promise you, we’re going to do something cool with that content. Head over there, comment on our post, and also, share with us something you’ve learned so far, something you love about what we’re talking about here today.
Dan Stewart: While you guys are off doing that, I’m going to go ahead and pre frame what we’re headed into. We talked about five key attitudes, five key activities that you’ve got to engage with to really get you to the top. Me first, be confident, give generously, flock together and staying hungry, are of huge importance. They’re not enough. They’re just not enough by themselves.
Dan Stewart: You’ve got to focus on these four critical areas, when it comes to growing your business. Let’s talk about what those four areas are. Let’s talk about what it is that every person on this call today has got to have a focus on every day when they wake up in the morning. That area is going to be lead generation.
Dan Stewart: Kris, there’s a lot on this slide here, I want to break it out, top to bottom. A lot of our clients in the real estate space, they try to focus on maybe just buyers or maybe just sellers or maybe a balance. I think that each agent has to really ask themselves, what do they want their day to day focus to be? I can tell you listing agents on the call, if you’ve got a bunch of listings, those are generating great buyer’s leads. It makes sense to go ahead and build out a team of buyer’s agents.
Dan Stewart: Lead gen, there’s just so many different choices here. I think there can be a lot of confusion, sometimes about what works and what doesn’t work, and what people should do. I’m trying to line this up in a way we can just knock it down, Kris.
Kris Lindahl: Yep. [crosstalk 00:15:40] top one there with the Facebook.com/ …
Dan Stewart: Yeah, absolutely.
<p dir=”ltr”>Kris Lindahl: … krislindahlrealestate. Yeah. The top one there is my Facebook page, where we generate a lot of activity, whether it be buyers, sellers, recruits. The Facebook page is really us on stage. People are watching. That’s one thing you have to remember about social media, is people are watching what we post, how we respond, what pictures we’re taking. Be careful and just remember the world is watching us. Go over to Facebook.com/krislindahlrealestate, and you’ll notice my post that I posted yesterday, that has over 3000 likes already, which all it is is talks about positivity and positive focus, where as we look at Facebook and social media, if you stroll through your news feed, everything is so negative.
Kris Lindahl: What I want to do is I wanted to put more of a positive spin on it, and just read positive comments from people that I know, past clients, friends, family, just posting whether it’s quotes or pictures, whatever it may be, something really positive.
Dan Stewart: Let me jump in here, Kris. I got to interrupt you because this is so important. I get this question every day. People are like, what should I be doing on Facebook? What should I be doing on my social? I hear that a lot. I send a lot of people to go look at your page, because you are one of the leaders in real estate, at really using Facebook in a way that’s effective for you and not offensive to the audience. If you’re listening to this call and all you’re using Facebook for is a place to put your listings, you’re missing out. Gosh, there’s so much power can have.
Dan Stewart: Consider Kris’s post here. It’s not about real estate, it’s about having fun with your family. Look at the picture there, it’s just a beautiful thing. It’s a wonderful positive post. It’s 21 hours old, it’s been shared 33 times, it’s got 3077 likes, and 174 comments. It’s 21 hours old, people. 21 hours hold. 21 hours old, it’s got more friends than most of you do on Facebook. More likes than most of you have friends. It’s not about sell sell sell, it’s about engage. Show the community you care. Be an authentic human.
Dan Stewart: Does that make sense?
Kris Lindahl: Yeah. It does, yeah. With that, what I wanted to do is I wanted to also use a little power of persuasion as well. We have a big event that’s a big pumpkin event, where last year, we had 4000 people there. This year, we’re going to have 8000 people there. One of the things that we’re doing with that, is we made that post, and if you scroll down the post, you notice I tied it into the event, and I painted a picture of life would look like if you did come to our event. All the smiles and the joy that’s going to be at the event, but also, that could be the perfect holiday card.
Kris Lindahl: Notice in the post, I used holiday instead of Christmas or Hanukkah or any of those things. I just said holiday, because remember, we’re on stage, we don’t know who’s looking and who’s watching. I said, this would be the great holiday card. If you look through the comments, people are actually posting that they used their picture from last year as holiday card.
Dan Stewart: Super cool. You’re just framing it up, you’re making it very easy for them to participate, very easy for them to understand. Because what you’re doing has value, they’re sharing it. They’re commenting, they’re engaging.
Kris Lindahl: They’re engaged, right. Yep.
Dan Stewart: Yeah. Super cool. Thank you for doing that Kris, and congratulations on your success with Facebook. Just awesome.
Kris Lindahl: Thank you. It’s just this world is so negative, and there are so many distractions now, that just to have that positive focus, I can tell you that for me, it benefits me as well, because I go through those comments and I feel good about what’s happening when I read what people that I know are doing and saying.
Dan Stewart: Very cool. Let’s jump back to our slide here for a moment. Let’s tackle the buyer’s side first, Kris. I’ve got a lot of things put up here. As we’re talking to our clients around the country, we hear a lot about where there’re generating buyer leads and where they’re generating seller leads. I’d like you to share with the audience, your lead gen strategy and what you really focus on, and how effective you feel it is for you.
Kris Lindahl: Okay. The first thing, this is the most important thing that I believe in lead generation, is be diversified. You cannot be dependent on one lead source. So many people in this industry are so dependent on one lead source. I have friends where their strategy is all search engine optimization. They have organic rankings. What happens if Google changes their algorithm? What is Google is no longer the source? I have friends that are dependent on Zillow, Trulia, realtor.com, that’s all they do. They buy all the leads that Zillow and Trulia and realtor.com provide.
Kris Lindahl: I have other friends that are 100% pay per click. All they do is they buy all the pay per click leads they possibly can from Google, Yahoo and Bing. When you find yourself in that trap, you have to get out as soon as you can. I recognized that a few years ago. Dan, you were actually, you were instrumental in me actually changing a little bit, you probably don’t even know this, but you made that comment to me and I bring it up almost every time I see you about your friend that was in the DSL world, and as they changed to cable, I don’t want to be that agent where the light switch goes off and I had one, I was dependent on one marketing company or one lead stream and now I have no clue what I’m going to do.
Dan Stewart: How many people on the call today used to just use Craigslist and generate a slew of leads with Craigslist?
Kris Lindahl: I did.
Dan Stewart: Yeah. That ship has sailed, hasn’t it?
Kris Lindahl: It’s gone.
Dan Stewart: Yep.
Kris Lindahl: As I look at this list, and we can cover each one of them, they’re all equally as important. But, I’m just saying, we have to be diverse. We cannot, the problem is, and you see this I’m sure more than anyone does, Dan, when you guys are having your consultations. So many people have become so drunk on lead generation, and specific lead generation, that when you take a call, I’m sure people say oh, I absolutely love Zillow, or oh, I’m all about SEO or I’m all about pay per click or I’m all about this company.
Kris Lindahl: They forget that there are so many different streams that we have to be focused on.
Dan Stewart: Yeah.
Kris Lindahl: It’s …
Dan Stewart: How do you manage all these different streams, Kris? What’s your strategy? IDX, I get a lot of questions, which site provider should I use, who should build my website? How many leads am I going to get if I do this or that? I always feel like there’s no one right answer to that question, because there’s so many different components …
Kris Lindahl: You’re totally right.
Dan Stewart: … that play on each other. No two markets are the same, no two agents are the same. Who you [crosstalk 00:22:43] matters.
Kris Lindahl: Totally right, I think …
Dan Stewart: It all plays …
Kris Lindahl: I agree. With the IDX, I think everyone, I’d imagine a lot of listeners today on the webinar are at different points of their business. We might for one person, they might be able to buy a $5000 website. For another person, the $39 a month website might work just perfectly fine.
Kris Lindahl: I think one of the things, and we covered this last time, it has to do with teams and don’t develop a team until you have a personal brand. If you have a personal brand you’re evolving into a team, then you’re going to need a higher level IDX provider. If you’re an individual agent, you might be able to get by with a WordPress site with an IDX plugin, versus going out and buying a high level IDX website. I think it depends on where you’re at with your business. The rule of thumb is, the more you spend on an IDX website, the more functionality it’s going to have.
Kris Lindahl: If you’re an individual agent, I’m not sure you need the highest level IDX website. There’s a point in your business where you’ll get to where you’ll need that, but I don’t think if you’re an individual agent, you need that out of the gate.
Dan Stewart: Yeah. Looking at some of our buddies who have sites that they’ve invested heavily in to create an enormous volume of leads. I’m struggling to think of one that’s a single agent. They’re all teams. They’re all brokerages.
Kris Lindahl: Right. I think you have … I think with IDX, I think everyone has to be present. If your client looks you up, someone has to be able to find you easily. If I search Kris Lindahl and I’m looking to use him to buy or sell a house, his website better come up either one or two on Google, with some form of IDX. You need to be present, but you don’t have to have the Bentley of the IDX world, initially. Build up to that.
Dan Stewart: Yeah, makes sense.
Kris Lindahl: Once you have a team, then you need to have something like that. When you’re an individual agent, you don’t need that.
Dan Stewart: Yeah, makes sense. Kris, I asked for questions from the audience earlier. I’ve got a whole slew of them here. A couple of them really tie into what we’re talking about right now. Mary would like to know what your thoughts are about door knocking and cold calling. I can tell you, I have some clients who do those things every day, and they’re very effective for them. Is it something you do in your business?
Kris Lindahl: I don’t. I think, I just had this conversation last week when I was at a conference, and I was with someone, that is extremely successful with cold calling. I think what happens is, our teams are a reflection of us. My team is a reflection of me, where we all think and act the same, because that’s the way that we hire. I’m not comfortable sitting on a phone for eight to 10 hours a day. I’m not saying it’s not successful, but the guy that I was with, after a 10 minute conversation, I said, I can tell that you just absolutely crush it on the phone, and so does your team, just by having a conversation with him.
Kris Lindahl: His scripting was so in tune and his motivation for the phone was something I’ve never seen before. For certain people, that works great. I think when you’re first starting, it’s the most inexpensive way to lead generate.
Dan Stewart: Yeah. Makes sense.
Kris Lindahl: If all you have is your time to give, it’s the most inexpensive way. I’m not saying that it’s the best way, but it’s the most inexpensive.
Kris Lindahl: For me, for where we’re at today, we don’t do that. Not to say that we probably shouldn’t be doing at least some circle prospecting, where we’re having an open house this weekend, we’re going to call the closest 100 houses, or we just sold a house and now we have another buyer that’s looking, and we call the close 200 houses to the home we just sold, those things I think are really valuable and are probably things that we need to add to our business.
Kris Lindahl: Today, I don’t do those.
Dan Stewart: Okay. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that, Kris, I can tell you that from my perspective, and I see it, because our clients do such a huge variety of different things in their businesses, there is no one right answer to how to be successful in real estate. You can do it a huge variety of different ways. That gets back to those five activities.
Dan Stewart: I think if you start with me first, you really work on yourself and you examine what you’re willing to do and what you’re not willing to do, if you’ve gone through that process, it makes it pretty clear to understand which of these lead generation strategies are really going to be successful for you.
Kris Lindahl: At the end of the day, you have to be comfortable with what you’re doing. Granted, in sales, you want to be a little bit uncomfortable when you’re doing things, because that’s going to get you out of your comfort zone, but when you go to the office, you have to be excited to go do what you’re going to do.
Kris Lindahl: For me, that door knocking and calling, that wasn’t me. You’re right, there is no one answer. I’ve seen so many different models that are highly successful, and all of them are very different.
Dan Stewart: Yeah. That makes sense. Of these things that are on the screen, Kris, are there any that you want to focus on here? Any tips or tricks you might want to share with the audience about things you’ve tried that’ve worked really well? Or things to avoid that maybe you haven’t?
Kris Lindahl: Yep. Facebook obviously’s a big one. You have to be really present on Facebook. It doesn’t have to be all about your listings. The second one, IDX, you must have a visible IDX site that’s branded somewhat to your name, to where if someone searches you on Google, they can find your site. The portal, Zillow, Trulia, realtor.com, we use Zillow. We’re not really, really highly invested into Zillow, but we’re really present.
Kris Lindahl: One thing that you want to make sure you have on Zillow is you want to have a lot of reviews. Reviews are what help the consumer decide who they’re going to reach out to. If I go, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve went to a canceled listing appointment and when I look up the previous listing and the agent that had it listed, I see one transaction and zero reviews. If I’m a consumer, I don’t think I’m ever going to ask that agent a question about that house.
Dan Stewart: Yeah. Totally agree. Before you spend a dime on your portal advertising, take some time to optimize your profile.
Kris Lindahl: Totally agree. I think the focus for a lot of people on this call is, take time, time block, and build out your profile on the portals, before you ever sign up for any sort of advertising. Because it is going to be money wasted, and you’re going to be like a lot of the agents that are posting in a lot of the Facebook real estate groups now, that are upset with Zillow, Trulia and realtor.com, they’re not getting a return.
Kris Lindahl: The truth is, is if you look at their profile, it’s not built out properly. That’s one area where-
Dan Stewart: There’s that Kris, I want to jump onto ZTR portal issue here for a moment. I see it a lot. I talk to people about their lead sources, and they say things like, I tried it and it didn’t work for me. I spent a bunch of money but I ended up not getting a great return. Then when I ask about their followup process, it’s almost always really bad. Conversely, if I talk to someone, they’re like oh yeah, love Zillow, love Trulia, I’m crushing it with those leads, they’re great, I almost always see that they’ve got some really good followup processes already in place.
Dan Stewart: The fortune is in the followup is cliché for a reason, you know what I mean? It absolutely makes sense.
Kris Lindahl: Yeah. All of the money. Anyone can generate leads, the money’s made in the lead conversion which we’ll cover in a little bit. Yeah, that’s where all of it is.
Kris Lindahl: On this list, we do a lot of open houses. We promote them on Facebook ahead of time. I think it’s the new age meets the old age. Open houses still can work, the odds that people are driving around and going to an open house based on signage, not as likely. It can benefit you if you have a lot of signage up in an area that you actively farm. You can also use those as billboards and brand exposure.
Kris Lindahl: Listings are a fantastic way to get buyers. It’s probably the number one way to get buyers, is listings. People inquire on product. If you have product or you’re perceived to have product, people are likely to reach out to you. If you’re a newer agent starting and you don’t have very many listings or zero listings, go to someone in your office or brokerage and ask them if you they’re okay with you marketing their listing. You don’t have to say the listing’s yours, but just use that listing to try to generate some activity.
Kris Lindahl: I think you’ll be surprised how many people will reach out to you, when you have listings, then you’re posting product, because the truth is, that’s really all the consumer cares about, is the product. That’s why, and I’m sure there are several people on this call that can relate to this, is where you’ll sell a house to someone, that knows seven people that are in real estate.
Kris Lindahl: The reason they’ve bought a house with us wasn’t because we were the best real estate agent, it was because we were perceived to have the most products.
Dan Stewart: Makes sense. Now, I recall a story back at the start of your career, where you were perceived to have a massive amount of product and it really gave you a boost. Can you talk to us about that?
Kris Lindahl: I can. When we first started, and this was back in a completely different market in 2009, when I first started, it was short sells, foreclosures, and one of the things that I did is, I got permission from HUD, which I think that’s written into their contract that you can advertise HUD homes for sale, and all I did was I advertised all of the HUD homes. I advertised the HUD homes everywhere on the internet. We got tons of calls. They were not easy transactions, HUD homes, for anyone that has them in their market, they’re not easy transactions, but they make the phone ring.
Kris Lindahl: Back to your point earlier about the Craigslist, at that time, Dan, Craigslist was the arena where you wanted to advertise listings. What I did is I set up a system online where we were just advertising HUD homes all day long on Craigslist, and just answering the phone. One after another, and meeting them. We always answered the phone.
Dan Stewart: That reinforces an earlier point too. That strategy that worked for you in 2009 is absolutely going to fail in 2015.
Kris Lindahl: For sure.
Dan Stewart: One of the key things with any approach is timing. Your timing was right there. Again, congrats to you. It’s so impressive what you’ve been able to do, Kris. It’s just six years. Just six years.
Kris Lindahl: Thank you. The one thing … [crosstalk 00:33:26]
Dan Stewart: It’s awesome.
Kris Lindahl: Yeah. One thing, Dan, I’m glad you just said that, because it resonated with me. One thing as entrepreneurs that I don’t think we do enough of, is take self credit. Sometimes, it’s okay to sit back and go, you know what, this has been awesome, it’s amazing what I’ve accomplished in six years. You don’t have to get conceited about it, but as entrepreneurs, I think we tend to not give ourselves enough credit.
Dan Stewart: It’s so easy to get caught up in the day to day. If you’re the kind of person that’s driven, that’s always striving for bigger and better and what’s next, it’s really hard sometimes to just sit back for a moment and say wow, I’ve really actually made a lot of progress here.
Kris Lindahl: It really helps with your me first and the positive focus to do that. The last one here is one of the really big ones for me on the buyer’s side. That’s the community and charity side of it. If you go to my Facebook page, which I’d encourage everyone to do and look at that post, you’ll notice that I tied in a link to RSVP for the pumpkin giveaway. Go ahead and click on that, you can click that you’re attending or you can click that maybe, that way you’ll be able to follow along and see how we execute this even that’s happening on October 25th. You’ll notice how many people are engaging with this and the type of comments that they’re talking about the event.
Kris Lindahl: The truth is, I would say so far from what I’ve seen, about 80% of the people that are making those comments, I’ve never met one time. I don’t know who they are.
Dan Stewart: Love it.
Kris Lindahl: Yet they’re saying, the Kris Lindahl team is doing amazing things in the community, we wish there were more people in this world like Kris. Those comments then show up on their news feed, to their friends, to their family, to their coworkers, and then, the real power is, is that when someone then sees one of our advertisements on Facebook, they notice that they have 200 of their mutual friends like the Kris Lindahl team page. They click on it, the like it, they go to their friend Jane and they say Jane, what do you know about the Kris Lindahl team? Kris and his team, they do so many community and charity events, notice how the conversation really doesn’t talk about real estate first. It talks about community and charity.
Kris Lindahl: When you talk about our Facebook page and how it’s so different than so many of the other pages where we’re not listings and big ego first, is that those conversations when someone goes and asks their friend, family member, coworker about us, they talk about the community and charity stuff we do, not the real estate stuff. Real estate’s second.
Dan Stewart: Yeah. Love it. Again, Kris, I think you’re probably leading the entire country on your use of Facebook and real estate. For everyone who’s here today, you should bookmark that page and just observe what he does on Facebook. Be sure to RSVP for those things, so you can see that marketing train keep chugging its way home.
Kris Lindahl: Yeah. One thing I’d like to say-
Dan Stewart: There’s a lot that goes on there.
Kris Lindahl: One thing I’d like to say is that everyone should post something positive on that most recent comment, I’d love to read them all.
Dan Stewart: Yeah. Awesome.
Kris Lindahl: Let me do what I do.
Dan Stewart: Let’s jump into the next segment here that we’re going to cover. I want to talk a bit about lead conversion, Kris. When I think of lead conversion, there’s two main things that come to mind. First, we’ve got skills. Come on, folks, if you can’t talk to someone, if you can’t figure out what kind of pain they’ve got that you can make go away, there’s not much any system or technology is ever going to be able to do for you. Again, me first. You’ve got to work on yourself, you’ve got to build some skills, you’ve got to be ready to help serve these people from a positive place.
Dan Stewart: At that point, when you’ve acquired those skills, then it’s time really to invest in technology, so that you can put all of these things together. When Kris and I had a chat about this before we pressed play on our webinar today, the thing that we just kept repeating over and over and over is how absolutely critical it is to be consistent. You’ve got to have a system in place, you’ve got to have a process that you follow for every single lead that’s generated, and you’ve got to measure the results of that process. That’s the only way you’re ever going to know what changes you need to make, so that you can optimize it.
Kris Lindahl: I think one of the things with the consistency is, that’s consistency is the number one thing in lead conversion. I can tell if there’s anyone on this call, and this is not a stream that we use at the moment, but for sale by owner and canceled/expired listings. The people that absolutely crush it in this country are the ones that consistently follow up throughout the entire cycle of that expired/canceled listing.
Kris Lindahl: Every real estate agent calls the first three days. They get about 500 phone calls. Who calls sixmonths, 12 months, five years, six years, seven years? Who’s calling down the road? I can tell you right now, the most successful agents that do this in the country are the ones that have consistency. This is where, and I know you didn’t ask for this, but Happy Grasshopper, this is why you guys have so many success stories, is because you consistently send out your message to our leads.
Kris Lindahl: The beauty of that, of your software, is that it actually doesn’t look like it’s a mass email. That’s the big thing. When consumers respond to our Happy Grasshopper emails, they think that I’m actually personally writing them an email. They’re more likely to respond. The nice thing about your system, is it’s consistent. It’s way more consistent that Kris Lindahl can ever be. I can’t send out that email every day at that exact time, but Happy Grasshopper can.
Dan Stewart: Awesome. Kris, again, we’re honored to have you as a client. I think I’ve been pretty open about the fact that if we gave you a paper bag and dropped you in the desert, you’d figure out a way to turn it into a successful business. I don’t think you need us to be successful by any stretch, and I’m just honored that you let us help you.
Kris Lindahl: No, but you guys … A system like Happy Grasshopper does really help with the consistency of lead conversion. That’s one thing that has really helped us. I know this isn’t intended to be a sales webinar, but [crosstalk 00:39:47]
Dan Stewart: Yeah. Let’s focus on some skill stuff here. Thanks for the plug, bro. Let’s give the audience what they really need. I’m curious, we’ve had some chats. I know the real Kris Lindahl, which is exactly who’s on the webinar today. It’s the same guy. You told me stories about being in high school and discovering that you’ve got this ability to not just sell things, but to put deals together.
Dan Stewart: I’m curious if you’ve got some thoughts about how someone in the audience can improve their sales ability. Where do you send someone who’s joining your team that maybe needs to bone up on their skills? How do you work with them to help them improve?
Kris Lindahl: Right. I think one of the things is being coachable, and realizing that no one has all the right answers, and the best leaders in this country are always students. I think that’s one thing that you have to remember is, we don’t know everything. It’s just, we have to be willing to learn and be coachable.
Kris Lindahl: I think when I listen to our agents on the phone and actually, I listened to one of our agents today, and she did a fantastic job talking to a client where a transaction is falling apart or it’s going to fall apart, and she talked to both the husband and wife and she handled herself great. I told her the exact same thing, she said oh, that didn’t go so well. I said actually, I thought you handled the call really well.
Kris Lindahl: If she want to have, I would’ve gave her constructive feedback on things that maybe she should do differently next time. I think that’s one thing, as we grow our sales ability is, always be evolving, always be willing to change, always willing to take feedback. I’m willing to take feedback from everyone, because I don’t know everything. That’s one thing that I’ve learned is that, all of the great leaders are still students.
Dan Stewart: Yeah. Totally agree. That’s important. I think the minute we feel like we’ve got all the answers and we don’t need to learn anything else, is the minute we start to die. That’s a negative path that’s not going to lead to growth in our careers or personal growth, either.
Dan Stewart: I know that real estate clients, my friends in the real estate world, you guys have to solve a million problems. There’s a certain amount of creativity that’s got to come into play here. I think that the learning curve for some can be pretty steep. When you’ve got a deal falling apart for a myriad of different reasons, it’s your job to help stitch it back together. When you’ve got someone who’s a brand new lead, I just talked with a guy yesterday, I thought this was really cool.
Dan Stewart: He’s in a market where there’s just a huge desire for rental properties, but there’s very low inventory. Now, there are properties for sale that most of the people who want to rent, would actually like to purchase, or could purchase, they’re just not aware that they’ve got the ability to purchase. A big part of his focus is to help them understand that their problem of not being able to find a rental is really a huge advantage in that they can actually buy a home, and own it.
Dan Stewart: Problem solving, creativity, follow up, organization, there’s a million things that go into be effective at lead conversion that are personal skills. I want you and the audience to take that accounting and go yeah, what do I need to work on? I’m going to put that down as a deliverable. That’s something I must do for me. I’ve got to get better at this.
Dan Stewart: Talked to a guy last week, who said you know, Dan, I’m looking at my business and I’m not getting the results that I really want to get. I’m growing, but only very slowly each year. As I’m talking with them, I’m thinking, geeze, why is it that this guy isn’t having success when so many others are? He’s telling me things like, I don’t really like to talk to people on the phone. I’m kind of blunt, a lot of people don’t like that about me. I’m just thinking, there’s some work there that he could do on himself, that would really yield huge results for him.
Dan Stewart: I want you in the audience to go through that process. Just identify your weak spots, don’t beat yourself up about it, just use it as a springboard to rebuild yourself. I think it was Teddy Roosevelt who said, “Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.” I know in my career, whenever I’ve been stung or whenever I’ve done something really stupid, I try to own it and learn from it. If you’re not-
Kris Lindahl: I love that you said that, Dan. Owning it is the key. If you don’t own it, you can’t get better.
Dan Stewart: Totally agree.
Kris Lindahl: In our problem solving, one thing with the lead conversion is, it’s an evolution, it’s constantly changing. It just continues to get better because I own the mistakes I’ve made in the past. You have to have the ability to own things when they’re not right. If you can’t, you can’t move forward.
Dan Stewart: You can’t grow. Absolutely. Let’s move into the next topic. This is leverage. I think this is critical. We’ve talked about flock together as a an activity and an attitude. Leverage is a bit more specific than that. Flocking together is about having peers who’re going to support you in achieving your goals. Leverage is about acquiring the right talent and the right technology to really support your achievement of those goals. Kris, I want to ask you about the key things you’ve put in place.
Dan Stewart: Let’s talk about the tech side first. When you look at all the different lead sources that you have, the volume of leads that you’re generating, obviously it’s clear, there’s not one way that you can handle all that. You’ve got to have a variety of systems, both creating the leads and helping you follow up on them.
Dan Stewart: Talk to me a little bit about the systems that you’re leveraging in your business.
Kris Lindahl: Yeah. There’re a couple different ways that we leverage when it comes to technology. One of them is you have to have a high level CRM. One thing I would tell anyone that’s listening today is, don’t overthink it. If you have one and you like it, keep it. It can be extremely disruptive in your business to start changing CRMs. Make sure that if you are going to change, you’ve done all the research. Talk to some other users that are using it at a high level, before you actually make that change.
Kris Lindahl: Having a CRM will allow you to leverage your business completely in so many different directions. That’s one area. Then if you have an IDX system, you have to be able to leverage the way that you set up auto emails, the way that you set up property alerts. For some people, maybe you’re texting out property alerts, or maybe you’re texting price reductions. For some, it might be email. For some, it might be voice blasts. Leveraging, whatever it may be, just make sure that you’re leveraging your systems so that you can be more efficient inside your business.
Kris Lindahl: For us, we have several different systems, but the CRM is the central hub of everything that happens. Number two is, it’s our IDX site, and number three, then it gets into the email system which we use Happy Grasshopper, you can use Slide Dial, which goes right to their voicemail. You can do Slide Broadcast, which is a group voicemail. You can use Twilio, which is a group text message. There’s a lot of different systems out there that allow you to leverage, so you can have more of your time to focus on your business.
Dan Stewart: Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. Now, I want to shift now to the people component, because obviously, just look at you, Kris. You were crushing it as a single agent. You had to be highly leveraged to have 175 transactions in one year as a single agent. That’s madness. You must’ve had all sorts of great tools to support you with that. You also need great people. Today, you’ve built out a team. That team is critical from you going from 175 to approaching 400 transactions this year.
Dan Stewart: I want to talk to you about growing that team. I want to talk about recruitment. How is it that when you’re growing and you’re saying, hm, I need help here, I can’t do everything myself, who do you think? What role do you think is that critical first hire for someone that’s just building a team?
Kris Lindahl: Yeah. I think one of the big things that we have to understand about the world today is people want to be in groups. People don’t want to be individuals. Agents don’t want to be alone. They want to be a part of something bigger. I think this is where for the most part, the real estate brokerage has been twisted up a little bit, is a lot of the bigger brokers, the agents, have become individual agents and they don’t have that group, that culture feel, that the smaller teams have. Recognizing that people want to be in groups attracts talent.
Kris Lindahl: That’s for us, if you look at our Facebook page, just having a Facebook page, like Dan said, that’s that high level, attracts higher level talent. Because they’re seeing all the positivity within our group, and they’re seeing how things can be if they’re on our team, and they’re going, okay in my brokerage today, it’s all negativity, everyone’s fighting, everyone’s competing against each other. Then I see the Kris Lindahl team, where all they do is have fun, they’re making a difference in the community, I want to be a part of that.
Dan Stewart: I love the contrast and the way that you’re framing it. Let’s get back to Kris Lindahl 2014, pulling your hair out handling 175 transactions. Who’s your first hire? Is it an assistant? Is it an admin? Is it a buyer’s agent? What direction are you going in?
Kris Lindahl: My first hire was actually, was a few years ago. It was just Sarah and I, and she was the assistant who’s evolved into way more than that. She’s fantastic. A lot of the systems were absorbed by Sarah. Our first actual addition to the team was a buyer’s agent. We added eight buyer’s agents this year and one assistant.
Dan Stewart: Extremely.
Kris Lindahl: We have one assistant and including myself and Sarah, there’s 11 of us right now. There’s 11 of us and we have one assistant.
Dan Stewart: Another question that I hear a lot from people who’re looking at building teams, they build a name and a brand for themselves in their market, and then they struggle with the idea of turning that over to people on their team. They’re concerned that gosh, I want Kris Lindahl. I want to list my house with Kris, where’s Kris? Why isn’t Kris coming up and having me sign the listing contract? I want to meet Kris.
Kris Lindahl: Yep. There’s two parts to that question. It’s the best question you could ask someone, Dan. It’s a really good question. The first part is, that question comes up quite a bit still. Obviously, it’s the Kris Lindahl team, where’s Kris, we want to talk to Kris. What happens is, it’s in the scripting. It’s in the scripting. Actually, Kris wants so and so to go out there, because that person specializes in that area. Or that person knows more about this than Kris does.
Kris Lindahl: What we do is we just change the scripting and then if Dan, if you’re calling in and you say hey, I’m looking to buy a house in Minneapolis, actually, Cara on Kris’ team specializes in the Minneapolis area, Dan, I’m going to have her call you in the next 10 minutes.
Dan Stewart: Got it. Yeah, that’s awesome.
Kris Lindahl: The handoff is done. The second part to your question is, is the ego side of team leaders and that control side, where we don’t want to give up that control because we don’t think anyone else can be like us. They’re not going to convert like us and all those things. We have to give up the control. We can’t do it alone. In the leverage piece, you just can’t build the entire thing alone.
Kris Lindahl: Once you make a conscious effort to realize that, your whole business will change. It’s not an easy thing. It took me a long time. Obviously, I should’ve been at a whole different level right now, and I waited way too long to build a team. That’s because I thought I needed to be the one that was in every single appointment.
Kris Lindahl: This year, our production is going to double, and I’m not in nearly as many of those appointments as I used to be. You have to ask yourself, does the consumer really care if Kris Lindahl’s there or not. I would argue, they don’t. Someone outside of the team or outside the business would look at that and they would immediately say, that has got to be a complete challenge for the Kris Lindahl team to run a business, and Kris not be at the appointments. In reality, it’s not.
Dan Stewart: There you have it, folks. That is just an absolute critical realization. I’ve heard it said a few times, and I really agree with it. Our jobs as entrepreneurs is to really try to find the right people who can do a better job than we can, in their areas of expertise. I know as we’ve grown as a company, I want to hire writers who’re way better than I am. I want to hire team members in every role in the company who’re way better than I am at what they specifically do. If I were a team leader, building my team, I would absolutely want to hire buyer’s agents who’re much better than me, transaction coordinators who’re better than me, buyer’s agents who’re better than me.
Dan Stewart: It’s really, really important. Another question here for you, Kris. You’ve built this critical mass, you’ve got an awesome thing going. Your market presence is outstanding. I would imagine that you get a lot of interest from people who want to join your team. In fact, I know you do, because we chatted about that. My question to you, is how do you go about figuring out whether or not someone is actually a good fit for you culture, whether they’re going to work out or not?
Kris Lindahl: Right. You have to have some sort of standards and you have to have some way that you’re going to measure that. Everyone’s got a different way. There’s no right answer to this question. For us, the first step that we always take is we give them a personality test, by the name of DISC. The DISC profile will give us enough information to even see if we want to meet with them. If we get someone on the DISC profile that has a higher level of something that we know can’t be successful in real estate, we’re not going to interview them.
Kris Lindahl: Now, there’s always going to be outliers, there’s going to be exceptions to the rule. Generally speaking, that profile will give us a really good idea if that person’s going to be successful in real estate or not. That’s the one thing that we’ve changed. I mentioned that to you, Dan. This is where we talk about how we’re always evolving and we have to be willing to change, and we have to listen.
Kris Lindahl: One of the things is, when we made our first couple hires, we didn’t do any sort of testing or personality traits. It’s made a big difference in our more recent hires. Because now, we know exactly what their personality is, and we know what their strengths are, so that we can develop a leveraged business around their strengths.
Dan Stewart: Got it. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I will say that I’ve learned a lot from our clients. When we started Happy Grasshopper, I wasn’t that familiar with the DISC profiling system. Now, every time we’re hiring, we have our applicants take the DISC. We actually go through a process where first, we have a phone conversation. If that goes well, I ask them to take the DISC. If that looks good, and we can talk a bit about what looks good on a DISC, I know there’s some debate there, for sales, I generally want people that are high D, high I. If they’re in support, I to look or high C, high S.
Kris Lindahl: Dan, one thing to stop you real quick where there’s, like I’d mentioned, there’s no right or wrong way to this. I think we both would agree that in sales, you probably want some sort of D or I.
Kris Lindahl: For us, just something to give anyone that’s familiar with the DISC profile, we want high Is and lower D, because higher Ds are disruptive. They’re going to take all of our resources, we’re going to be focused all of our time on the high Ds because they’re so disruptive. I’d rather have a team of high Is that maybe aren’t as quite high energy as the high Ds, but they’re lovable, likable, and they’re probably going to do the right things in the community.
Kris Lindahl: That’s just what we choose to do. That’s one way [crosstalk 00:56:56]
Dan Stewart: Yeah. I love that you’re saying that. This gets back to the whole me first point. You’ve got to be really clear about what you’re building and what your culture is, and then attract the right people to play with you.
Dan Stewart: Yeah, I can definitely appreciate that. Kris, there’s a few things here. First, I’m just looking at the time, and I’m going, oh my God, how did we do this again. We’re slightly over time. Screw it, I’m just going to keep on chugging. We still’ve got a ton of people on the call, so let’s give them the good stuff.
Dan Stewart: There’s something about you, Mr. Lindahl that we haven’t talked about yet. I think it’s critical. This is something that is maybe a little bit of a secret. It’s an element that the most successful people have in common. I see this over and over and over again. Years ago, I had the opportunity to become friends with Joe Torry. At the time, he was the manager of the New York Yankees. I saw this element in him.
Dan Stewart: Years later, I met a billionaire, founder of a massive multinational company, and I saw this same trait in him. This is something that really does separate the best from everybody else. It’s one of those things that isn’t really easy, and then all of a sudden, just click, it is. It’s something that every single person on the call today can put into their life, without a doubt. When they do, it makes a massive difference. Not just in their business, not just in their sales, in all areas of their life.
Dan Stewart: That secret is this sense of urgency. It’s so absolutely critical to have a huge sense of urgency and to not screw around, but learn to take action now. Folks, I’ve seen Kris do this. We’re in Alaska on a fishing trip, and he’s got an idea for something, and he’s stopping everything and he’s implementing that idea. Boom. Done. In my life, I look at that and I think, I could really learn from Kris. I don’t execute at that level. I just don’t do it quite at the level there that I should be.
Dan Stewart: Kris, I want to ask you about that. Where does that come from? How did you learn to do this?
Kris Lindahl: It’s the hunger. It’s just in me. I don’t know that it completely can be trained. I just know that my goal is, is I want to make a difference for more people, and I have to take action now to get there. I’ll give you just a really quick thing that happened to me this morning when I went and got my haircut.
Kris Lindahl: Was talking to the lady that cuts my hair, who by the way is pregnant, no one knows that, she shared that with me-
Dan Stewart: Now a lot of people know that.
Kris Lindahl: Now everyone knows. One of the things I said to her is, I said, what is your life going to look like in 25 years? Are you still going to be standing on your feet for 12 hours a day, and she said, no. Said, you need to start figuring out how you’re going to leverage your business. I can tell you in that 20 minute conversation I had with her, every single time I brought up a suggestion, or something, she had a negative spin to it. No matter what it was I said, she had a reason why it wasn’t going to work.
Kris Lindahl: There’s two directions she could’ve took there. One is, she could’ve took action, she could’ve said hey, I appreciate the suggestions, you’re right, I do need to leverage, I need to find someone else that can help me. I need to grow my business. She could’ve said anything, but instead, she said, yeah, but you don’t understand my industry. I said no, I don’t need to understand your industry, I understand that you need to leverage because in 25 years, you can’t be on your feet for 12 hours a day cutting hair.
Kris Lindahl: The difference there was, is she wasn’t willing to take action. I think for most, the reason people aren’t taking action, it’s in their head.
Dan Stewart: I think it’s fear of failure. I might spend a lot of time saying oh, gosh, what could go wrong if I do this? Over the years, I try to get better. I used to hesitate and hesitate and hesitate, and then you’re just like, oh well. Something else pops up and you end up never executing.
Dan Stewart: What I’ve learned to do is to really think about … I want to be super clear about this, I don’t set out to fail. I don’t want to fail at anything I do. If I’m going to fail, I want to fail really, really quickly. I don’t want to spend a whole big chunk of my life trying to figure out whether something’s going to work or not.
Dan Stewart: I always look at how can I get this to a point where I know whether it’s going to be the right thing for me. The answer is implementation. It’s absolutely get that sense of urgency to get off your butt and just do it. So, so important. So critical.
Dan Stewart: Kris, we’re wrapping up here, I’m going to probably have this for another couple of minutes. We’ve got a ton of questions here from the audience. I want to make sure we take some time and get to these things. I’m going to go through here, there’s a couple here that I think are really kind of cool and interesting.
Dan Stewart: My buddy Lyndon Moe, God, I love this guy, Lyndon, I can’t stand the fact that we haven’t met in person at an event yet. It’s going to happen. The drinks are on me, bro, for sure. He wants to know what your top three sources of listings are.
Kris Lindahl: Okay. Number one is probably Facebook. Number one is probably Facebook. Number two would probably be direct mail. The reason I say probably, is on listings, sometimes it’s hard to source where they came from. Because what happens is, if you’re hitting them with multiple things, they may have seen your TV commercial, they may have saw you on the radio, they may have saw you on Zillow, they may have saw you on your website, and if they contact you through a different chain than where they initially saw you, you then track that as a different source.
Kris Lindahl: That’s where, you can get really convoluted in your tacking when it comes to listings, when you’re doing a lot of mass marketing, because it could come from several different areas. I would say that Facebook, direct mail, and my website are the top three. Those come from, a lot of it comes from Facebook.
Dan Stewart: Got it. Okay. We’ve got a bunch more questions here. Brenda Sage, you’ve asked a couple of questions here. One of them, I’m going to take. She mails a newsletter to her database every month, and it includes leads, past clients, friends and family. Do you think once a month is too much to send to friends and family?
Dan Stewart: Brenda, I want to break this down into two parts, because, let’s talk about your audience there. You’ve got your past clients, your friends and family. They already know, like and trust Brenda. You can communicate with them in a different way than you would your leads. Your leads are looking for reasons to know, like and trust you. Your past clients and friends, certainly your family already do. I would recommend that you actually send different content to those segments of people.
Dan Stewart: In terms of once a month, specifically for friends and family, our testing shows that the best send cycle is once every three weeks. If you’re sending once every 21 days, our metrics show that will yield the highest open rate and the lowest unsubscribe rate.
Dan Stewart: Now, next question is from Barbara Esker. Kris, this is kind of a good one, she wants to know how you started your first pumpkin giveaway.
Kris Lindahl: The truth?
Dan Stewart: I suppose.
Kris Lindahl: [crosstalk 01:04:41]. No. Last year, when I joined my brokerage, they contacted me, they have a university set up where they fly around and they record agents that join the company. They contacted me right after I joined and they said, we’d like to fly up and film me for a week, and we’d like to film it on a past client event, or something of that nature, or community event. To be honest, I had never done one.
Kris Lindahl: I said, and this is kind of funny, she calls and I go, what do you recommend? I’ve never done it. It was sort of humorous that someone’s calling me to come film me, and yet I’ve never done one, I don’t know how to do one. What we did is, we came up with the pumpkin thing. We had done a pumpkin thing at my previous brokerage, that wasn’t very successful, it was pretty stale. I looked at it, I said, how can we make this fun and energetic and deliver it to the community in a way that everyone will have a great time?
Kris Lindahl: We started adding different pillars to that event. Our event last October was the first time we had ever done a community event, and we had 4000 people there. What we did is, is we just promoted it socially and we promoted it in the direct mail. We did all the traditional things that we talked about on this call today, and we just made it really fun, and we gave people a reason why they wanted to be there.
Kris Lindahl: That’s how it started. Now, this year, we just took everything we learned from last year, this is the key, everything we learned for last year. There were several things where I made major mistakes. Guess what? This year, I fixed them. This year, we’re going to have other mistakes, which next year I’m going to fix.
Dan Stewart: Yeah, awesome.
Kris Lindahl: That has to do with the take action and to be willing to learn. That for me is so critical, when you talk about take action now. We have to take action, we have to be accountable. We got to own those mistakes. There were just some slight things I did that I would’ve done differently last year. We made those changes, and I’m sure there’ll be things this year that we should’ve done differently that we’ll change next year.
Kris Lindahl: I can tell you from the standpoint of what we did, it was past clients, community. Everyone was there on our farm. It was a great event. Everyone needs to do one. I was two years too late, I should’ve had events before. That’s why I said, you got to keep yourself accountable. I should’ve been doing these way before I did. That calling, when I received that phone call, that was my motivation to really get on my horse and get something going.
Dan Stewart: There’s a really great follow on question to this from Kathy Bass. She wants to know, how do you have time for your family and all the stuff that you’re doing in your community and with charities? How do you juggle that? I know Victoria’s awfully cute and all. You’ve got this darling daughter, I know you want to spend time with her. How do you make time for that?
Kris Lindahl: The big thing is, is this is back to that leverage piece. Where you start to leverage systems and you start to leverage people. For me, when you look at our business, in reality, I don’t have to spend that much time on the things we’re talking about today. If you go into the office and you’re a high performer, and you’re operating at your highest level, you can get a lot more done than you think you can.
Kris Lindahl: The key is, is you have to be operating at a high level and you also have to be, you have to have to have time block. If you don’t time block and set time aside to do these different things, it’s going to be complete chaotic all day long. So many real estate offices that I’ve been to, where it’s absolutely chaos from morning throughout the rest of the evening, because things are absolutely everywhere.
Kris Lindahl: With us, there’s a lot of time blocking that goes into the things that I’m doing. In an eight hour day, I can get a lot done, because I’m time blocking everything that I have to do. I already know, and I think for everyone on the call, if you have some sort of journal or some sort of form that every morning, you write out what you’re going to do for that day, it’s going to make a big difference.
Dan Stewart: Yeah. I totally agree with that. I had a time management class, I don’t know, probably 1996 or something, and I learned something that stuck with me the rest of my life. For a long time now, I’ve spent every night doing exactly the same thing. Last thing I do before I shut my eyes and go to sleep is I take a peek at my calendar for the next day, and I make any notes about what’s scheduled and what’s coming up.
Dan Stewart: I just trust my brain to pull some magic together while I’m asleep. I don’t know scientifically how effective that is or not, but I know I always sleep great, because there’s no mystery about what’s coming up tomorrow. If you looked at my calendar, folks, it’d probably frighten you, because I do schedule practically everything. I schedule time for myself, I schedule time for my family. I make a portion of my day available to serve my clients and to work on continuing to build Happy Grasshopper.
Dan Stewart: I love that that’s what you’re sharing. Now Kris, little bit of housekeeping there’re a few people who are asking hey, I’m here late, yes, it’s recorded, folks. Yes, we’re going to send out the content to you, don’t have to worry about that. No, this is not a sales pitch for Happy Grasshopper webinar. You see on the screen now, happygrasshopper.com/tour. Just head over that. That’ll let you schedule a time to take a peek. Again, the way we work with our calendars here, you’ll understand what that process is all about.
Dan Stewart: We want to give you the time you need. There is no one size fits all approach. We’ve got to really learn about you to know that we can help you.
Dan Stewart: Now, few more questions here. Jad Snan wants to know, can you elaborate on time blocking. Let me chime in on this one, Kris, and you can wrap it up for me if you need to. The concept of time blocking is really pretty simple. If you set aside our talent, if you set aside our money, if you set aside our experiences, our education, all of our resources, we all have exactly the same amount of time every day. There’s a finite amount of time that we get to use in this life. The way that you really leverage that is to go ahead and just decide that your time has value.
Dan Stewart: My friend Ben Kenny, I love that he does this. He says, write this down, I care about my hourly wage. I care about my hourly wage. The point there is that when you’re time blocking, when you’re actually scheduling time on your calendar, that time becomes uninterruptible. Just like it was an appointment. If you’ve got a listing appointment on your calendar, you’re going to be there on time. You’re going to show up prepared and you’re going to do a great job. An appointment with yourself, where you get to work on achieving your goals, is far more important than any one individual listing. You really have to own that, and decide to focus on what gets you where you want to go.
Dan Stewart: Does that make sense, Kris?
Kris Lindahl: Yeah. One example of time blocking, even right now is this webinar. You and I time blocked this time for the webinar, uninterrupted. I heard you right before the call went live, close the door and lock it. My door is closed and locked, my phone’s off. We are 100% time blocked for this webinar. Imagine if everyone on this call, if you looked at your business that same way, where you just time blocked and compartmentalized everything that you’re going to do, and you said okay, this hour, I’m going to do this.
Kris Lindahl: Just write it down. The power, Ben’s right, the power of writing something down means you’re actually going to do it. When you write something down, you say okay, from this time to this time, I’m going to do this. I would challenge everyone on the call to look at how your business is running today. How efficient is it running. Look at what you’re doing from hour to hour, from minute to minute, from second to second. I’m pretty sure that everyone could make their business more efficient. If you’re not time blocking, I really think you’re missing it.
Dan Stewart: Yeah. One more question here, Kris, and then we’re going to wrap it up. We got a question, what is the number one thing, the number one most important thing, that you would recommend to a brand new agent who’s young in the business?
Kris Lindahl: Number one thing, positive focus. Positive focus, when you wake up in the morning, you absolutely have to have positive focus. One app that I would recommend, which is free, is called Win Streak. It’s just W-I-N S-T-R-E-A-K. It records your wins every day. You can write, when you wake up in the morning, write down what you want to do today and what your wins are, and it will remind you through the day to make sure that you’re actually winning for the day. That’s it.
Kris Lindahl: If you have positive focus, you can do anything you want. You can have all of the great lead generation techniques that we covered today and some of the other things, none of those things matter if you don’t have positive focus. If you can’t-
Dan Stewart: Yeah. Gosh. If your expectation is that you’re going to convert that lead, if your expectation is those people are going to really love the service that you’re providing, if your expectation is that you’re going to help that family move onto a better place in life, whether they’re buying a new home with you or selling the home they’re currently in, you’re approaching it from a completely different state of mind.
Kris Lindahl: State of mine is a number-
Dan Stewart: Yeah. PMA, baby, PMA. Chris Smith says it better than anyone. He’s like, you’ve got to be a Labrador retriever. You’ve got to be happy to see everybody.
Kris Lindahl: You have to be.
Dan Stewart: Might be here to take the TV, but hey, I’m going to wag my tail anyway.
Kris Lindahl: We talk about this all the time in our team, and I mentioned it several times on the call is, we’re always on stage. The world is watching. We have to be positive. We are supposed to be positive. If someone’s looking to buy or sell a home and we’re not positive, how are they going to feel?
Dan Stewart: Yeah. Absolutely. It’s up to us to provide leadership to our clients, leadership to those who join our team, and most importantly, leadership to ourselves. We have got to do those things, and it starts with making a commitment to having that positive mental attitude.
Dan Stewart: Kris, what can I say, buddy? Thank you so much, I’m so pleased to spend this time with you. I miss you. I can’t wait until I get to see you at an event again, hopefully very soon.
Kris Lindahl: I appreciate it. Thanks to everyone that tunes in, and all the questions. I absolutely love doing this.