WEbinar Notes & Links

Happy Grasshopper Website - https://happygrasshopper.com
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Show Transcript

Dan Stewart (00:00): Today we are going to talk about one of my all time favorite subjects as it relates to recruitment, and that is agent activation. Let's dive in here. I am going to go ahead and get my screen shared and we will dig right in. Go ahead and say, hello everybody. Tell us where you're from. Jim Haley in the Chicago area. Victor's in Los Gatos. All right. We got De Moines, Iowa in the house. Beautiful New Jersey, Miami, New Hampshire, Minneapolis, Connecticut, Houston. This is one of my favorite things about working here from my garage, which I'll tell you that story in the moment. I love that we're able to connect this despite all the distance, the different time zones, we're all able to still be connected. That's an awesome thing. Now, if you can confirm for me, please, that you are seeing my slides pop up there, that would be awesome. Okay. Yes, yes, yes. Very cool. Hey Rob. Good to see you.
Dan Stewart (01:13): Kristen, yes, Kim. Yes, everybody, yes, yes, yes, yes. So cool. Welcome. My name is Dan Stewart. I'm the founder of Happy Grasshopper, and I am super glad that you're all here with me today. We're going to cover an enormous amount of stuff, we're going to do it really quickly. Recruitment is possibly the most important thing for you to master as you're building teams and brokerages, right? If we're not effectively recruiting people and retaining them over time, we're going to wear ourselves out. We just are. If we have a constantly revolving door of recruiting people, yay, and then watching them just slip right out through the back, ouch, not so much fun. Right?
Dan Stewart (01:55): Today my goal is to help you really acquire and then use some strategies to activate the agents that you're already in collaboration with. Throughout the session, as you probably have picked up on, I love to keep it conversational. The chat box is open. You're welcome to jump in there with your questions. There will be a few times throughout the session where I ask you questions as I've done so far and I will expect your answers in the chat. I hope that's cool. If it is, great, if it's not, great, because that's the plan I'm on, that's the one that I'm going to run. For those of you who may not know me, my name's Dan, I founded this little company called Happy Grasshopper, a whopping 10 years ago now.
Dan Stewart (02:43): It's actually my seventh company. I feel really privileged to have had some significant success and some very significant failures along the way. I'm broadcasting to you today from my detached garage down here, my horse farm in Tampa, Florida. I want to share this picture with you for a very specific reason. As entrepreneurs many of us really live on dreams. We do. That's okay. That's not a bad thing at all. We just have to understand the path to go from it being a dream to creating it as our reality. Like many of you, I grew up in a situation I did not personally like, it was not a great environment. I was not always nurtured or supported or loved and sometimes not even fed. And for me to get to live here, for me to get to wake up and do what I get to do every single day, feels nothing less than a miracle, right?
Dan Stewart (03:46): Now, I'm thankful. I'm grateful. I feel so appreciative of the life that I get to live. I want to use this, whatever it is that I've achieved, whatever recognition or status I have, to help other people go from wherever they are to wherever they want to be. Anytime that I have the privilege of speaking to a group of people as I do today, I like to make sure we're building bridges between our dreams and our beliefs, because it is our beliefs that power the achievement of our dreams, right? It absolutely is true. I'll share a few beliefs with you. I believe that every single thing we want to achieve in life, we achieve through relationships. Can you agree with me there? If you're a relation person, give me a yes in the chat, if you believe in the power of relationships. I expect to see every single person say yes here. Right?
Dan Stewart (04:47): Zelda's here. I love it. Chris is here. Very cool. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We should all. We should all. My gosh, we live in a world that's filled with people. We exist within a business where relationships absolutely matter. And no matter what our personal deal is, if we invest ourselves in building quality relationships with other people, every single thing gets easier for us. I'll share another belief and that's that relationships only really live in one place and that's conversation. There are so many of you that are on this call right now that I've had great conversations with, right? And yet, if we don't continue to have conversations, if there's no communication between us over time. that relationship can wither. It can drift away.
Dan Stewart (05:45): When we're talking about activating agents, we have to talk about your communication with the agents that you've already brought into your organizations. Very, very important thing for us to cover. Now, conversation has a wonderful side effect and it's that it leads to contracts, right? If someone's an agent and they're trying to help people buy, sell, or invest in real estate, if they have more conversations, they will have more contracts. As a broker, as a team leader, as someone building their organization of agents across the country or the world, if you have conversations with people about joining your organization, you will have more people join your organization, right? Now, this is a big topic. I cannot possibly teach you every single thing I know about recruitment in the time that we have today, or set that expectation upfront.
Dan Stewart (06:38): I also want to let you know that you need to Mark your calendars right now. So go ahead and save these dates for me, May 19th and 20th from 11:30 AM Eastern to 4:30 PM Eastern, I am going to be teaching you literally every single thing that I know about recruitment. As you see on the screen, if you are currently a member using recruitment services provided by my company, Happy Grasshopper, your ticket is free, right?
Dan Stewart (07:09): Thumbs up, right? That's awesome. We'll go ahead and send you your credentials. You'll get your login information. And you will join me in a Zoom room like this with one exception, everybody's camera is going to be on, and we are going to do the work of creating results that you need in recruitment. You see that otherwise there's a a ticket price for this of $997. If you would like to take advantage of a very special opportunity, those of you who are live with me here today, all you have to do is email me, [email protected]. That's pretty easy. Just email me and say, I'm in, and I'll save a ticket for you at $497. That's my gift for those of you are here today. Now, at the summit, I'm going to be teaching you what I call my ACES strategy, right?
Dan Stewart (08:04): There's four parts here. It's attract, convert, expand, and secure. Those are the four fundamental strategies that are necessary to really build a thriving organization. This is not today, right? Today we're here to focus about agent activation. That's what we're here for. That's what today is. I have a few goals. I want to teach you some strategies that you can implement literally right now today. I want to offer and show you ways that you can go deeper with activation. I see Brian is commenting here. I see some questions coming in. Looks like Maya's having a chat. That's awesome. Let's to see some conversations going on. Chris, you're asking if these things will be recorded. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. She's saying those dates May 19th and 20th conflict with her vacation, Chris, by all means go on vacation.
Dan Stewart (09:08): When you buy a ticket to the event, that content is going to live in a recruitment academy where you'll be able to get access to it at any point in the future. That'll be there for you. All right. All right. I am going to dive right in now to activation. Let's begin here. The purposes of activation. They are two, right? There's two purposes to activation. They're very simple to understand. One is agent production and the other is agent attraction. Okay? Activation can do both of these things for you. Let's just spend a minute and talk about why this is important. It does no one any good to attract an agent into their organization only to watch them fail. There's something we call sunk costs and all that time, all that effort, whatever you've spent to attract an agent into your organization who fails, all of that is lost. It's gone. It just goes away. You never get it back.
Dan Stewart (10:12): We start here talking about agent activation as part of a recruitment series, because failing to do this properly is like having this bucket. You've got this bucket, your goal is to fill it up with water. You keep pouring water into the bucket and it just keeps running out the holes in the bottom. Failing to activate your agents is the largest hole in your bucket, because when an agent is properly activated and engaged as a member of your organization, they're immediately less susceptible to recruitment by other parties, right? They are. I'm going to show you some strategies to help you with with agent production today. The second part of course is attraction. Obviously we'd love to have the agents who are already with us, happily inviting other people into the organization, right?
Dan Stewart (11:10): Who's that agent that's co-broking the deal? Are they awesome? Well, then we have to have a means of inviting that person to learn more about the opportunity of joining you and your brokerage. These things do not happen by accident. If you've grown an organization to any specific scale, without these, it's been on the power and force of your personality, which is a huge asset, and yet it has a plateau that you just cannot grow beyond. If everything that you're doing is dependent on the power and force of your own personality, you can only grow to a certain point. To break through that plateau you've got to put some systems, some strategy, some structure in place that includes teaching every agent in your organization, the right message. Right? We'll talk a bit more about that in a moment.
Dan Stewart (12:08): Let's talk about this foundation of activation. If it does serve these two purposes, as I say, what are the core things we have to consider as part of this effort to attract agents? Well, the first one is, we have to engage people's attention, you know this, right? You know this from your own sales career. You can't possibly convince someone to use you as a buyer's agent or to use you as a listing agent or to use you to invest in property if you don't have their attention, right? That's the flashy purpose of all of our marketing. Hey, look at me over here, right? Here we are. Corporations spend billions and billions and billions of dollars doing nothing, but trying to capture our attention. And today we all live in a world where our attention has become a currency, right?
Dan Stewart (13:00): It's absolutely become a currency. It's interesting, we just had the Oscars a few nights ago and it was the least viewed Oscar ceremony in history, right? This was something that used to compete with the super bowl for viewership. And yet right now in today's society, there are so many people at war for our attention all the time, that unless we have a way to cut through and be heard amongst all the noise achieving our goals is almost impossible, right? The first foundation for activation is to have reliable means of engaging their attention, right? It's not just having it for a microsecond. It's having it to the point where we have their attention. Consider this, of all the people that are on this session right now today, every single one of you has the opportunity to be somewhere else, you do.
Dan Stewart (13:59): If I don't do a good job today, if I don't really teach things of value, if I don't help you see a new way to achieve your goals, I'm not likely to continue to have your attention. Right? I won't deserve it. I would not deserve it if I weren't capable of doing that. It's one thing to get the attention. It's another thing to keep it and to maintain it over time. We have to talk about that as part of the mission. And speaking of mission, that is the very next foundational element in your attraction. It absolutely is. You've got to have a mission. You must be about something. Where have you planted your flag? Where have you said, this is who we are? We are not anything else. We stand for this. This is us. If you like this, us, come on over.
Dan Stewart (14:50): If that's not your jam, that's okay. You can go somewhere else, right? When you have a mission and you communicate that mission to your people, that really gives you an advantage in the market, right? It helps them understand what's unique and special about you. And of course, giving them a mission is valuable because they may quit you, they will never quit the mission if they actually believe in it. That's true. Think about that. Many of you started your careers with brands that you're no longer with, and yet you're still fulfilling the same fundamental mission, right? You're still helping people handle the most important transaction in their lives.
Dan Stewart (15:36): I suspect that of the people who are gathered here today, you're wanting to pass those values onto the people in your organization. Some of this happens organically, to punch through that growth plateau and really get into the power that's available for you, you must absolutely must know that mission, you must communicate that mission, you must teach that mission. Tell them that story over and over again, such that not only have they heard it from you, but they can very easily tell it themselves. Right? Does that make sense? If that makes sense? Give me a big yes in the chat. I want to see it.
Dan Stewart (16:23): Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It always takes a moment for the yeses to catch up. This is important stuff here, right? We have to have a mission, lots of brands teach mission, vision, and values. It turns into this painful exercise where you come out the other end and you feel like, I don't know exactly what we just did that for. I liked that other brands mission better. Have you had that experience? Have you done that exercise where you sit around and you go, what was that other person's idea? Right? It's not always a bad thing, right? Because R&D, rip off and duplicate can be a good, powerful way for you to get started. When I look at what it takes to really build a vision and mission and communicate that, my expectation is that there are some parts that will never change.
Dan Stewart (17:17): They are core, fundamental pieces. Other parts can evolve over time. They can change according to market conditions, they can change to disruptors that have come in and caused change. Having it written down in a way that you can communicate it makes a lot of sense, right? This slide that I'm sharing with you is something that we share with every new recruitment member. All the people, and I know there are a bunch here who are our recruitment clients, you've seen this, right? My personal mission is all about connection. It's why I'm here. I would not get to be the person I get to be if it weren't for so many other people who've guided me along the way. So many mothers who were not my mother, that helped me grow into the person that I am.
Dan Stewart (18:07): I feel a tremendous obligation to pass on what I've learned and help other people experience those connections. My vision is not to just do this at a math level, but to do it at such a high level, so consistently over time, that we don't ever really need to advertise right. That our business can grow just simply from word of mouth and referral, because we will be the most referred organization in our industry. That's important. I'll share some of these core values. These are ours at Happy Grasshopper. Some of these I'm certain are yours. Being thoughtful, that to me is a it's an indicator I look for when I'm hiring someone. You ever asked somebody a question, they have the answer so fast, you know they didn't really think about it.
Dan Stewart (19:03): I very much appreciate thoughtful people. I like to see that they're considering the meaning behind the things, rather than just waiting to respond. That's important. These are our core values. These are the things we stand for. These are the flags that we've planted and we say to all new people joining our organization, these are the things we are. If you are also these things, it's likely we're going to get along really well and have a great relationship. If you are not these things, that's okay. You'll probably not be very comfortable here. Right? Think about that. When you have that a binary switch, we let these kinds of people in, we push those kinds of people away. You build something really powerful. It's a momentum machine, right? Because like attracts like, you're going to pull in more and more quality people who fit your core values.
Dan Stewart (20:03): Before you know it, you have this unstoppable force of people that you're really authentically aligned with and everything is easier, it's more effective and it's more fun, right? Let's jump forward. Let's jump forward to the point where we've done this, right? We're been really clear about who it is that we're going to attract to our organizations. Well, now we've got to help them thrive, right? The way that we help people thrive is to feed them air. Okay? Some of you have heard me tell this story. I had a mentor early in my career who said, if you're going to have an organization, if you're going to have a community, if you're going to have a network of customers, you got to feed them air. Everybody needs air to survive. I can hear his voice, right? He taught me that the A in air is for awards.
Dan Stewart (20:52): The I is incentives, and the R is recognition. This is so important, right? Here's a strategy you can rip off and duplicate right now, you can do this today. You can reach out to an agent in your organization who's doing a great job, make a social media post about them, congratulate them for what they're doing. Here's a pro tip, rather than have it be a production based item, make it something that's in alignment with your core values, right? Just say, thank you to them. Write them a love letter on their social media wall, right? Tag them in it, tag a bunch of other people in your brokerage or your organization, get a bunch of people engaging in that post, lots of likes and comments, right? And then take a link to that post and share it with the whole real estate community that you're a part of. Right?
Dan Stewart (21:51): If you're recruiting in a specific geographical area, share it with as many agents as you can in that geography, because that's something that's going to be attractive to them. Here's a person who appreciates these same values I share, and also push away someone who's not going to be a good fit, right? Someone for whom those values don't resonate. Okay? Hope that makes sense for you. All right. We've talked about a few things. I want to cover. This is so important. Agent attractions is about two things, right? A little review. It's about production and it's about attraction. Excuse me, agent activation is about two things, production and attraction. We're always going to be more attractive when we're certain what we stand for. Think about in your life, aren't you drawn to people who have a great sense of certainty? You are, you absolutely are because certainty is a human need.
Dan Stewart (22:50): None of us feel like we want to work with someone who maybe can help. We want to work with people who absolutely can help. It's very important that you, as someone who's recruiting, you have a means and a method of helping these agents you're attracting, understand that you can offer them some relief from the real estate rollercoaster. Okay? Say yes for me in the chat right now, if you've been on the real estate rollercoaster, if you know exactly what I'm talking about. This can be an up and down adventure ride. One minute you're flying high, you are absolutely at the top of the world. Oh my gosh, I've got so many deals pending. It's going to be an amazing month, an amazing quarter, an amazing year. And then that house of cards starts to shift and crumble, right?
Dan Stewart (23:41): To be a successful agent, you're constantly managing own emotions as the car is racing around the track, right? This is not an environment for everyone. It's not comfortable for everyone. It can absolutely drive some people crazy. What I would encourage you to do, is provide a means to help people get off that real estate rollercoaster, help them take out the fear and the fright, help them adopt strategies that make their business very consistent and predictable. And you'll find yourself in a place where not only are you attracting more agents and therefore earning more, but the agents that you already have are transacting more and you're earning more, right? It's a very virtuous cycle there. It makes a lot of sense to do this. The way to get off this rollercoaster is to teach your agents, the fundamentals of database nurturing.
Dan Stewart (24:40): Now, that is not the sexiest two words in the English language. Right? Put in that order, they don't really light anybody's fire, it seems dull. That's because I think people don't really know what the words are, right? It's like, it's odd. It's not that. You've taken a class, you've sat in a session or a seminar, and you've heard, send this at this time and that at that time, and you get started, it's time to import the contacts, things get frustrating. How does this work? And then the next thing you know, it's weeks or months later, and you're still sitting right where you were. Database nurturing when you do it wrong, it's just a giant pain. It's a giant pain in the butt. We all know that. And yet when it's done right, oh my gosh, it's so good. It is so good when you do it right.
Dan Stewart (25:33): I'm going to teach you some fundamentals right now that you can pass along to the agents in your organization. Firstly thing we've got to really acknowledge, is that mindset is the most important element here. This is the section of the page that everything else fits within. We must, must, must adopt the right mindset when it comes to nurturing our database. That's a tough thing, right? What mindset, which is the right one? I'll walk you through that here. Right? The mindset is the place where these other elements exist within and message and mechanics are fundamental. That's absolute necessity. It's absolute necessity and whether it's my service, whether it's our friends at companies like Follow Up Boss, LionDesk and Wise Agent, and, and, and, there's dozens and dozens of different systems someone can choose from, and yet these three things are fundamental to all of them. Right?
Dan Stewart (26:38): I like to start here because the goal, when we enter real estate as entrepreneurs, right? It's profit. That's what we're after. So many of us say, hey, I need a career where I can have some flexibility and some time, and I also really need to get paid. What are we going to do in order to do that? We've got to start with organization. That's the first fundamental, the second is automation and the third of course is content creation. I get that. This is a challenge for your agents, right? It's a challenge for you. You must have a system that helps them understand what database nurturing can really do for them. And at the same time I'd like to suggest that that same system is what can help you get off the rollercoaster that you're on. Right?
Dan Stewart (27:29): Let's talk about this system. We've got attraction on one side and we have fulfillment on the other. If you imagine yourself as the recruiting party, the team leader, the broker, the managing broker, the recruitment officer, whatever your role is, part of what you're really focused on is recruit, recruit, recruit. You've got to bring them in. You're always focused on that. And then this is that bucket on the other side that can have so many holes in it. We've got to fulfill the promises that we made during the attraction phase. That's the process, whether you're an agent attracting leads or you're a broker attracting agents, it's the same exact process. You can use that same exact technology to get off that roller coaster. You can do that. So step one is understanding that every rollercoaster, right? It's a highly engineered thing.
Dan Stewart (28:29): Rollercoasters aren't just assembled by a couple of guys and we hope it works out all right. There's a team of engineers who are designing and building a highly systematic experience. If we were to map your experience in recruiting agents and your agents experience in recruiting clients, we'd see some very familiar things here, right? The components are getting leads, closing the sales and then wowing people on the other side of the transaction. That's what it's all about. I promise you, this is an important thing to work on, because their experience, the emotions that they're feeling while they're working with you, that's directly connected to your income. That is the pen that's writing the check that you get to deposit for the work that you do. The experience you provide, when you really design it and you think about it, you have that system and process. You can be absolutely certain of it.
Dan Stewart (29:32): You can feel great about it. You're not living in doubt. You're not living in fear. You're saying, this is what we are. This is what we do and that feels great. You can relax into that. And then you can let the people you're attracting decide whether or not they're going to enjoy that experience. So important to understand that, so important to acknowledge that. Your job is to create a journey for the agents that you're attracting. It's not your job to enjoy it for them. That's up to them, right? It's up to them. You build that systematic experience that lets the right people really thrive and succeed and you get out of the way, right? That's important. This is where we get to pull these people together, message and mechanics, it comes together, right? When we're using the right system to send intelligently and we've got the right message, we can create emotion by the content that we're sending.
Dan Stewart (30:31): Let's think about this from a recruitment perspective. If I'm an agent in your market right now, maybe I'm considering a brokerage change. Maybe I'm not, you probably don't know that. Maybe you've pulled my information from BrokerMetrics or the MLS or the ShowingTime tools. It could be any place that you maybe have an insight to my volume of production. Well, if you send me a congratulations message, well, that's something I get to have an emotional reaction about, right? If you send me a long explanation of why I should leave where I am enjoying you and we don't need even know each other, I'm having a different kind of emotional reaction. Right? We have to think about leveraging, not just the right content, but the right system so we can send the right messaging at the right time. That's important.
Dan Stewart (31:27): Marty, I see your question here. I'll go ahead and answer this. She's asking what CRM do we recommend for recruiting or database in general? Happy Grasshopper being the power partner to your CRM, correct? Yes, absolutely. We have integrations with hundreds of different systems. We connect directly through our API. We connect via email sync and of course we connect by lead PieSync. So email PieSync. Zapier, PieSync, third-party API, there's all sorts of ways for our system to integrate together. And again, whether it's our system or another company system, we have to be really clear that our words matter, the messages we send matter, the impact that we make on the reader matters, right? Whoever the recipient of that message is, if we're going to create an emotional reaction, let's be really clear about the emotions we want to create, because those emotions drive behavior, they absolutely do. Right?
Dan Stewart (32:37): Think about the conditions in the market right now for your agents. Every single one of you probably exist in a market that is unprecedented. If that's true, say true for me right now in the chat. I would imagine that's true for everybody. We're seeing across the country and across Canada, we've got so many members whose their buyer's agents are feeling exhausted. They're writing offer after offer after offer and they're having a lot of difficulty getting accepted. Their listing agents are going, oh my gosh, where am I going to find a house to sell? It's a really interesting market right now. It creates great opportunities for you to recruit, because that is a present pain that nearly everyone is experiencing in some way, shape or form. If you can create and deliver content that speaks to that present pain that they're experiencing, that creates engagement.
Dan Stewart (33:35): Okay? Back to the beginning of the session today, we got to create engagement. It's a foundational element to success with recruitment. Think about that market, is this going to last forever? Certainly not. There's always going to be changed, right? That's an important thing to note, because in any market condition, no matter what's going on, you have a need to attract and activate agents who are in alignment with your mission and your core values. Whatever is happening at the moment, is always a good way to create engagement with the people you're trying to recruit. Okay? Let's step back now, let's help these agents we've already recruited thrive. If I'm a new agent, I probably don't have a bunch of past clients, right? If I'm an experienced agent and I'm just joining you, I almost certainly have a bunch of referrals, a bunch of past clients, bunch of relationships I can draw on.
Dan Stewart (34:41): What you're seeing on the screen right now are the different components that are most common in lead gen for real estate. Referrals and past clients is here at the top, because it's the fastest, lowest cost way to attract new business for your agents. Right? One of the best things about focusing on referrals and past clients, is that you can cut all the clutter and the noise that's going around and around leads. Many of you look at the NAR data like we do. There's typically 85 to 99 million digital leads per year. That's an insane number of leads for about five and a half million transactions. Okay? Think that reality as this structure, this systematic experience that everyone in real estate is having, right? If I'm your agent and I'm seeing that all these different leads are coming in and I call them and they don't respond, I email and they don't respond.
Dan Stewart (35:55): I don't understand that each of these leads is often contacted by as many as 10 agents. And they often begin their search eight to 12 months before they're ready to speak with you. That's part of the story you need to be telling your agents, right? If you've got that starry-eyed agents, who's all set to go out and invest in this expensive lead program. It's very likely that if they don't understand this, they're going to arrive at a place where they're just totally fatigued. Okay? One side of this equation is we've got an agent who's worn out, right? They got all these leads and they just don't believe in them anymore. The leads are no good. We've all heard that, right? The leads are no good. It's like a Glengarry Glen Ross scene.
Dan Stewart (36:47): It's not a problem with the lead most of the time, the lead itself is usually okay, it's that span of time between when they register and when they're ready to transact, that isn't really understood, right? Now, none of us as good as we might be, none of us can force someone to buy, sell, or invest in real estate before they're actually ready to buy, sell, or invest in real estate. We don't have that power. There's no magic script that will convince someone to do that. Right? What we do have the power to do is understand that our time span between when they show up as a lead and when they're ready to transact, that is the absolute, perfect time to be building that relationship with this person who has a need in their future, that's connected to real estate. Okay?
Dan Stewart (37:40): Setting those expectations, telling that story to the agents in your brokerage is very, very important part of being able to activate them, right? To help them succeed in production. Let's look at some math here. There was a study done by our friends over at the wave group. Victor, Maryland, hi, if you're watching. I love the study and when I saw it, I was like, no, that can't be true. We ran our own parallel study and we found our data was actually a little bit worse than theirs. The average real estate lead today gets 1.2 phone calls and only two emails and then the agent stops following up with the lead. Think about that. Think about that. You've got a person who might be eight to 12 months away, there's a couple of emails and 1.2 phone calls right at the beginning, and then nothing else happens. This drives them to keep registering and registering and registering, right?
Dan Stewart (38:43): Now, if you have an IDX site set up, if they've come to you through Zillow or realtor.com or homes.com, or Trulia, they are receiving a search update, right? Here's a new listing, here's a new property search alert. Here's a price change update. All of that content is going and they're getting all of it from these 10 agents that they've registered with. And they're getting it multiple times per week for months and months and months, and months and months. And when you, your brand, your brokerage and you as an agent yourself or the agents who are with you are swept up in this mess, you have to understand that, to the consumer there's no differentiation. There just isn't. They don't see you as you, because you're just another agent sending just another search update, like, yay search updates. That was 10 years ago.
Dan Stewart (39:42): Now it's, oh my God, another search update. Right? We've got to, got to, got to understand, and I truly believe this, right? I truly believe that this mess that we just talked about is a massive opportunity for you. It's a massive opportunity to argue for why you matter. It's absolutely critical for you to do that. If you have an existing database of clients, past clients, sphere of influence, people who absolutely know who you are, you need to communicate with them on a regular basis, so that they don't get so caught up in all that noise. Right now, do you believe your past clients and sphere are going to Zillow to see what their home is worth? Absolutely.
Dan Stewart (40:29): Do you believe that Zillow would like to sell their eyeballs to another agent? Absolutely. Right? So you've got to, got to, got to communicate with the people you know, in order to create the opportunity that your agents need to have, right? And you need to teach them to do this. Here's my prescription for you. You can do this, whether it's us at Happy Grasshopper or some other system, you try to do it with yourself, this is the formula that works. 17 emails per year. This is once every three weeks. It's a non salesy message. It's about interesting things that are happening now. It's not about buying, selling or investing in real estate, it's not a market update. This is a message that shows someone who you know, that you actually care about them more than you care about the commission they represent.
Dan Stewart (41:24): Okay. Email's great, foundation of our company is still super strong in 2021. Email is fantastic. And yet it's not the only thing that's fantastic. Text messaging and ringless voicemail drops can be a very powerful part of your recruitment strategy. It can be a very powerful part of your agents, client conversion strategy. I want to set an expectation here that the frequency of these three methods, you can guess at it, right? And you might be right, or you can just study the data like we've done over the past decade. We're currently nurturing about 16 million contacts for real estate agents. We're not guessing at these frequencies, it's all data supported. I'll go a little deeper here on the text and the ringless voicemail drops. First let's talk about frequency. These are a one-two punch. They go out in combination with each other.
Dan Stewart (42:26): Your client's birthday, their transaction anniversary, four quarterly lead harvesting messages, and then up to six holiday messages per year. That's 12 texts and 12 ringless voicemail drops for each of your contacts each year. If you're not familiar with a ringless voicemail drop, that's where their phone doesn't ring, they just simply look down and go, I missed a call from Dan. All right. And then they can either read the voicemail or they can listen to it, right? Those options exist. A great way to use it, is to just reach out and tell somebody happy birthday, right? You record one birthday message, all of your past clients and sphere get it on their birthday. Same for transaction anniversary, for holidays. I'll show you some results here from a member who just used that strategy to generate two listings in one day.
Dan Stewart (43:20): There's all sorts of great ways that you can do this. And when you think about how you need to not just do it for yourself, but you need to really help your agents do this, right? You have to teach them the story, teach them to tell the story. You're well-served to choose a technology platform that can structure all of this for you. Now, of course, that's what we provide at Happy Grasshopper. I'm really proud that we do it in a way where our branding comes off, our members branding gets featured, right? What I'm going to show you here in our technology, is that we can use our application to send email, text and ringless voicemail drops. Your agent gets a message from you letting them know what they need to do.
Dan Stewart (44:12): And when they do that, when they say, yes, I'll send this message, their expectation is that it's going to work and it should be. Replies come very quickly from our system. Those of you who are using it, you know this. I love to show this as an example, because, think of this from a perspective as a recruiting broker. There's a lot of pressure on recruiting brokers. You feel like you need to provide leads, technology, there's all sorts of things you can provide them. And yet, sometimes they don't use them, in fact, most of the time they don't use them. Here's a scenario where Cassidy was provided this system to create results with it. And like a lot of agents, she was skeptical. She loaded just three contacts to test it. She sent an email and then she got her first reply, a few minutes later.
Dan Stewart (45:11): This expectation is that when you show your agents how to tell the story, get messaging out there, they need to see the engagement from it to know that it works. Here's another example. I love this one, because this is Jolenta Avril here on the screen. I've known her for a long time. She's a wonderful human being. I've been participating in the real estate webmasters forums recently. Here she is saying, she can't wait to try one of my amazing one-liners. I asked if she sent the one I mentioned on the webinar, she says, yes. And look at this, the responses have been rolling in almost as fast as I can reply to them. In these market conditions, right now, today, my gosh, you've got to be able to send messages that people will respond to.
Dan Stewart (46:01): That is the truth, whether you're sending messaging for your own business or whether you're sending message to recruit agents to your brokerage or team or organization. I'll show you some examples here of how this works. What you're seeing on the screen right now is a version of our application that we set up for a brokerage in Nashville, Dallas, and in Oklahoma city called Ten Oaks. And the way this works is obviously we've put their branding on the site and then their agents get a notification. They choose a message here that they need to send. Here's an example of a message. This is a blockbuster message, right? It's about blockbuster video. It asks if they've seen it, the 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. And call me crazy, but I actually love this.
Dan Stewart (46:59): It makes me wish they paid more attention to Netflix and pivoted sooner. And then here we've got a change, right? We've just shared something interesting, that's trending in the news, that's a live story that's happening now, and we're closing with a call to conversation about real estate. 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? Right? If you would send that message to your past clients or sphere, give me a yes in the chat. And if you think I'm crazy, write crazy. Go ahead and put that. If you think, no, I would never send that message, write Dan's crazy in the chat. Lisa says, she'd send it. Steven says, he'd send it.
Dan Stewart (47:46): Usually a lot of people at this point are saying, yup I'd send it. Absolutely, I'd send it. And invariably, we have one or two who would say, I don't know, it doesn't feel like my personality. I would want to send a message that's a little bit more about real estate or our market. I get it, right? That's totally fine. And yet guys look at the data from this message. This is so cool. This is the actual reporting results. 53% open rate here, a 53% open rate on an email about blockbuster. It went to 198 people, and Randall Martin who's the sender of this message, look what he wrote in his company's Facebook group. He's an agent at a brand in Houston, Texas called CB&A, it's Chance Brown and Associates. Chance, if you're out there watching, I love you brother. We need to connect.
Dan Stewart (48:39): I love that he posted this in his company Facebook group. Within 90 minutes, I received this email back from a client that closed in 2013, right? That email says, are you able to give me an idea of what we could list for? How handy is that in a market where it's so hard to get listing inventory, right? Come on. It works. And then I love that, later that same day he got a second email from another client. There's two great responses. He says, if those were to pan out, that's between one and a half and 2 million in turnarounds, right? Not bad for a simple email, right? Not bad at all. If you were doubtful about sending a message like that, go ahead and press your trust button and just send it, right? You'll be surprised how people respond.
Dan Stewart (49:26): Now, I'm going to show you an example of a text message that an agent used here to produce a half million dollars in volume. That's Ken and Velma there at the Rhon group. I got this message from them saying, I really enjoy listening via YouTube and Labcoat. We've been enjoying success with 30 to 50% email open rates. We sent our first mass texts using the it's been a while script. Right? Pretty cool. Got one listing that went live today, already received two over-asking price offers. There will be a buy associated with it after we close, which will result in approximately half a million in volume. We were also able to refer a client to a commercial agent. Right? How cool is that? A simple text message sent from our system, and here's the message by the way.
Dan Stewart (50:17): It's Ken, how are you? It's been a little while since we've touched base. Is there anything I can help you with? Okay? You don't have to write Shakespeare. It doesn't have to be a novel. It doesn't have to be eloquent, right? It just has to be consistent and friendly over time. That's what produces results. Go ahead and screenshot message, steal it, send it out to your past clients and sphere. Have your agents send it out to their past clients and sphere and you'll see some crazy great results. You might not get a listing right away like Ken did. You might get something that's almost just as good. I love this story. There's an agent member of ours at Ten Oaks named Brack Mosshart. Brack sent that text. Here it is.
Dan Stewart (51:06): Hey guys, how are you? It's been a while since we've touched base. Is there anything I can help you with? Simple. Well, he sent it to Christina Garcia. She properly screenshotted it and wrote this on Facebook to brag to the world about how awesome Brack is for reaching out to keep in touch. Look at that. That is a glowing 10 star review. It's amazing. It is absolutely the sort of thing that's possible through relationship. When you show that you care enough to keep in touch without a sales agenda, magical things open up for you. They absolutely do. Now I'll show you another example of a quarterly lead harvesting message and this one's a voicemail drop. Our member Barry Jenkins created this message. We call it the Barry Jenkins script. I love it.
Dan Stewart (51:59): This is where you press record and our system records your voice saying, hey, this is Dan Stewart at blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, reaching out to our past clients. In fact, you know what, I believe I have that message right here. Let me just go ahead and play that for you. This is so cool.
[Recording playing of Barry Jenkins] (52:20): Hey, this is Barry Jenkins, Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate. We are reaching out to our past clients. There's an inventory shortage. If you, maybe a neighbor or a friend is open to selling their home in the next six to 12 months, I have something very interesting that I'd like to just review with them. It'll take 15 minutes over the phone. You can give us a call back at our office number, (757) 654-5223, that's (757) 654-5223. This offer is only being given to past clients. And so really excited about it. And I can't wait to share it with you, have a great rest of your day.
Dan Stewart (53:04): All right, how cool is that right? I love that we've got such a dynamic group of members that they're finding ways to help each other and serve each other. When Barry sent that message out and he got two listings, he immediately reached out to us and share that message so that we could share with everybody else. Just one of the advantages of planting your flag and saying, this is what we stand for. We attract people who also believe those things. Barry's a great example of that. So many of you that are on the call with me today are people I truly know, I had great conversations with so many of you. I want to really make sure I anchor this point, because everything that I've shared with you today is not great just for recruiting, right?
Dan Stewart (53:55): It's not just about agent attraction. It's not just about activating those agents. It's about some fundamental beliefs that really allow you to enjoy the connections with other people, to build those relationships that lead to unprecedented opportunity. Hi Karen, I see your question there. Steven, I see yours too. I'm going to answer these. Karen, better late than never, right? Better late than never. I'm glad you're here. And yes, we have recorded this session. Possibly later today, more likely tomorrow we'll push out that replay link for you. Steven's asking what was Barry's special offer? Now, you'll see the note down here at the bottom, the details of the friends and family program are up to you. Barry offered a minor commission discount, a home warranty, paid at closing to protect the seller, and a smart device as a house warming gift. Right? Those were the things that he built in there.
Dan Stewart (54:57): I'd encouraged to make it your own, just to ask yourself what you're willing to do, what you think would work in your market. One thing that's fun is when I talked to Barry about this, he said, I didn't really know the details of the program. I recorded the message and send it out. There's a lesson there as well, right? Because those of us who take action generally reap the rewards. It's a very, very important skill to adapt. Speaking as somebody who's had this sense of wanting to be super prepared for everything, I've had to work really hard to go ahead and jump in and sometimes execute at 80%, rather than 99.9%. So action works. You are so welcome, Christina. You absolutely are. And I'm sure we'll connect again soon. So take care of Christina.
Dan Stewart (55:50): Guys, actually it's 1:58. I'm going to go ahead and stop the screen share there, get my face back on the screen. I will hang out and answer questions for you if you have them. Couple of things that I'll recap, is that the process of recruitment, it's a big process. I'm fortunate that in my background as an entrepreneur, I've hired hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. About seven or eight years ago, when our real estate members asked us to help them with recruitment, I started from a different perspective. I didn't look at what everybody else is doing for recruitment in real estate. I've brought a different perspective to it that's been highly effective. We have a member who's regularly recruiting over 200 agents per month currently.
Dan Stewart (56:41): We have several who've recruited over a thousand. Those goals are huge and they fit those brands that went for them. I also suspect there are people here who would like to really add five or 10 great agents. Everything in my process, everything I'll teach at the recruitment success summit will enable you to achieve those goals no matter how large they are. Again, save the date, May 19th and 20th. If you'd like me to send an invite to you for that, just go ahead and pop your email address into the chat here. Actually, don't do that. Just send me an email to [email protected]. I've noticed with Zoom that we sometimes don't get all of those notes, so I don't want to miss any of them. Just email me, again, [email protected].
Dan Stewart (57:32): All right. Well, I will give one last call for questions here. I don't see any more coming in. All right. Well, it's two o'clock on the dot. We have filled this hour with great stuff. I hope you all got a lot out of this today, and I'll look forward to chatting with you soon. Bye now.