What To Say Now: Episode # - Topic or Title

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Dan Stewart (00:17): Hi, what's shaking? So here we go, guys. It's Tuesday afternoon, almost 2:00 PM Eastern. And that means it's time for another episode of What to Say Now. This is a project we've had so much fun working on at Happy Grasshopper, because it has been about 10 years now that we've learned one of the biggest challenges people have is communicating with their database when it comes to figuring out what to say. So rather than make you struggle, we host these weekly episodes every Tuesday at 2:00 PM Eastern, to literally put the words in your mouth. We are teaching you What to Say Now. And today we're going to look just a little bit into the future.

Dan Stewart (00:59): I'm excited about this because we have so much new, amazing, awesome stuff. That's just about to come live from Happy Grasshopper. And you're going to get the very first look at it today. The preview before anyone else in the world has even seen it. You get to. And the thing that I love about this most is that it's the way for us to help you communicate in a very regular and consistent pattern. Let's never forget that consistency equals professionalism. If you're making the assumption that your clients are yours, that they will stay with you, that they will absolutely hire you again, just because they hired you once before, you're making a big mistake. So let's get down to brass tacks here. Let's take a look at what we've got going today.

Dan Stewart (01:46): I'm going to cover really four things here with you today. We're going to jump right into the first thing, which is who to send your message to? If you're watching this, you have people in your database, you have clients, you have friends, you have family and you have leads.

Dan Stewart (02:05): So the difference between those groups of people would be that some know who you are and some don't. So all of the messaging strategies that I'm going to teach you here today are designed for people who know you. These are not messages for leads. These are messages that are only meant for people who know who you are.

Dan Stewart (02:26): So when it comes to database organization, all you have to ask yourself is, "Will this person actually know who I am when they get this message?" If the answer is no, you should not send this message. So pretty simple. Pretty simple and yet we don't assume things. We want to make sure we're deliberate in what we choose. So, Colin, welcome. Glad to see you here. Hello to some other folks coming in. Brian, hello. Good to see you guys. Usually it takes a few minutes for Facebook to find an audience, which is why we're recording this. We'll certainly syndicate it to our members of the group.

Dan Stewart (03:03): Now, I am going to do something I have not done on previous What to Say Now episodes. And that will be to share my screen. So I'm going to jump over and share a screen here. And you guys are going to be the first to get to see some entirely new stuff. So this is a version of Happy Grasshopper called Chirp, is really pared-down. It's not for multiple audiences. It's not for capturing and converting leads. It's not for recruitment. Chirp is only for communicating with your past clients and your sphere of influence.

Dan Stewart (03:38): And inside Chirp, we have messages divided into send by audience, handwritten cards, voicemail drops, and text messaging. Today, we're going to review your communication plan for September. So think about September, we've got a few dates in there that really stand out. One would be Labor Day. That's September 7th this year. So you definitely want to make sure that you have some sort of holiday messaging lined up to send out to people. Another date, 9/11. It's an uncomfortable date for a lot of people still all these years later. So, having a plan to message around that is important. You don't want to take these things for granted.

Dan Stewart (04:20): So now what I'm going to do here is we're going to jump into the actual messaging itself. I'm going to click here on send by audience. And these are all email messages. Now my prescription for your success is that every person who knows you, needs to get one of these once every three weeks. What up, JB, good to see you here. Glad you're here. It's awesome. And Laurie Davies, oh my gosh. It's so good to see you too. I love that you're here. Thank you for coming.

Dan Stewart (04:48): So I'm going to share with you some of these messages, guys, we're just going to preview. So this is a message about Blockbuster and I love this message actually. I'll let you read it there.

Dan Stewart (05:05): All right, pretty simple, straightforward message. Now some of you reading this may absolutely love it. Some of you might not. So we give our members the opportunity to rate the message. If you're not our member, just go ahead and screenshot this message, make it your own and send it. This is exactly the kind of content you're going to get a lot of replies to. And if you don't love this message, that's okay. There are more messages for you to choose from.

Dan Stewart (05:30): So I'll show you another message here, take a look at this one. Subject line is, "Been out to eat lately?" I'll let you read this. That's a conversation starter. If you get this message from someone you know, it's really easy to reply. They're going to consume it quickly. They're going to reply quickly. And the net result is they're actually going to remember who you are. So in this cycle, we have five different messages that are loaded. I've shared two of them. Hopefully you guys, who are not our members, have screenshotted those.

Dan Stewart (06:12): I'm going to show you one more message here. And then we're going to move into a different messaging category. I like this message. It says, "I'm a sucker for anything involving dog saves man. And this story touched me. So I thought I'd share. Can you remember your first day on the job? If we're at all alike, you were a raw mixture of joyous accomplishment and palm-soaking fear, (I was in high school, okay?). Anyway, if you read the story," there's a link to the story. "You'll hear about a rescue dog's first day and the people he saved, it's a very touching story even if you don't like dogs, let's touch base. Life's too short to go this long without talking." Send that message to your past clients and sphere and watch the replies come in. They will reply to this sort of messaging.

Dan Stewart (06:59): The key with this content is to make it short, make it interesting and make the content relevant to things that are happening now. Really, really important thing to do. So those are the last of the emails here that I'm going to show you. Now we're going to shift gears a little bit. We're going to talk about voicemail drops. We're going to talk about text messages.

Dan Stewart (07:21): So in terms of voicemail, I've got scripts that are loaded here in our system. And there are some that you should always absolutely be ready to send. So if you're our member, you need to just pop in and record things like a birthday greeting. Pop in and record things like a transaction anniversary message. And I'll show you how we do these things. I'll just walk through.

Dan Stewart (07:46): So, this message, you'll see the note here, is suggested for sending before their birthday. So let me give you a little coaching. Think about when you actually leave a voicemail for someone, it doesn't sound like a radio commercial, it doesn't sound like I'm sounding now trying to project in the microphone and be engaging for this streamed event. It sounds like you're leaving a voicemail. So to put me in the right frame of mind, I'm going to actually pick up my phone here and I'm going to read this message.

Dan Stewart (08:15): Okay. I'm going to say it now. "Hey, it's me, Dan. Happy birthday. I hope I'm the first person to tell you that this year. And I certainly hope you're doing something fun. So, let's catch up. All right? Give me a call. It'd be great to chat. Okay. Bye." [inaudible 00:08:33], simple. Now, did you notice I made some mistakes there? I didn't read everything word for word. I misspoke and I giggled a little and went back and corrected it. That's what you do when you leave an actual voicemail for someone. You do not want to make this sound like a radio commercial, guys, it's got to be personal and authentic.

Dan Stewart (08:54): So I'll encourage you to embrace your faults there and just go with what you've got. It'll be fine. So, transaction anniversaries and birthday messages, those should go out, obviously, at the time that's appropriate, when those events are taking place. You also want to send some quarterly touch messages. So here, I'll preview this warm touch message. It's, "Hey, it's me, Dan. I'm calling because I was just thinking about you the other day. And I hope things are going well. And I'd love to hear an update. So, let's talk soon. Call me." Right... Off you go. Simple. You spend a few minutes recording messages like this, and then they can automatically be delivered for you throughout the year at the appropriate time.

Dan Stewart (09:40): That's what you need to do if you're going to really generate a business that's based on referral and word of mouth, you've got to have a plan to keep in contact with people.

Dan Stewart (09:50): Now, the next area I'm going to click in here will be text messaging. So here in the text area. Hey, Ben [Meyer 00:00:09:58], good to see here, my man. This is fun. So here in the text area, you'll also see birthdays. Transaction anniversaries needs to be here. We've got warm touches, asking for help and offering help. Now, a word about text. I cannot stress this enough. You can send an email whenever you want. People will reply whenever they want. They don't expect you to actually be there. You can send a voicemail drop whenever you want. People don't necessarily expect to get you right back on the phone.

Dan Stewart (10:29): But when you send a text message, they're absolutely expecting you to be there and to respond. So my suggestion is that you don't trigger these messages to go out until you're sitting in front of your computer and you're ready to actually have those conversations. Because people will open them right away. You will start getting replies right away.

Dan Stewart (10:51): So, I'll give you a quick look here. I'm going to preview this message. I'm going to click edit and schedule. "It's Dan, how are you? It's been a little while since we've touched base, is there anything I can help you with?" Tell you what, when you send that message, people will reply. They absolutely will. And I hope that you notice, guys, it doesn't have to be Shakespeare. We don't want to write a novel in a text message. We want to write something that people can see, expects a reply from them. So that's the approach here with these types of messages.

Dan Stewart (11:28): And in our system, all those responses get managed here. So, as replies come in. You just respond to them from this particular area. So, here, for example, is birthday message. We'll preview this message. It's going to use their first name, "Hey, Jeremy, it's Dan Stewart. Am I the first to wish you happy birthday this year? I hope so. Do you have any plans?" A message like that will absolutely get engagement when you send it. So all of this that I'm showing you here, you'll notice is inside Chirp.

Dan Stewart (12:05): And if you are a current Happy Grasshopper member, Chirp is going to be available for you inside the application you already have. What this is, is a communication plan that consists of 17 emails, six to 12 voicemail drops and six to 12 text messages per contact per year. So, that's a 29 to 41 touch plan depending on the number of holidays that you choose to message people about.

Dan Stewart (12:34): So I am super, super excited about what we've learned in the past 10 years. And I absolutely love the way that we're rolling this out for people here in the very near future. So, a few things that I would like to stress here before we wrap up. What I've shown you right now is just a little scratch of the surface. On Thursday, this Thursday at 1:00 PM Eastern time, I'll be going live with a deep dive webinar. That webinar is called Fast Track to 12 Transactions. And I know that a lot of you guys are doing more than 12 transactions per year. But what I'm going to teach there is going to be super useful for everyone from the brand new agent all the way to the super experienced team leaders, doing hundreds and hundreds of transactions per month.

Dan Stewart (13:19): I'm going to show you how to implement a cohesive messaging strategy that produces real results. We'll do that in super detail. This Thursday at 1:00 PM. So, to register for that webinar, just go to happygrasshopper.com/webinar. How easy is that? And I'm sure somebody will stick that in the chat here for me, underneath this video. So, guys, there you go. How's that for a quick action plan? September is right around the corner. If you don't know who in your database is having a birthday, now's a good time to figure that out. If you don't know who of your past clients is having a transaction anniversary, now's a good time to figure that out.

Dan Stewart (14:01): You can enter that information into your Happy Grasshopper account and our system will go ahead and prompt you to send that messaging out on time. So, we make it easy for you to win. Thanks, everybody, for paying attention today. I really appreciate it. I'm going to jump back on Facebook here and hang out for a bit. If anybody wants or needs to connect with me personally, please just hit me up through Facebook. I'll look to see you guys there. Have a great afternoon, everybody. Bye now.