What To Say Now: Episode 21
Going Zombie Hunting In Your Database

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Dan Stewart (00:10): Hey everybody. It is Tuesday at 2:00 PM Eastern time on October 13th, 2020. My name is Dan Stewart, welcome to our 21st episode of What To Say Now. This is a project of my company, Happy Grasshopper, where we believe that through connecting you in conversation with the people you already know, we can pave a wide, wide path to prosperity. So today we have a really fantastic topic lined up for you. We're not yet feeling even a hint of fall down here in Tampa, Florida, but I understand other parts of the country, you're starting to feel a little chilly. You're breaking out the sweaters, and you've got Halloween decorations all over the place.

Dan Stewart (00:56): So today we are going to go zombie hunting. That's right. We are going to find some zombies. We're going to dig them up, and we're going to turn those people into active clients, right? So this is going to be really fun. And besides being fun, let's just acknowledge the opportunity that's actually here for you. I mean, think of it this way. What would it mean for you if right now, today, literally this moment, you were to discover that you had a hidden bank account. Like, "Oh my God, surprise. I didn't even know I was saving all this money all this time. I didn't even think about it. And now I have it. I can do something with it" it's that moment, like you're doing your laundry and you find some cash in your jeans from last year. You're going, "Yay, this is awesome." So in this case, it's even better, because there is so much opportunity that's just hiding for you in these old, cold, moldy, dead leads. And today we're going to show you how to dig that out so you can take advantage of it.

Dan Stewart (02:01): So my question for you guys is what would you do if you found that hidden pile of cash right now? What would that mean for you? I want to see, go ahead and call it out in the comments below. Would you take a vacation? Would you pay off some debt? Would you reinvest in your business? What would you do if you found some money? And I know some of you are thinking, well, how much money are we talking about? How much could it possibly be? It could be a tremendous amount, depending on the volume of old, cold, dead leads that you have hanging around.

Dan Stewart (02:36): So I'll give you some examples here in a moment, but before we dig into this any deeper, I'm going to take you one layer deeper, and we're going to go to a very special place, because today we're not only going to help you find your own hidden savings account, but we're going to help you find the hidden savings account of a bunch of people you work with. They don't even know they've got this money in the bank, and what's even crazier, they don't want it. Literally, if you just ask them, they will hand it to you.

Dan Stewart (03:11): So today what we're going to do is walk through that process to help you take advantage of it. And of course, before we do that, we've got to just kill a myth. We've got to get this out of the way, because I know this sounds too good to be true. I know that it does. And yet in every real estate brokerage on the planet right now, there's a very real situation called leads fatigue, around you, in your office, in your brokerage, within your brand, there are hundreds or thousands of agents who have leads that they haven't been able to do anything with. They think they're absolute crap and garbage. They do not want them, they'll be happy to give them to you if you ask them.

Dan Stewart (03:52): So that's the reality, and I just have to show you how to tap into it. Now, if you don't know, my name is Dan Stewart, I founded this company, Happy Grasshopper, 10 years ago. Oh my God, we're 10 years old. And we have a really long history of helping people resurrect their zombie leads. So I'll give you an example or two. The first person I'm going to call out is Brent Dalley. He's a team leader in Mansfield, Texas. He runs BoomTown. He has tons and tons and tons of old, cold, zombie leads and contacts that never converted. So we loaded those into a system. We sent out one simple message, and we were able to find 17 transactions for him that he wasn't aware of were hiding. So doing the math on that, that was over $100,000 in commission for Brent.

Dan Stewart (04:45): Like what would you do if you discovered you had $100,000 of deals that you weren't paying attention to? I mean, how would that make you feel? That could change your life, literally. That could salvage your whole year. So to get after that, what you really need to do is have a framework that makes it simple to follow and repeatable for you. So that's what I want to break down. And the first thing we have to do is know our enemy, because we're going hunting. If we're going hunting, we better know what we're going to hunt for. And to do that, we've got to understand what a zombie lead really is.

Dan Stewart (05:19): So we're going to take a look at data. NAR has been tracking the number of digital leads that are generated each year. And they've also been tracking how many transactions take place each year. So if we go back to 2014, there were 4.5 million digital leads generated each year. And there were about 5 million transactions. In 2018, there were five and a half million transactions, and there were 88 million digital leads. Massive change. And then last year, that number of digital leads grew by another 10 million. So we have millions and millions and millions of leads that have been generated for about the same volume of transactions. That should tell you that if you're only responding to the leads who are ready to do business today, you're missing a massive opportunity, because every single one of us has to live somewhere.

Dan Stewart (06:19): What's really changed in the lead generation landscape is that leads get generated now far in advance of when they actually are ready to have a transaction. That's a key learning. So what you need to do is set up a plan for yourself that once a quarter, you're shaking that old, cold, zombie database of these long dormant leads to see who's ready to actually have a transaction. So know your enemy. These old zombie leads or this cold, old stuff that just hasn't responded, it's the leads your agents in your office gave up on a long time ago. We're not going to give up on them. We're going to breathe new life back into them.

Dan Stewart (07:00): Now, the places that you go to find zombies, let's talk about that. We go to graveyards to find zombies. That's where it happens. And your graveyard is your CRM. You've got tons of contacts in there that aren't doing anything, right? That's your graveyard. That's where you're going to go to resurrect your zombies. So that's where we're going to start. We've got to pull together those contacts. We've got to pull them out of the CRM, we've got to get ready to send them a unique and special kind of message. And this is the gear up portion that I'm talking about, your messaging to them. That's your gear.

Dan Stewart (07:35): And the message that you need to send to them should be very short. It should be very concise. You can send it via text. You can send it via email, you can send it via voicemail drop. Those are three great ways to do it. In every scenario, it should be a short, punchy message that says something along the lines of, "There's some interesting things happening in the market now, it may be time to act. Please let me know if you have questions." Simple, straight to the point, we're just prodding them with one message that says, "Hey, now might really be the time to buy, sell, or invest in real estate." So that's what we're doing here.

Dan Stewart (08:14): Now, the way that we round these people up over time is through having a structure. We need to have a system that sends messaging to these people one time per quarter. We don't want to put them on a plan where we're constantly sending the messaging, because they're very likely not ready. So let's say you've got a thousand zombies, these dead leads in your database. If you shake it real hard from a thousand, you should find about two deals that are ready to do business now. So if you have a thousand people in your database and you're sending once a quarter and finding two deals, that's eight transactions per year. Eight transactions per year, times your average commission per transaction, like we're talking about a serious savings account that's just sitting around waiting for you to take advantage of it.

Dan Stewart (09:05): So I'm going to recap this in a moment, but I need to also be super clear about something. This is a challenge for most of you, right? Because as simple as this is, you still have to actually do it. That means you have to take the time to pull your database together. It means you have to take the time to craft a message and actually send it out to them. It means that you have to do it. You have to set a calendar and you have to stick on it, once a quarter you need to send this sort of a message out there. So that challenge is easily overcome if you have the right partners helping you. So if you need help with that, let us know. Myself and my team at Happy Grasshopper, we're here to serve you with that.

Dan Stewart (09:52): So let's review. First of all, we understand that there's opportunity hiding in every agent's database, every single day of the year. Every lead you've ever generated has a person behind it. And that person has to live somewhere. So just because they haven't responded now, when a lead comes in, doesn't mean it's a bad lead. It means that they're just not ready to transact today. So don't give up on that lead. You want to put them in your zombie pile, and once a quarter you want to breathe new life into them.

Dan Stewart (10:25): And specifically that means sending them a short, punchy message that's designed to get a quick response. So that kind of message should say, "Hey, there's interesting stuff happening in the market right now. If you're still interested in buying or selling real estate, now may be the time to act. Please call me, blah, blah, blah your information." Short, sweet, to the point, once a quarter, not a long message, not a sales pitch. Just a simple, poke, prod, you're checking basically, is this zombie going to move? That's what you're looking for. You're nudging the zombie, and you want to see if the zombie stands up and comes to life. That's what we're looking for.

Dan Stewart (11:05): So if you need my help with this, please let me know. You can comment below. You can email me, [email protected]. And of course you can reach out to my staff at happygrasshopper.com as well. We have so much great stuff coming up for you this month. I'm really, really excited about what's going on in October. You may have seen we've launched LCA Nurture with Lab Coat Agents. It's absolutely fantastic. We've got dozens and dozens and dozens of agents who are signing up every week, and they're seeing this quick response can be created from their database. So if you're part of the Lab Coats world, you definitely want to check out LCA Nurture, it's really, really cool.

Dan Stewart (11:44): We have a brand new webinar series that I'm so excited to announce. Go to happygrasshopper.com/webinar. This series is called The Martial art of Achievement. And I know that sounds really fun and serious at the same time, but really what martial arts is all about is efficiency. It's about conserving your motion. It's about an economy of motion that produces an outsized result. I've been fascinated with that my entire life, and I'm really, really proud of the work that I've done here. I just can't wait to share with you what I've learned, studying martial arts and how it's impacted my business life. So be sure to tune in for that, just go to happygrasshopper.com/webinar. You can save your seat there.

Dan Stewart (12:32): And finally, if you're watching this on YouTube or any other platform, and you're not a member of our Facebook group, you absolutely need to join. That's at facebook.com/groups/what-to-say-now. And that's where myself and my staff of writers answer your communication questions, and we prepare you to win with whatever communication challenge you're having.

Dan Stewart (12:55): So thank you to everybody for tuning in today. Really appreciate it. I'll see you back here next Tuesday at 2:00 PM Eastern, and until then be safe and go get those zombies. All right, Dan out. Bye, everybody.