What To Say Now: Episode 13 
The Real Estate Communication Plan Framework

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Dan Stewart (00:11): Hey guys, it's me, Dan Stewart from Happy Grasshopper, I know you know who I am. I have some cool stuff to share with you today, and first thing I need to do is just wrangle some tech here. I'm going to do a screen share with some pretty neat stuff here inside Zoom, so I just want to get ready for that here as we move forward and we're ready, so...

Dan Stewart (00:33): First of all, happy freaking Tuesday, everybody. It's 2:00 PM Eastern, so it's time for another episode of What To Say Now by Happy Grasshopper, so you should, if you haven't already, be a member of our Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/whattosaynow. It's where myself and my team of copywriters spend a bunch of time every week listening to what you need in terms of communication help, and then we give it to you.

Dan Stewart (01:01): Now, over the past several years, I mean almost a decade now, I've been running this little experiment called Happy Grasshopper, and today I'm really excited to roll out for you a framework that you're going to find incredibly helpful when it comes to building your business while also having some of those soft things that we love to have in life, like a sense of calm, right? A sense of confidence, a sense of absolute certainty that no matter what happens in your market, no matter what happens with COVID, no matter what happens with interest rates, no matter what happens, that you're going to be just fine, right?

Dan Stewart (01:39): So here's how this all fits together. The first thing that we have to really understand is what's possible for each of us through the relationships that we have. Now, there's all sorts of great data about this, and if we look just at our dataset, we know that for every 100 contacts in your database that really know who you are, there should be 12 items of business per year, okay? 12 per 100 who really know who you are, that's the difference-maker, and we're not talking about 100 people who have no clue who you are, we're talking about 100 people who absolutely know who you are, to find those 12 items of business per year. So what we're going to do is show you specifically how to tap into that opportunity there, right?

Dan Stewart (02:28): Now, as I mentioned before, when you have a true relationship, you have something that's super, super valuable, right? Contacts are worthless, it's the relationship that you have with those contacts that are priceless, so I don't want you to get too hung up on how many people you might have. We'll run with easy numbers, we'll say let's imagine 100 people in your database that absolutely know who you are, there should be 12 items of business that you can pull out from that group of 100 people every single year, right? That could be a transaction, it could be a referral to a transaction, so that's where we're going to start.

Dan Stewart (03:09): Now, I see some messages here coming in on the side. Guys, I will do my best to try to answer questions here, I see Alex, my man Alex in Victoria, saying "Hi," good to see you, Alex. So this is good, as people come in, I'll try to pause here and say hello, but before we go any farther with showing you this framework, there's a myth that we have to get out of the way, and that myth is that your clients are loyal. I'm sorry, they are not, right? Any time you drive through your neighborhood on the way home, you know there's a chance some other agent's sign is going to pop up in front of the yard of one of your neighbors, right? That's something that you need to avoid, so...

Dan Stewart (03:53): Oh, my man Jason Keys is here, glad to have you, Jason, thanks for being here, Buddy. So let's be clear about that myth, guys, right? You might love your clients, you might have taken them through this massive rollercoaster of a thing called a real estate transaction, it is not safe now, it will not be safe ever to assume that that person is loyal to you. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is. If you want to be sure that you're going to win that business with people over time, if you want to be sure that you're the person who's going to capitalize on the referrals that that person can make, you have to do one thing, and that's maintain a relationship with that person, right? You can never assume it, you have to actually work towards it, right?

Dan Stewart (04:37): And this isn't just me saying this, right? This is like a... Gosh, think about it, guys, I've helped over 12,000 real estate agents since starting Happy Grasshopper. We're currently nurturing over 16 million contacts for real estate professionals, so the data is super, super clear here. If you want to avoid that feeling of having your clients slip away, if you want to avoid that uncertainty of knowing where your next transaction is, the relationships you build in your business is what can give you that certainty.

Dan Stewart (05:13): So here's a couple of proof points, we got Jason and Alex already saying "Hi" here today, right? So, Jason I know through a group called Board of Advisors, we're members there with 100-plus other entrepreneurs from around the world, and we have a thing called a relationship, right? It's kind of why he's here today. Alex, my man Alex up in Victoria, he's a client, he's a friend, he's someone who hasn't yet invited me to go skiing in Whistler, but it could happen, I'm holding out hope that that could happen for sure. And of course you have to understand, guys, that if you have a framework, if you have a framework that you can follow, that's what you need to tap into this opportunity that's in your database every year.

Dan Stewart (05:59): So now I'm going to do a screen share here, I'm going to show you how this all fits together. So let me put this on the screen, and I'm going to map this out for you so it's all super clear, right? So what you should be seeing now is a blackboard, and I'm just going to write this framework for you, okay? We're going to write right up here at the top, "Framework," and what this framework is is a simple recipe, think of it like a prescription that you can follow to get the results from your database that you're looking for, and there's just three ingredients here. There's email, there's text, and there's voicemail drops, and I'll just write that as VMD, right?

Dan Stewart (06:44): So email, text, and voicemail drops, these are the three ingredients that you have to have in your plan to maintain these relationships with your contacts. So let's talk about email. We're going to say 17 emails per year. 17 per year, okay? Text messages, we're going to say six to 12 per year. And voicemail drop, exactly the same, at six to 12 per year, right? Now let's break down the type of content that this is. For email, I'm not talking about real estate email, I'm not talking about your price change alerts, not talking about your new search updates, not talking market stats, right? That's all important part of your marketing, but here we're talking about people who know you, not necessarily people who are actively searching for real estate, so with this audience you have to deliver content to them that shows that you value them, right?

Dan Stewart (07:46): So this content should not be about you, and it should not be about real estate. It should be about something interesting that's happening now, that invites them into a conversation with you, right? And then you need to have that conversation. So sending this out 17 times per year, that's one time every 21 days, right? That's 17 touches, so once every three weeks, that's the metric that we see across our database as delivering the highest open rate and the lowest unsubscribe rate, 17 touches per year.

Dan Stewart (08:20): Now, your text messaging, I'm going to write a very specific plan here for you. So one time per year for their birthday, right? And then one time per year for their transaction... Whoops, transaction anniversary, right? So that's two text messages right there, and then I want you to have another category of texts, which is 4X of quarterly touches, and then we're going to have X number of holiday messages, right? So let's break that down for you.

Dan Stewart (09:00): The birthday message. It should be fun and friendly and short, it shouldn't be, "Hey, happy birthday. By the way, was hoping you could refer someone my way." No. It should be, "Hey, happy birthday. Was thinking about you, hope you're doing all right, would love to catch up." That kind of a message is going to be received warmly by people who know you, this will not work if you're sending it to strangers who don't know you, and it's going to generate replies, right? The relationship lives in the conversation that you're having, and a text message like this can generate that for you.

Dan Stewart (09:33): Now, the next one you see there is the transaction anniversary, so in your transaction management system, your CRM, possibly your website, possibly your MLS, you're going to have data about when the transaction took place with your clients and your past clients. You need to pull that data out of those systems so that you can send a message that congratulates them on another year of home ownership, right? That's a message that gets a very, very high reply rate, so you just got to set it up and you have to do it.

Dan Stewart (10:05): And then you see the 4X quarterly touches, so once a quarter, I want you to send a simple text message that says something like, "Hey, was just thinking about you, how've you been?" Imagine the responses you're going to get when you send that to people who know you. Now you have each of these people in a conversation, that's where you have an opportunity to generate the referrals, that's where you have the opportunity to discover that they know people who are looking to buy, sell, or invest, that's where you have the opportunity to provide the value you can professionally provide, but in your messaging, the focus should be on them. I hope that makes sense, that's a key learning, very, very important.

Dan Stewart (10:46): And then we have a question mark here for holiday messages, okay? So let's talk about that. We've got one birthday, one transaction anniversary, and four quarterly touches, that's a total of six messages, then I say up to six holiday messages per year. So personally, Thanksgiving is my holiday, I love hosting, love having a big spread of food, love having friends and family come over. We always host, that's a great holiday for us, and I love to send out a text message that says something like, "Hey Jason, just want you to know I'm grateful for you. Hope you and yours are having a great Thanksgiving. Let's catch up after the holiday," right? You're going to get such a warm response from sending a message like that.

Dan Stewart (11:32): Now, whether it's Flag Day or Boxing Day, or whatever other holiday you might choose, there's a variety there, a pro tip would be to send messages about the holidays you actually care about, right? So don't send messaging for holidays that you feel like, "Oh, it's just a holiday, it doesn't really matter." Send for the ones that are important to you, because these messages, remember, they're going to people who know you, right? So be authentic to who you are in your messaging.

Dan Stewart (12:01): Now, voicemail drops, we don't need to spend a lot of time going over here. This is the same exact prescription as for the text messages, and I will give you a little pro tip bonus here. For birthdays, you know what? Facebook has ruined everybody's birthday, we all get tons of birthday notifications on Facebook. I say beat the rush, right? Set it up to where at the beginning of the month, you've got a voicemail going out that says something along the lines of, "Hey, I hope I'm the first one to wish you a happy birthday. Did I beat the rush? Would love to talk with you, let's reconnect again soon," right? A message like that is going to work tremendously well.

Dan Stewart (12:39): So that's the prescription, guys, that's what you do. If you do this, if you put this in place, you're going to have tremendous results with it, if, right, and here's the big "If," you got something that you need to overcome first, and we're going to talk about that, because if you don't solve this one challenge, all the rest of that isn't going to help you, right? The number one challenge is who to send to. We're solving the what to say part, you have to figure out who to send to, right?

Dan Stewart (13:14): So if you're a brand new agent, you might have lots of people you know through your former employment, you might have lots of people through church or community activities, you might have a lot of people in your email that you kind of know. For this prescription to work, the recipients must know who you are, right? So we hear lots of commentary, lots of things like past clients and sphere, right? And sphere I'm going to associate here as just SOI, sphere of influence.

Dan Stewart (13:45): I think people get confused about what sphere of influence is. Someone is not in your sphere unless you have influence over them. To have influence over them, they have to know who you are, you cannot be a stranger to them, right? So you shouldn't put someone who's in maybe your community directory, you shouldn't put all the parents from your kid's class, you should put people in there who absolutely know who you are, and the good news here is that this list does not have to be huge. I don't care if you've got 10 people or 150 or 250 people, it doesn't matter how many, right? The relationship is the most important thing, right?

Dan Stewart (14:28): So let's just kind of recap here, and I'm going to stop the screen share. I'm going to exit that, we're going to stop the screen share, we're just going to do a quick recap. Guys, there's so much opportunity for you in your database, 12 items of business per year if you're following the plan that I've laid out for you, this is referrals, these are actual transactions. There's no reason not to go for it, there's absolutely none. And course, we've got to touch base on that myth that your clients are loyal. They're not. Never assume that just because you know someone, the business is yours. You have got to earn that relationship, you've got to earn that repeat and referral business.

Dan Stewart (15:10): And of course, I'm going to touch base on the fact that all of this that I've just shared with you is data-driven. I mean, we're almost 10 years into serving the real estate community, we know absolutely what we need to do to create results for you, and as long as you follow that framework, 17 emails, six to 12 voicemail drops, six to 12 text messages per year, you're going to do great.

Dan Stewart (15:34): Now, my buddy Jason here, I know you're a KW guy, right? So you've heard about the 33-touch, the 36, the 38-touch, what I'm saying is there is no one-size-fits-all solution. There is a solution that's right for you, and it's somewhere between 29 and 41 touches, depending on how involved you are in your community and how closely you need to keep in touch with the contacts in your database, okay?

Dan Stewart (16:00): So there we go, those are all the reasons that you should absolutely be doing this, and I'm encouraging you to just follow this prescription, right? Whether it's with us or it's with anyone else, you've got to do this to tap into the prosperity in your database. So if you would like my help with it, of course I'm here for you. Hit me up on Facebook, would love to have a chat, or even just send me an email, [email protected], right? Pretty easy, [email protected].

Dan Stewart (16:31): Now, few things that are coming up here. We have been working super diligently behind the scenes, we're about to release a brand new website, which I'm going to only share with people here in my social sphere first, we're going to launch that later this week, it's going to be really exciting. We have a brand new brokerage product that oh my gosh, I can't even believe, we've got over 10,000 agents lined up to start in this program within the next 60 days, that is insane to me. So if you're watching this and you're a broker, we need to chat, just go ahead and send me an email, [email protected], right?

Dan Stewart (17:08): And then finally, and I'm going to close with this, we have a webinar that's coming up next week on Thursday, and it's Thursday, I believe it's at 2:00 PM, stay tuned, I'm sure I'll send you an announcement for that, but what I'm going to do in that webinar is take everything that I've shown you, that I've talked about today, and I'm going to show you the nitty-gritty, the nuts and the bolts. I'm going to show you actual messages that you can just grab right from the screen and go and send out to people, and of course, I'm going to make it super easy for you to use our system to do this.

Dan Stewart (17:41): So, can you imagine what it would cost, what the value would be to do all the things that I've just laid out for you? Well, the good news is that you can do it for as little as $2 per contact per year, right? Tiny, tiny amount of money to invest for a potentially massive result. So thanks for watching, everybody, I really appreciate you. Hope you and your families are all safe and holding up fine during this COVID weirdness, and I'll look forward to seeing you all soon. So again, if I can help you, hit me up here on Facebook, or send me an email, [email protected]. Take care, everybody. Bye now.