If you are a real estate agent that is looking for more listings then you should watch this 3 part training session on how to get more listings consistently in 2022 and forever, using the Influencer Strategy.
The Influencer Strategy teaches you how to Future Proof your real estate business.
You will learn:
What is an Influencer
What do Home Sellers want from an agent
How to grow your Reputation
Becoming an Expert (Investing, Innovative Products, Tech, Marketing, Negotiation)
Video Content to attract sellers
Using your iPhone for Time Management
Using your iPhone to purposefully Engage
Best practices for Communicating
What is Upstream Marketing
Best practices for Multi-Channel Marketing
Scripts (Texting, Videos, Phone Calls, Emails)
How to get B2B Business
Put it all together to Win More Listings
Hosted by Howard Chung VP of affiliate sales for John L Scott real estate. Howard Chung has been in the real estate industry for 25 years as a top producing agent, manager, executive, and coach.
We provide some follow up action items, access to download the slides of the presentation and all the tools necessary to build a real estate empire.
*WARNING* If you are looking for a quick fix, the silver bullet or the easy button for getting more listings this is not it. Additionally, there is no such thing. This is a workshop that will guide you to becoming a professional listing agent.
PART 2 – Workshop Topics
VIDEO 2 – 0:00 TIME BLOCKING USING THE CALENDAR APP
Here’s one of the biggest problems of all. Go ahead, take out your phone and open up your calendar app. Open up your calendar account, everybody has multiple versions of the calendar app.
When you look at today you can scroll right and almost every single calendar app is such that when you make it horizontal it shows you the week view. What’s nice about the week view is it shows you what’s happening this upcoming week. Now, swipe left and it’ll show you what you did last week. Simple concept right?
The thing that is not calendared as a repeating event, by the way a lot of us don’t do repeating events, are your daily routines.
Everybody here for the most part eats every day, everybody here for the most part sleeps every day. I would recommend you actually put sleep in your calendar, it’s important to sleep. What’s your nightly routine right before you sleep? I don’t even call it sleep, I call it refresh, dream, meditate, rest, relax, literally words matter.
These are the things that I’m doing during this time and it’s consistent. One of the things that’s not a repeating event for most of you is every Monday at nine o’clock communicate with your existing buyers and sellers. I think that should be built-in every single 9 a.m on a Monday. Could be earlier if you’re doing a one-way push.
People are super impressed when email communications come early, not text necessarily because if they’re later people. If you send an email and it comes in at 7am people think they are communicating with me early. If there’s a one-way video push where you are updating the seller on a Monday morning about what happened over the weekend, that’s super impressive.
Every single Monday moving forward I do my updated communication with my B1s and my sellers, those people I’m communicating with.
Then there needs to be a block of time when I’m doing business development. I like Mondays for this, you know why? Hopefully you met some people over the weekend or you got to do follow-ups on monday. You can’t wait 3, 5 or 7 days to do this stuff. If you meet somebody on a sunday, especially at an open house, the latest you’ve got is the next day or Monday. It should be at least one level of communication the same day.
‘Hey we met at the open house yesterday,’ ‘hey we connected over the weekend remember me’? Monday is an immediate follow-up so I’ve got that time blocked up.
A really good time for follow up to connect is right around that 10 a.m to Noon time frame.
Before 9 a.m is when we are all most creative, assuming you had a relatively good night’s sleep.
Have you ever been on a walk and you’re not thinking about anything and something brilliant pops into your brain and you’re like I should write this down? But you don’t. You should. Sometimes you wake up in the middle of night with a brilliant idea. Write it down.
Keeping notes out is a good habit to have when you’re in the shower. Do not listen or consume in the shower. My recommendation is to think of shower time as creative time. Let your brain actually come up with creative solutions. When you have a problem, write this problem on the bathroom mirror. A little note taped up there and in the shower without you having to come up with it, it will naturally come to you.
The most creative time is somewhere between 5:00am and 8:00 am for 99% of people except for night owls. For most people that’s a really important time where you allow creativity to occur, so let that happen.
10 a.m all the communication that only requires a little creativity.
Anything that doesn’t require a lot of creativity such as admin work is 12pm – 3pm. Admin work doesn’t require you to be too creative.
You can follow up on communication and all that kind of stuff throughout the day but just know that you are the least creative around that time frame. Those are little cycles to be aware of.
There’s a book called When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink, that explains this well.
The first thing you have to do is make sure you have time blocked. Let’s say on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday, especially Friday, from 1:00pm all the way through 5:00pm, own this. Be the most diligent real estate agent, more diligent than everybody else in the city.
Think about that for a second… What if you were more diligent on Friday afternoon than everybody else in the city and did that for one year straight. You worked every single Friday afternoon on your business. You know what would happen to your business? It would explode.
Most real estate agents don’t measure on a weekly basis how many hours you actually worked last week.
When the Association of Realtors did a study and they asked busy agents how many hours do you think you’re working in a week they said 60.
When they measured hours consistently it was 34 hours.
We remember the exceptional days where we did a lot of showings and we remember a day that we had a really late night. When you look at all the other days there’s massive gaps all over the place, there’s a lot of downtime. You’re just at home, you’re just kind of doing something, it’s kind of like real estate but not really.
When you actually and truly measure work hours you only worked like 34-36 hours. That’s like part-time work and you want to earn 3, 4, $500,000 in this business.
We need to make sure we’re very mindful in terms of our calendars. Be diligent from 1:00pm to 5:00pm on Friday afternoons.
You swipe left on my calendar app and the reason why you have no referrals this week is because last week and the week before that and the week before that I did no business development activity. I don’t mean creating content by the way, creating content is one thing. If content creation leads to zero listing appointments and buyer appointments or referrals then it’s a waste of time. Everything I’m talking about in terms of content creation is all useless if it doesn’t lead to a buyer appointment or a listing appointment or a referral. That’s the measurement and if you’re not measuring that then what’s the point?
That’s why the calendar app is the most important app on your device. If nothing else, use the calendar app to schedule and manage yourselves on time through that app.
VIDEO 2 – 7:16 MANAGING A CRM USING THE CONTACTS APP
The second app and this is a major problem, is your contacts app. Pick one of your favorites, somebody in your favorite section. Somebody you recently called or texted. Click on a favorite. In that contact section of that one individual you will have a name, maybe a photo. Maybe, name, telephone number and email address. Maybe some of you don’t even have an email address. You know what’s missing with 99% of you right now? There’s no home address.
One of your favorites right now that’s on your phone, they’ve got your number, you’ve got their number, they’ve got no problem texting you back and forth and you don’t have their home number or home address.
Here’s the problem with that, everybody who owns homes is curious whether they can sell it and how much that home is worth right now.
For every single one of your contacts that you don’t have a home address for, which is virtually all of them that is a problem. You don’t have a home address and you also don’t have a general idea of how much that home is worth. You’ve got tools to find that out instantly but you need a home address for every single one of your contacts.
When you look in the contact section where it’s phone number, email one, email two, home address one, home address two. What typically is address two, it is a business. Are they a small business owner? If so, write down the business address in. The other really important address is if they own an investment home, which some of you have no idea about. Most people either own an investment home or are curious about an investment home at some point. The addresses are really important information.
Then you have the notes section. The note section should be things like; what’s the anniversary date, what are the kids’ names. You can start a deep dive; how old are the kids? What’s their current mortgage? You can start to gather more and more data.
A big problem right now is that big data companies have more data than you do on your customers and clients. You should have more data than the big data companies. You should have an intent of why and when they would want to move.
There is a statistic that shows that with 100 contacts on average 3% up to 7% of people move every single year.
That’s on average, every once in a while you might have a database where only one person moves. The reality is if you have a database of 100 people right now three to seven of them will move every single year.
Which 3 to 7 in my top 100 will move this year? That’s a problem would you agree?
They don’t have to live here in your area in your marketplace but if they are part of your network chances are you can help them and still receive a referral fee.
You don’t know who’s gonna move. Ouch, that’s a problem.
You know what’s another problem, last year 3 to 7 of them moved and you don’t know that they moved.
Try this exercise;
‘Hey Jason it’s Howard, hope you've been really well. Hey if you were to move where would you move to in the next 10 years’? ‘Howard, I just moved last year.’ ‘Oh you did [I sold you that house].’ ‘We were not planning on it.’ That kind of stuff happens all the time so you need to have a gauge for the hundred people that you are closest to in your database. Who likely will move this year, who moved last year, some of them we don’t know if they’re going to move this year and yet it’s going to happen.
You need to check in and find out when, where and why they would move next. They need to be the ones who get your content. It’s not the world, oddly you think that you’re going to make money from people you don’t know. It’s still mostly people that you know and people that they know. Let’s focus first and foremost before anybody else on the 3 to 7 people who are going to move this year in our own database.
UPDATING YOUR TOP 100 EXCERCISE
If you have 100 people in your database right, I know you probably have more but let’s say there’s 100 people in the database. Over the next two weeks or 14 days, this is a checkbox commitment, take two days off and commit to five days per week that’s ten days total over the next 2 weeks. Not a goal over the next 12 months to do this, but 2 weeks. What i need to do is take a hundred people and get their Name, Telephone Number, Email, Home Address and find out when, where and why they would move next.
There’s 100 people and I’m just taking 5 people a day. That’s not that much or maybe 10 people a day. If I did 10 people a day this week, 10 people a day next week how many does that give me over two weeks? 100. There are 100 people. 10 people a day is not hard. You know what sounds harder: 20 people a day tomorrow that sounds way harder. Skipping 2 days and now it’s 30 people that day. That’s much harder, you’re much less likely to do it. 10 people today.
TEXT BEFORE YOU CALL
10 texts. You could make the phone call but this could happen. When you receive a phone call that’s from an unrecognized number the first thing we think is;
‘What, who the hell is this’? When somebody who’s not on our phone calls and it’s just some random number even with a recognizable area code, we are still very skeptical. Even as an agent and we’re in real estate it can be a million dollar listing but we don’t know and we’re very skeptical.
We’ve all received the scam calls, hey your extended warranty is due or whatever. We avoid those calls. Then there’s no voicemail and we’re super annoyed. They do leave a voicemail and we’re annoyed. We’re annoyed either way, at least if they leave a voicemail now it transcribes to text. We generally get it and we just delete it or it might be a client of mine. When a number comes in the first thing we feel is kind of mistrust.
Let’s say my insurance agent calls Allstate. What the hell do they want? It’s probably a sales call. You let it go to voicemail. Sometimes they leave a voicemail, sometimes they don’t and I’m ignoring it either way.
Verses I get a text, the text is the following;
‘Hey Howard this is Jason, hope you're doing really well.’ You have to say this is Jason Fox John L Scott real estate.
I might know it’s Jason but let’s say I switched phones or something didn’t sync and his number is not actually in my phone. You never want that situation to happen to you so introduce yourself.
‘Hey this is Jason Fox I hope you're doing really well. Keep an eye out for an email invitation from me. I'm giving all my clients a little update of how much equity they have in their home in 2022.’ How does someone respond to something like that? I hold the text down and I give it a thumbs up or I hold it down and I give it a heart.
‘Awesome I love that’, or ‘ sounds good.’ Send that text and then send a Zoom calendar invite for 15 minutes on a Friday at 12 noon.
What happens on Friday at 12 noon?
ZOOM
We’ve been Zooming for two years now and some of you have never actually hosted a Zoom. You’ve received the Zoom invite and clicked on it. Some of you have never hosted a Zoom where you have shared your screen. I think that is a little ridiculous at this point. You need to be able to do a listing appointment, a buyer appointment, all sorts of appointments. You need to know how to share your screen, how to optimize the sound button, and how to check the Audio box.
Don’t create that environment where you don’t know what’s going on.
'Just give me a minute here’. ‘OMG are you kidding me?’ Practice with somebody first. We’re two years into this now. I love the glaring window behind and you are a shadow and I can’t see your face because you’re sitting right in front of the window. Come on. What you should be able to do is host the meeting, send a calendar invite, they click the link, and share your screen.
In 15 minutes;
‘Hey Jason, really good to see you. I have your home pulled up here.’ What am I sharing by the way? I can share a million things; I could share the MLS, I could share Cloud CMA, I could share my own personal website. Share your personal website, your personal John L Scott website.
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT USING HOME VALUATION TOOL
I’m going to click this orange button, which is the PERCY.AI button on the John L Scott personal websites. If you ever want to do this yourself this is where you can find it, but I’m going to sign you up for this.
Click the orange button which is Percy, formerly known as Buyside. Then a new website pops up and I type in their address and it auto populates then I hit enter. All of a sudden it shows me their house with a google image.
I’m not doing this on my phone or in the car, I’m behind a computer so they see their house or the neighborhood rotating. It gives them three numbers. Tell them those numbers are wrong, although what I’m finding more and more is once in a while they’re right. Once in a while one of them is right on. The Zillow one is getting close sometimes and sometimes it is right. I start scrolling down that tool and they’ll stop you. Wait a minute my house is in better condition, let’s just do this together.
If this is the first time you’re hearing about what this tool is, I’m shocked. Hopefully you’ve all done it for yourself and every single month every single one of you should be receiving your own Percy report.
I see my agent’s photo, and I see my 3 price evaluations. I get an automated home valuation from Zillow, I get one from Redfin, I get one from Realtor and I get one from my agents. Every single one is something a little different, and I’m curious about all of them. I’m not going to sell my house, I’ll never sell my house. In my head I will never sell my house. right
Then I get my Percy report and I also receive on a regular basis new listings in the 98275 zip code that come on the market. I’m curious what’s going on in my city.
I have the entire zip code on my property tracker and I don’t get emails every day because there’s not that many listings. There are still not that many listings coming on in Spring. When they do come on I’m a little curious.
That is how all this communication should be happening. When an agent says, ‘ hey here’s your house, here’s the information, here’s a little bit about what’s happening, here’s what the five percent mean, you fixed up your house and all that’s happening in 15 minutes. People will find that helpful.
How does the conversation end after 15 minutes? I think it needs to be a call to action. The call to action looks like;
‘Did you enjoy that?’ ‘It was great, thank you so much.’ ‘I set you up on this Perci tool now so you'll get a little update every month. You can't just respond to it if you ever have any questions. Just click reply and we can communicate. I also signed you up for something called the “housing updates'' that gives you the overall marketplace as well as neighborhood updates as far as what's happening in the real estate market.’ ‘Awesome thank you so much’. ‘My clients really appreciate these. Do you know anybody else who would like one of these? I'm giving all my clients this little update. Do you know anybody else like a family member or neighbor who might appreciate one of these?’ ‘My mom would love one, my sister would love one.’ ‘Would you do me a favor and give me a little email connection with her?’ ‘Of course I'll do it right now.’ You’re asking for a referral from your one appointment and that should always lead to another appointment. That’s sales. Back to Sales 101, every listing we should get another listing or another listing appointment. At the end of every one of these 15-minute calls the call to action is getting a referral.
Imagine if that was just your behavior and it came out naturally.
‘Hey, I'm doing this for all my other clients anyway. Do you know anybody else who would appreciate something like this?’ I ask for a referral, not in the Buffini way which is a little bit dated to use that particular phrase. This is a very simple way or another simple way to get a referral.
INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES
‘Hey now that I know that you're actually interested in investment opportunities. I'll text you from time to time or I'll email from time to time. What do you prefer, text or email? If it is something that's really hot is it okay to text you?’ ‘Yeah, OMG.’ Then I make all the little notes in my contact section of that client, who’s also now interested in investment property. I can go to my John L Scott mobile app and find a home where the numbers crunch out really well. I text it to them.
‘Hey this one has really good numbers that crunch out at $200K down.’ ‘I don't have $200K.’ ‘If you know anybody else who's interested in an investment opportunity, forward it onto them if you would, or let me know who they are and I would be happy to share with them.’ ‘Sure I will.’ Make it easy for people to refer you based upon the number one thing that people are curious about which is listings. We talk about listing inventory all the time and we’re not leveraging IDX after all these years. Using other people’s listings to get opportunities to sell real estate.
If I texted Cindi a listing that is not mine explaining that it is a really good investment opportunity with $200k down. If you’re interested let me know. If you know somebody who might be interested, forward it on to them or share their information with me.
I’d be happy to share it with them if the numbers crunch up really well.
The reason why I say $200k is that you will find properties within a 50 mile radius of where we are where the rents will cover the principal, interest, tax and insurance. People are sitting on cash, my mother-in-law, myself, I know so many people sitting on cash.
What’s super annoying is inflation. Inflation is rising faster than the value of the savings account. We’re also nervous about stocks so we don’t want to put it in anything. People are sitting on so much cash. Crypto people sitting on cash. What an amazing time where there’s so many people sitting on cash. You know what is still a really good investment? Real estate and they are curious about real estate investment.
The numbers crunch out really well especially since the renters are paying the mortgage. This is the Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad Poor Dad, concept. You want to invest in real estate over in Kitsap county, Jefferson county, Pierce county, Thurston county, Skagit county there’s opportunities. Maybe in King county. $200K down sounds like a lot and then you realize there’s a lot of people with $200K right now. Where the numbers are going to crunch really well.
How do you find the local rental rates? Go to Zillow, go to a million different sites where you can find that kind of stuff. Talk to a local property management company. Do a little research. Talk to agents at John L Scott in that area.
‘I was just talking to a colleague of mine down in Pierce county and the rents in Tacoma are going crazy. It's one of the hottest markets.’ If you guys didn’t know this, Tacoma is one of the hottest markets around. (as of the recording of this workshop). There’s development going on everywhere prices are going up like crazy. That might be a really good place for you or go down to Thurston county. You could go to Mason county, do you know where mason county is? Maybe the Shelton area close to Olympia, they’re market is blowing up like crazy. People from Seattle and Tacoma are all moving out there. You know why? Fiber, because of fiber.
They see your reputation is growing not only as a residential real estate broker.
‘Hey everybody, Howard Chung, I was talking to a colleague over in Mason county where you can invest in real estate. It's only an hour outside of Ocean Shores. It's a great investment opportunity where fiber is coming in, the home prices are increasing, it's beautiful out there and you can still afford a house with $100K down. Even with a little higher interest rate. It might be one of the best places to invest in right now. If you're curious about real estate investment let me know.’ You will have access to all of these scripts and if you know the topic you can come up with a script. You can also take any one of my scripts and tweak it.
Let’s become known and get a reputation as an investment expert.
The three most important apps ; Calendar App with repeating events, Contacts App with name, email, phone number, home address and notes and Messages App.
TIME BLOCKING
Some of you will do as I suggest and block time for actual business development 3X’s a week. Do you agree it should at least be 3X’s a week? That is not that much. Then during that time you get ready to contact people. Finding information and doing research and then spending five minutes of the two hours actually contacting people.
We’ve all done this. In order for me to do something I have to clean my room first or i have to clean the kitchen first. That’s what happens to our brains. You have to set aside a separate time to work on scripts, to work on systems, to work on CRM prior to the business development time.
You’ve got a two hour block, one hour is dedicated to the preparation time and one hour just committed to the 10 people I’m going to contact. After that hour you better have 10 texts sent. You better have 10 zoom emails and invites sent.
Imagine, today I sent out 10 zoom invites. My week just got really busy. How am I going to do this again tomorrow? Just schedule the Zooms further out.
I love it when somebody sends me a calendar invite and it is four weeks down the road and my calendar still looks relatively empty. Just continue to do that and you are working what’s called upstream.
There is a chance of them blocking it out or when it gets closer they need to reschedule, no big deal you’re rescheduling. You’re always doing that. When the appointment is coming up I’m gonna give them a little reminder.
‘Hey, I'm looking forward to connecting on Friday with you or on Thursday with you.’ People that are closer to you can go ahead and send them Ubereats or Postmates, send them lunch where they are. That’ll freak them out. You can do it for anybody, my son gets food delivered to him all the time from people he does not know. He does some streaming stuff, it is crazy.
VIDEO 2 – 27:48 FOLLOW UP WITH TEXT APP
‘Hey do you have time for a quick phone call?’ ‘I've got time, maybe in a couple hours.’ ‘Okay let's touch base then.’ We should just normally do that but we’re not being very strategic about it. Instead of just calling I would recommend text then call on a regular basis.
Both Android and IOS phones either mark the call as “Spam Likely” or just auto send it to voicemail when the number is not already in their phone.
VIDEO 2 – 28:32 UPSTREAM MARKETING
There are many books about Upstream you can start to download, including the book called Upstream by Dan Heath.
You should be constantly listening to motivational and educational books. I have already mentioned Influence you can start to upload these on Audible.
Upstream are the people I’ve never done a real estate transaction with but I want to get their business and referral business from them upstream. I’ve got to do all my reputation building upstream so that they feel good about using me and referring to me.
Midstream is when I’m doing a transaction with somebody. I’m working with a buyer right now that’s midstream.
Downstream is after I’ve done a transaction with somebody I stay in communication with them on a regular basis for repeat referral business.
What’s the statistic of the consumers that say they would use you and refer you, and were satisfied with their services at the time of closing? What’s the percentage of those people? It’s high, it’s 95% on a national basis. What’s the percentage of people who forget their agent’s names within 12 months? 72%. The same people forgot your names.
I gave a referral, my cousin who works at Zillow as a developer and he bought his second home through this agent in Seattle. Great place. They had one child when they bought the house then they had a second child. With the second child they are already thinking the space is starting to become cramped and now they’re thinking of the suburbs.
I was over there at Christmas time and I asked them;
‘Hey do you know what the house is worth?’ This is a guy who works at Zillow and he’s very loyal.
‘I guess, well my zest…’ That’s what he refers to as a Zestimate.
‘Haven't you received an actual evaluation from the agent I referred you to?’ ‘No he hasn't been in touch.’ I refer to a bunch of different agents so I asked him which agent I referred to him.
‘Who was the agent that I referred to you again?’ It has only been 3 years since he bought the place.
‘The guy, you know the runner.’ ‘He hasn't been in touch?’ ‘No not really, he was great.’ I’m the one giving him the market updates and I don’t even sell real estate anymore. He was no longer loyal to that agent, he was great but he forgot his name and there’s no loyalty there whatsoever. The agent did really well. He had a good year but he’s not keeping in touch. My cousin is going to sell a well over a million dollar place and the place he’s looking to buy is well over a million dollar. Do the math and the commission is 60-70 grand. 1 client, 2 transactions plus all the other techy people that he knows.
Amazing agent just not staying in touch. No email drips, no pop by’s, no none of that. His downstream is poor.
Midstream we’re doing a poor job at the end of midstream. You work with a client you get under contract and then there’s closing. Toward the closing period most agents are really bad at communication, are really bad at showing up and often don’t show back up to the house. That’s a problem, we will talk about that here in the second.
I want you to understand that there’s Upstream, Midstream, Downstream, your past clients, there’s your spheres of influence and then there’s everybody else. The unattached buyers and sellers. People who have not bought real estate or have bought real estate before but they forgot their agent’s name.
They would work with anybody who’s competent in front of them. Contrary to the idea that they interview three agents, they usually work with the first one they talk to. Every once in a while you do get that where they still need to talk to 2 other people but most of the time it’s, ‘you sound great let’s just go for it’.
That’s because the reputation is all there. I need to understand this concept, I need to constantly be working upstream.
The power of moments. It is psychologically proven that people remember the ends and the beginnings but often not the middles. Think of it like a vacation where you think about the beginning of the vacation and toward the end of the vacation we often forget the middle.
The end of a real estate transaction is the key exchange, the actual signing of the documents, make sure those are amazing moments. How do they receive the keys? What’s your communication like during the key exchange, what’s your communication like during the signing? If you have a good escrow person they can let you know when they’ve come in for signing and email or text immediately when they’ve left.
‘Hey, I just heard that it went really well.’ Or you pop by toward the end of the signing and you’re there;
‘Hey congratulations, how do you feel?’ ‘Good.’ ‘Good.’ ‘That was really nerve-wracking.’ Some people say you shouldn’t be at closing. You don’t have to be in the room you could be hanging around or be close by.
‘Hey, where are you going to be in the next hour?’ ‘We're going to be here.’ ‘I want to pop by.’ That’s a big moment.
Make sure you’re there at closing on the day of moving. Bring them a little package. You can have prepared 10 bags for 10 closings. Paper towels, trash bag, granola bars, and some cleaning supplies. it’s not a closing gift it is a moving day basket of tchotchkes. A couple of extra things and an opportunity for you to touch base one more time on moving.
Some people actually go in and help move. I don’t necessarily recommend that. Popping by with something like that is nice.
‘Hey that came in handy, that was really nice, it was so sweet.’ After they’ve moved in right or if it’s a seller maybe you have a different experience. If they’re moving somewhere far away you’ve got a coffee basket, you’ve got a wine basket, something nice. Boom. That’s going to cost you $30. This one might cost you $50, $100, $150 depending on the client. They are thankful.
Then you show up with the sold sign because it’s a very proud moment and many people don’t upload their own moving pictures. After closing you’re gonna show up and you’re gonna take a photo or take a little video clip of them in their new home.
‘Hey how's your new home? Do you mind if I take a couple photos? Hey can I get a quick little tour? Is it okay if I film it?’ ‘Yeah sure.’ You’re filming them while they’re touring around and showing you a couple of little things. Ask them if it would be okay to post it on your Facebook & Instagram. They will either say yes or no or I’d rather not.
You need to get permission. How about just the photo. You upload the photo up to their wall. What are you gonna type in? You guys were amazing clients who love you. A nice comment complimenting them. When you give a comment based on influence chances are they will reciprocate with a nice comment back. These typically are going to get a lot of traction. You’re going to be part of a huge thread. That’s another way of getting a referral. After they write this nice little comment about me I’m gonna copy and paste it into an email and send it to them with a link to my google review and Yelp. Would you just copy and paste what you just shared.
That is operational integrity, that’s a process. How many deals are you doing where you can’t do this? Show up. It’s a big big big big deal.
VIDEO 2 – 37:49 EMAIL DRIP CAMPAIGNS
We’re talking about content creation now. Jason Fox and I have talked about this for many many years and are still trying to share the importance of email drip campaigns.
There’s this myth about email. The emails that you subscribe to, all the ones you’ve deleted today where you swiped left without even hardly looking at it, that’s not spam. At some point you gave them your email address. You’re not willing to click unsubscribe yet because you might need that service. You might want that deal from them at some point. On average of the emails you currently get you open 1 in 5 or 20%. 20% get opened, that’s high.
They send five emails and sometimes you’re getting these every day from these people. You’ll read one in five on average. Every once in a while you’ll look at the subject line. If you have a particular need at the time that’s when you actually look at the email. If you have that particular need then you’ll do a click through. Click-throughs are 1-3%. The fact that the sender and the subject line still made an impression.
You need to share content by email. Where it’s relevant, it’s interesting, it’s quick and it’s also shareable. Have you ever forwarded an email because it was relevant? You liked a good piece of content of some kind.
Email is still very relevant. Young people don’t check email anymore. They still have to have an account in order to access everything. Everybody with a job still checks email.
It’s important that you have an email mechanism, a drip mechanism.
If I look at any one of your phones right now and i go to the sent box you didn’t wish anybody happy birthday today. Yes, you did it through Facebook possibly. You didn’t write a nice personal message in a one-on-one email today. You didn’t send any kind of note-like email. A nice one-on-one email. I
If I look at your email app you’re not sending any of those Zoom calendar invite links. That’s a very quick indicator that you’re probably not doing as much of the business development stuff as needed just using email. Some people are still old-school email people the older you get that’s still where they are they’re still gonna check that email.
Do you know what the open rate of mail is on real estate items? It’s 100%. Check it out the next time you check your physical mailbox and there’s a piece of real estate content in there about the local community. Not because you’re a real estate agent but because you live there. You will look at it. You’ll take a quick look at the front and you’ll take a quick look at the back and then you’ll toss it away.
This multi-pronged approach where I receive an email, I see stuff on social media and I see stuff in the mail that’s multi-channel marketing. That’s all going upstream as well as downstream.
“Save 10%”, “A bold way to increase your home’s value”, that’s coming from handy, it’s not coming from my real estate agent. “Get your trees trimmed before the next storm”, that’s a reminder. “We miss you at Gamble Sands”, it’s brilliant.
You know what’s really good about email campaigns from the larger companies? These larger companies pay millions of dollars for research on open rates and click-through rates, copy them. Whenever you see emails from the larger companies; the design, the content, the subject lines, there’s research. The time of day that they were sent. Maybe I should copy exactly what is happening and piggyback off of it. Every time you receive an email check into that.
Text based only no image and it seems very tailored to me. ‘Dear Howard, find your next BMW today.” Very clear in the subject line who it’s from. My son owns a BMW. “My team reviewed the specs of your 2014 and we have matched you with a great opportunity for a later model, reviewing my offer”. That’s a hyperlink and I’m so curious what he’s talking about so I clicked it. The click-through rate must be so high. The open rate is going to be super high. It’s customized to me.
How busy are you when you can’t send those kinds of emails. You have your automated systems but from time to time you need to send a personalized email to your top 100. I know this is just an automated system. It’s dear, {first name} that my name automatically goes in from their database, I know it’s a system and yet it’s brilliant. The open rate is almost every single time I get one. Which is every six months or so from them specifically about my vehicle. T
Find a quick little bit of information that i’m going to post on social media, i’m also going to use MyDesk to send out a quick drip email. You have your distribution list ready to go.
“There’s a free at-home COVID test”, that was sent within the first hour that it was made available at the USPS. With a link to USPS, that’s all. Free content. Whenever you see free giveaways, free stuff, free news you need to have a distribution list of your customers and clients you’re top 100 ready to go on MyDesk and boom create the content. Text based only really fast, header, footer and you’re out.
There is creating content and there’s curating content. That was an example of curated content. “Top three things to do in the spring for your house”, I just found a Youtube video that is not another real estate agent. Check it out first and make sure it’s a good video, copy the link and boom send it. You just curated some content. There’s creating content and curating content. It doesn’t have to be from me, it could be from home depot. You get the idea.
VIDEO 2 – 44:12 HOUSING UPDATES TO BUILD REPUTATION
You should have your top 100 people in MyDesk (John L Scott’s Tech Stack Desktop) receiving a housing update. I just shared with you that a 20% open rate was average. Housing updates are getting a 50% open rate. Few unsubscribes from close to half a million sends that we do every single month.
We get so few unsubscribes because everybody wants to know in their specific county what’s been going on in real estate. 50% open rate but once a month is not enough. That is just their county; they also need what’s happening in their neighborhood which is where Property Tracker comes in.
Don’t forget about luxury. ‘I’m not a luxury agent’, ‘of course you are’. You’re telling me you can’t sell luxury? As soon as you sign up the same client for luxury updates you’re branded as a luxury agent. There’s a King county housing update and a luxury version.
Some of you have campaigns set up with no contacts, there’s no point. You need to have contacts in the system for campaign sending. It’s like Mailchimp or anything else you need to have people to send the content to.
You can go to the John L Scott Library in MydDesk, click on the library and then you type in “housing update”. We’ve got all these mp4s. An mp4 is a video. On Facebook instead of just sharing an image you now share the video file. A way of sharing video without having to create a video.
I tried to figure out how to download it with my phone and couldn’t figure out how to do it, maybe there’s a way. You might have to do it from the computer. You have the mp4 file downloaded to the computer then upload it to any of your social channels; Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Linkedin. The statistics of video open rate and playthrough rate is much higher than text or images. You may have seen these but very few of you have actually downloaded and then uploaded them to your social media.
You have to provide context. Just sharing some of the statistics and housing updates. If there’s no context it’s just information. Either type it in the caption or you can do another video.
‘Hey everybody, I just posted a video about the April housing updates. What's going on here is, what this means with a slightly higher interest rate is the buying power has gone down. Appreciation therefore might decrease, that's not depreciation it's just a lower appreciation. For buyers it could be good news. More houses might be available for you to choose from. Sellers and homeowners I just want to let you know it's still a seller's market so don't freak out. The higher interest rates does mean that it can impact the percentage of multiple offers for your home. If you have any questions let me know.’ Everybody should be getting a little housing update in terms of how much their home has increased this year.
How about the bubble?
‘Hey everybody this is Howard Chung with John L Scott real estate everybody's talking about the bubble right now. Is the bubble gonna burst or not? Let me tell you the top 3 reasons why…’ I know it sounds stupid but that’s just what people are used to at this point. Why are we not in the same situation as in 2008. Why we’re not likely in a bubble. Then you’re just quoting other people.
VIDEO 2 – 47:50 JOHN L SCOTT MOBILE APP
Pull out your John L Scott mobile app. How do you become the featured agent at the bottom? Really simple. There’s a search bar at the very top they just type in your name. If they type in your name and you’re with John L Scott, boom it’s there. Then they just click “work with me” and now you’re downloaded onto their mobile app. You are telling all your clients; on the top of the app just type in my name and click “work with me”. They’re able to see your photo on every single listing.
This is awesome. When somebody says “how’s the market” you just pull up the mobile app and click display; active, pending and sold. Click on the gps button, this is where we’re located and then the blue dot is you. You might zoom in and that’s the market.
Whoa, that’s what it looks like.
There’s very little yellows or Pendings, greens or Open Houses and blues or Actives in comparison to the reds or Solds! There’s very few blues and greens in comparison to the yellow and reds, which are pending and sold.
What you can do is take a screenshot right now, you push two buttons take a screenshot you now have that photo in your photo archive. What can you now do with that photo? Share it on Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin. Go and share it. Provide a little context.
‘Take a look at how the market is right now at the end of April 2022.’
You’re going to get all these views and comments. You can even throw out;
‘Hey I’m giving all my clients a little market update in terms of how much their home is increasing. Let me know if you’re interested in one.’
You are using the mobile app for building your reputation and market expertise.
When you click on any specific listing can you share a specific listing on social media that’s not yours? You can, but you will be violating the MLS rules. It allows you to share it but you will be violating the rules, which arguably is kind of stupid, but that’s what it is.
What you can do however is share a specific listing via text from your mobile app to anybody. Remember in the earlier exercise when we were asking everybody why they would move next and where? You can text them the listing, I thought of you. When you do that then they’re going to give a great text response back.
Share individual listings to your top 100 and share screenshots and pages with everybody on social media. You can provide some additional video context if you want to.
VIDEO 2 – 51:41 HOME VALUATION SELLER LEADS
Get out of the mobile app and go to your web browser and enter your personal website. You can do this on your computer if you want. Some of you haven’t done this for a while or this will be the first time you’re doing it.
Click on your orange button which says “get your home valuation report” on your personal website. A new web page pops up and on that is a share button for your “What is Your Home Worth?” web page. This is your Percy AI (formerly buy side) web page.
Every single time that I’ve told people to do this exercise during class, by the end someone said I just got somebody to comment or I just got a listing appointment. You’re sharing that page onto Facebook with the caption, “curious about how much your home is worth in 2022”.
People will click on it and then they’ll throw their home address on there because that’s what people do. Now they’re in the system. How do you find the statistics of our actual people? You just go to MyDesk and click on Buyside and it’s right there. Those are things you can additionally boost if you wanted to. For right now we post on organic Facebook on your personal.
What’s odd about the Percy AI (formerly buyside) results is on the left there is one number saying my current value from my agents at the top left. On the right the 3 numbers are different. I need my real estate experts to explain that to me. The number that sometimes shows up on my Percy AI is a different number than the actual value listed when they come to the site. This number is somehow adjusted.
The whole point simply being this is a conversation starter between you and your client not an actual value of the house. It’s an estimated value right or AVM (automated valuation model). When somebody types in the home address it goes to that specific home and on the top left it says the public view and then the owner view. Public view is when they are not logged in and owner view encourages them to create an account.
Your John L Scott website and the JLS mobile app is great for searching for houses but the Percy AI (formerly buyside) tool is for homeowners and sellers who are curious about the value of their home. The one-two punch is always there.
Play around with Percy AI. When you go to My Desk there is a Buyside link. When you click on it you will see all of your customers and clients including yourselves who have signed up for it and who receive the content every single month. All those statistics and analytics are all right there on that link. Make sure you check it out. There’s a bunch of PERCY how to’s and videos and all.
Everybody at this point should have a great video for yourselves, you’re about videos and have them loaded onto your MyDesk profile so they display on your team page and your personal website. In addition you can share them on social media.
BOMB BOMB ALTERNATIVE GOOGLE PHOTOS
Bomb Bomb is great but you know what’s a Bomb Bomb alternative? This is just a good one-on-one video sharing tool. Bomb Bomb is great and what it is doing is creating a gif of your 30 second to one minute video and emailing that gig with a link out. People click on the image which is the link back to where the video is hosted on Bomb Bomb. People just think it’s a video inside the email.
I recommend that you not text a video. When you text a video what happens,especially across platforms, it’ll become extremely grainy. You’re using something called MMS which is old technology. It was designed for photos at best, not massive 50 megabyte, 75 megabyte, 100 megabyte videos.
When you have a video created like;
‘Hey Jason this is Howard, hope you're doing really well I just want to check in with you because I'm giving all my clients a little market update in terms of how much equity you have in your home…’ I have a little video here on my phone. What I do is I just open my Google Photos App whether I’m on Android or IOS. My Google Photos app uploads all my videos to the google cloud which is the same as the Youtube cloud servers. Except it’s not public anywhere. Just on my phone and on my private Free Google account.
If you guys have never gone to photos.google.com you’re gonna be like, OMG there’s all these photos here. It’s been backing you up. Using the Google photos app that video is now up in the cloud in the google photos cloud.
From the Google photos app I’m sharing the link by text to my client. Even the image with the play button will pop up in the text. It’s not going through MMS, it’s just the link to my Google photos server. It’s a private message. I don’t have to go to Youtube and upload or any of that stuff.
Once I know they have probably watched that video I can archive or delete all my old videos. Which is really great so I can just constantly have a free Google photos app for any of that. That’s a free Bomb Bomb solution for one-on-one videos that is really great.
You should be sharing that way rather than Dropbox like which gives you a certain amount of free video space but I think Google photos is absolutely the best way to do all that stuff.
VIDEO 2 – 58:04 PERSONAL WEBSITES
Personal websites make sure you have some local imagery to show that you’re the local expert. You’ve got your video on the homepage.
Jeremy Sinis was the rookie of the year this past year out of Yakima. Everything I’ve been talking about has been video. The basics, 123’s.
As soon as you Google Jeremy his Yakima web page comes up. Actually the Google Business Profile. The reviews are right there then of course you go to his website and he’s embedded his personal video right on the home page. I’m on the phone and scrolling down and I can play it right there instantly. He put the exceptional home information as if he’s also the luxury agent so he’s branded himself for a positive reputation. Very very quickly in year one.
If you haven’t done basic year one things, I mean this is all stuff you should be doing and I know all of you guys have a video or most of you do. That should be on the homepage of your website.
For access to the slides used in the full presentation you can download them here:
1. Be sure to create a repeating/recurring calendar event for “Calendaring, Collecting, Categorizing, and Campaigning” at least once per week where you are committed to connecting with people through video, email, zoom, text, social, face-to-face, etc. The link to the content calendar can be found in the Scripts #1 above.
2. Work on your Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). Here’s a link to the book, Measure What Matters by John Doerr https://www.amazon.com/Measure-What-Matters-Google-Foundation/dp/0525536221/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1549516618&sr=8-3&keywords=measure+what+matters
3. Work on your CRM/Database including name, telephone, email address, home address, home value, where they want to move next, etc. Don’t forget about the the UCR Labs as a great resource: http://ultimateclientrelationship.com
4. Purchase Tools such as microphone, tri-pod, ring light, and Osmo Pocket video camera/gimbal https://www.amazon.com/ideas/amzn1.account.AGIZY4Y5I6EE5VRGQKHAORS3QR7A/N75YFDZLIFRC
5. Create a free Zoom account and practice sharing your screen with one another. Then be sure to send the calendar invite to clients and give them a market update! https://zoom.us/
6. Download the Google Photos App on your Phone and send one on one videos by sharing the video link once uploaded to Google Photos from your phone. You can share the photo link through text but DO NOT try to send the massive native video file through SMS/MMS. Alternatively, sign up for a bombbomb account http://bombbomb.com/johnlscott
7. Grab ‘B-Roll’ video footage every time you’re previewing, showing homes, out in the neighborhoods, etc. Remember they should be 3-5 second clips (don’t worry about your audio for these clips). Create an archive of video clips in the cloud like Dropbox or Google Photos (download the app and login at https://photos.google.com/)
8. Download the Promptsmart Pro app https://promptsmart.com/ for your phone and use the teleprompter function. Write scripts of hyper-local communities like your favorite neighborhoods, streets, sub-divisions, restaurants, plazas, etc.
9. Try out https://www.wevideo.com/ (mobile app and web versions) and/or Canva.com to bring together your video clips and voiceover to tell a story of your community, neighborhood, interviews with clients, local business owners, school teachers, etc.
10. Visit johnlscottboost.com and be sure to start a boosting campaign (re-marketing) to your spheres of influence with these videos!
Thank you and we hope this helps you with how to get more listings in 2022, and be sure to send me examples of some of your videos!