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Beatty: [00:00:00.36] This is Beatty Carmichael here in the studio office and I want to introduce this next session of Get Sellers calling you. I’ve gone back to some of our oldie but goodie archives that I did with Stewart Sutton, a top producer in a series we called Our Mastermind Calls. These were actually live telephone conference calls as we were training agents across the country how to build a thriving, sustainable real estate business. And so you’ll hear the audio quality. Sounds like it’s right off the telephone because it is okay. So just listen past that. The content is great. Also, this is during the early stages of Agent Dominator when agent dominator in its infancy was called Listing Grabber. But now Listing Grabber has grown up and we are today Agent Dominator. So we’re one and the same. And before I introduce the audio, I’d love for you to listen to one of our agents and what they say about our service.
Cathy: [00:00:54.09] I got my real estate license and it goes and signed up in September. And it did take a while really for the program to start working for me. And I got my first listing on July 5th and then I got my second listing on 76, and then I got another client on 812 and then I got another client on 918 and then on 923 I got another listing. And then on 1010, when I was like the second listing, purchased a home and on 1212 the third listing has purchased a home and that’s now in escrow. And I also have another one in my pipeline from the fourth postcard and so total and it’s all been in the last bit of this year. So it took a while to get ramped up, but once it did, it just ran like wildfire. I might have had six closings. I have one in escrow, and I have one that’s going to list on January 12th for a total of so far 86,000 commission with another 11,775 in escrow. Amazing.
Beatty: [00:01:55.89] Now, did I hear you correctly? You’re a brand new agent and this is essentially your first full year out.
Cathy: [00:02:01.74] Yep, it is.
Beatty: [00:02:06.81] Okay. I’d like to welcome everyone to today’s call. This is the Mastermind Forum. So as I was mentioning earlier, we do these calls once a month, the third Thursday of every month, and please put it on your calendar as just a recurring appointment. We try to keep these to about 30 or 40 minutes. And the purpose of these calls, as I mentioned, we originally started the mastermind forum as a way to give back to our clients and provide additional great training on best practices to get more sellers. And we’ve opened it up to just anyone who wants to join in. It’s a great way just to bounce some ideas back and forth. My name is Beatty Carmichael. I’m the marketing director with Listing Grabber and I also have on the call with us Stewart Sutton. And just make sure you’re on the moderator line. Are you there?
Stuart: [00:02:59.56] I am here. Good afternoon.
Beatty: [00:03:01.39] Okay, great. So Stewart is is actually the host for the call, and I can think of no one better. And Stewart, I don’t want to brag too much about you, and I want to be cautious if you don’t want me to share some things. But the other day we were talking about like how many hours you work and the type of volume that you do. Would you have any problem that I just sort of introduce you with a little bit of that stats? Just so people understand, there is a different way of selling real estate sometimes and what they think.
Stuart: [00:03:32.59] Sure. Feel free.
Beatty: [00:03:34.06] Okay. Because I know I know Stewart won’t share this information as readily because he’s very humble. But, you know, one of the things I’ve learned over the years, if you want to fly with the Eagles, then you need to learn from the Eagles. And so often we get in our realtor real estate business and it seems like we’re just churning through the mud and we’re working 60 and 70 and 80 hours a week. And we may make a decent income, but we’re knocking ourselves apart. Marketing has the ability to totally change everything you do in your real estate business. This is actually sort of the background behind the listing grabber itself because rather than trying to find, you know, who is going to sell next and hopefully they’re going to call me and and it just becomes sort of a potluck type of deal or a chance type of deal. When you get a listing, we realize that marketing can identify people who are thinking about selling and and marketing can dry people who are thinking about selling to contact you. Stewart has been doing this for over ten years in marketing. He’s been in business for over 20 years. Just a little bit about him. So you understand what we’re going to talk about today. The topic for today is how do you do take one sell and catapult that into dominating an entire community and becoming the dominant agent? It has everything to do with marketing.
Beatty: [00:05:00.16] Okay. And so Stewart is a 20 plus year agent. About ten years ago, he learned about direct response marketing. And for ten years, he has never made a single cold call. Last year, Stewart’s volume was two four and a half million dollars on, I believe, around 110 transactions, if my math was correct. And so you can do the math on that. It’s a lot of money. And so I asked to it one day I heard I was asking him a question and he made a comment that bugged me for a couple of months. So I came back just recently and asked him to clarify it. And here’s here’s the question. I said, Stewart, I think I heard this correctly, but would you confirm I thought I heard you say that you work less than 40 hours a week in your real estate business. Is that true? And and that is true. So what what you’re about to hear as we talk today and then also open up and share other ideas, is we’re not talking about things of theory. We’re talking about things that actually work, that can take you from wherever you are and help you dominate the areas that you want to dominate and do it on probably less time than what you’re doing right now.
Beatty: [00:06:18.70] And let me share one other aspect about marketing, because I think this is brilliant. One other little tidbit of about Stewart is about 99% or more than 99% of the listing appointments that he goes on he gets, including those that are in competition. And part of the reason is because of the marketing that he does before he gets to the listing appointment where people learn about him. Part of it is the pre listing packet that you guys have heard him talk about and, and, and following up is not about just getting someone on a mailing list. Following up with prospects is all about marketing you and knowing how to share what you do in such a way that that homeowner has only one thought in mind. I’d be an absolute fool to select any other agent besides and then put your name in there. That’s what marketing is all about. So as we get started, let me give you just a quick overview. For those of you who may be a little bit new, this is the promo. Okay, so this is my little 32nd advertisement. And then we’ll get into strictly the mastermind form.
Beatty: [00:07:32.02] Listing Grabber has been set up to help you identify homeowners who are thinking about selling before they come on the market. So imagine if you could drive down any neighborhood where you want listings and identify with relative accuracy those homes that are going to go on the market in the next 12 months and no one else knew about it. Could you make more money if you had that knowledge? And that’s what we do at Listing Grabber. Now, I want to share a quick result of the survey we’ve been taking so far. We’ve gotten responses back from about 10% of our customer base, which is a decent sampling rate. And out of that 10%, the question was asked out of those prospects that you’ve been able to reach and talk to, that you’ve gotten through listing grabber, what percentage of them, how many of them are actually thinking about selling? Okay. So that was the question. So if you’ve ever done lead generation or you bought things from Trulia or Realtor.com and and they send you all these leads and it’s just garbage, the question is, how can you do something where you get quality prospects? So this was a question trying to determine what quality prospects is our system performing for. And here’s the response. Out of 10% of our customer base that have connected with prospects, 87% of the prospects they’ve reached have confirmed they’re planning to sell typically within the year.
Beatty: [00:09:03.86] And out of that, 87%, 20% of those are planning to sell within the within the next three months. That’s powerful, guys. This thing really does work. Well, we’re going to talk about today right now is how do you take those sales that are occurring that you’re getting from them and catapulting that? Real quickly, though, I would like to open the call if there’s any comments and this is not planned. Okay. But if any of you out there, any of our customers, if you have some sort of a success story of either listings that you’ve gotten or people you’re talking to or or just overall results that you’d like to share. I’d love just to hear from you real quickly and let the others hear from you as well, and then we’ll turn the call over to Stuart. So if if you’re out there and you want to share something, if you will press Star six on your telephone to unmute your phone. Star six And we’ll also have a special treat for you that will give you in return for sharing whatever you share. So anyone want to share something before we turn the call over to Stuart.
Stuart: [00:10:10.71] Okay. Hi. My name is Arlen. I started a company called Here’s My Price. It has to do with all the homes.
Beatty: [00:10:19.31] Hey, this is not to promote anything else. So I got your email. We’ll talk about that later. But let’s don’t talk about that on this call. Do we, uh, do we have any listing grabber customers with any results they like to share before we get turn the car over. Call over to Stuart. All right. Well, Stuart, let me turn the call over to you. And this is not going to be a dialog, I mean, a one way presentation. We’re going the phones are open at any time if you have questions with what Stuart is going to share as the main content. Press Star six And I’ll unmute your line and you can share. And then we’ll also open up the call in a few minutes and just get other feedback from what others are doing and and share some good ideas. But Stuart, let me turn it over to you for what’s on your mind.
Stuart: [00:11:18.14] Thank you, buddy. I really appreciate it. It’s a pleasure to be here today. I’m sitting in a beautiful central Texas hill country with great weather. And I from what I understand, that’s what most of the countries do. And we’re seeing a really nice name. So hopefully you all are taking advantage of that and getting outdoors a lot. You guys, this is a fantastic real estate market. I mean, I talk to people all the time who from every area of the country who are I mean, the market’s doing great. And, you know, the bottom line is we deserve it. You know, you go through some tough times. We deserve some good years. And I hope it’s the same for you all. But this is another really terrific year for us. Let me share something real quick. What I hope to do in in these calls and in any of the sharing and visiting, I do is is try to stay on level ground. So for those of you guys who run big teams, for those of you who are individuals, everything I do, I have done as an individual, I have done as a big team. Now, the way I work right now is slightly unique. And Beatty alluded to it, but I have two part time assistants and a closer and that is what my entire real estate business is based on. That’s that’s what I do. We do real estate.
Stuart: [00:12:35.27] I help sellers. I help buyers. Now, I also have a team of five agents and I’ll be very sincere with you. I truly do not know what our volume is as a team. Remax does, but. But I don’t because I like selling real estate. I enjoy selling real estate. I’m not really a team leader, manager type of person. The reason I have a team is because we help each other support each other. I’m kind of the mentor guide, whatever you want to call it. But the bottom line is that the the type of situation that I have on my team is really all we’re trying to do here with Listing Grabber. I’m not associated with listing grabber. Baity was kind enough to ask me if I would run these calls and just kind of monitor and keep things moving forward so that the questions and the things that you need and want are available to you. Because when I saw a listing grabber and started using it, I had nearly immediate success. And as you can tell, baby’s pretty, pretty big on stats. And I’m going to I’m going to give you one that’s kind of impressive. I have actually listed sign listings going in the market, 21% of the leads that listing grabber has sent me. So over one out of five leads that listing driver sends me, I sign on a listing agreement and put the home on the market.
Stuart: [00:13:59.00] So that’s pretty good when you’re talking about quality leads, you guys, I can you know, I get these deals and you’ll probably do too. But, you know, I get an email that says get 1500 leads from Craigslist next month. Yeah, you know, hundreds of leads from farm. And yet I get all this kind of stuff and that’s all well and good. I’m not sure what I do with 1500 leads next month, but what I’m getting is quality and in my business is built on quality response leads because when somebody calls me to do business with me, responds to me to do business with me, it’s a different relationship. It’s a positive relationship. It’s a strong relationship. When I have to cocoa hard clothes and get appointments and there’s nothing wrong with that. I did it for years and years and years and it works and it’s successful. It’s just a different way of doing business. So when I’m providing information to these people based on the fact that they responded via listing grabber. The relationship is going to be stronger from day one. So the focus of this call really, you guys is is taking that very first lesson you get and launching that into a strong foothold and eventually a dominance in the market that you’re working. Now, I’ve got number one market share in a particular property type that I work here and what I’m doing with Listing Grabber is the same process.
Stuart: [00:15:20.05] Okay. So we’ve kind of covered in the last couple of calls the best way when somebody responds to you to follow up and what to do and all that now, and I’d be happy to cover any of those details, but this call is going to be focused on once you have that first listing, let’s launch into a strategy that’s going to make those those people in the neighborhood understand that you are, if not the only one, at least one of the agents that they absolutely need to be talking to. Okay. So I’m going to go over a quick series of of postcards that I send out to follow up when I put a listing on the market. And this has happened for each of the listings that I’ve taken with Listing Grabber, it has led to more listing, and it is also something that I do in my other areas of business. Okay, so here’s the very first thing I do when I put a listing, when I get assigned, listen to you guys. I go to and there’s a lot of different services for this. I just do it myself because, well, I’m I kind of try to watch my, my overhead. And if it’s easy to do and not very costly, I’ll go ahead and take care of it myself instead of outsourcing it.
Stuart: [00:16:33.01] All right. And, you know, I’ve rambled for a little bit. You guys hear me? Okay, baby, can you hear you? Fine. My coming through. Okay. All right. So the very first part I get, as soon as I find a listing, you guys, is I can go to my favorite domain provider and mine’s GoDaddy. I have a lot of domains that GoDaddy. And I’ll give you an example. I have a domain at 2808 Salon.com. That’s one of the listings I took from listings and it’s under contract now. But I go to I get to 8087 COCOM and I have that unique domain. I point that to the page of my website where I place that house. Feel free to go to 2808 essence’s list. Excuse me. My my text withdrawal is affecting me here. 2808 Solon Cove that’s esses and Sam A is an apple l as in lion o r is in robin. N is a no. C is in cat o. V is and victor is an elephant dot com 2808 Salon.com cocom. So you can look at it, you don’t have to look at it. But basically I get the domain for that address and the first thing I send out is it’s coming soon. This house is coming on the market soon and I let them out. I send that out to the neighborhood. Now, I don’t send it to the entire neighborhood. I send it to what I have surmised through a little bit of research as being the best, most.
Stuart: [00:18:14.94] Productive part of that neighborhood. Now, that might be everyone that’s lived there for three years or more. Let’s say I’ve got a neighborhood where this particular neighborhood, for example, ranges from 250 to 450, but the bulk of the sales or are from 3 to 350. So I focus on that price range, but I’ll send out a card that says this home is coming on the market soon. But it’s also a marketing card because what it says you guys is, is very simply, it tells them what is going to happen before that home goes in the market. So it says the owners are going to and we’re going to and it tells them the process we take before that home goes in the market. And it’s kind of impressive to them because most people don’t do that. So it just says it’s merry here or it’s coming soon or, you know, test different headlines that says this beautiful home in whatever neighborhood is going to be available. But first, the owners are going to have the home inspected. Then they’re going to resolve necessary repairs. So the home would be in top condition. The owners are going to have a termite inspection to make absolutely sure there’s no problems. They’re going to have the home state to make sure it looks its very best for your new neighbors when they come see it.
Stuart: [00:19:29.34] So I’ll list about four or five things there and I give them a very, very brief summary of the house. So that’s the coming suit. Now I send that out. I try to time it about ten days before the home comes in the market. Now, here’s the thing, you guys. Most of my listings, I end up showing to a buyer myself from that coming soon card. The latest one that I’ve put on the market, I had two showings myself lined up before that home went on the market. Okay. So. That gets information out to the neighborhood that’s probably not being done by other agents when they put houses in the market. The next card that goes out, as soon as that house hits the market, I send a card out. And by the way, baby has all this and I’m sure he’s he will post them if he hasn’t. All that hard says is that this home is now for sale, and it’s got a lot of white space and big bold font right across the middle of the card. It’s got W WW .288 so lawn COCOM and one or two that says this gorgeous four bedroom three bathroom is now on the market you know something like that. Go take a look, see all the details. Tell your friends and your neighbors. Okay. But but basically it’s that big giant block font.
Stuart: [00:20:57.65] So a certain number of people are going to go to that. As a matter of fact, more than you probably would ever imagine will actually go take a look. It’s kind of like pulling the flier out of the flier box, but now they’re doing it on your website. Now, let me ask you a question you don’t have to answer, but is it a pretty good idea to get other people to go to your website to see how well you market homes? So if you’re doing a really good job of marketing homes online and you get people to go to your website to see that you’re doing a good job of marketing comes on online, you’re getting a predetermined decision made about you before they sell their home, right? So that’s number two in the series. Now you’ve got to understand that once again, I’m taking a smaller part of the neighborhood. I’m not doing the whole neighborhood, so I’m not spending billions of dollars to do this. You don’t have to do this one. But the next one, I said, is really a this is something I do that no other agent. Who’s going to list your house can do? I can get them. Number one, Google ranking on my website, on their page. And it’s not that difficult to do. It’s just a process. So I basically send a card out that says, Hey, this home is on the first page of Google, go check it out.
Stuart: [00:22:14.15] And I give them a little bit of detail about the House and how important it is to have that first page ranking so that group of people. Has gotten three cards marketing this home to them. So my focus on this is not necessarily response, although each card has a response on it. It’s to make them aware that, hey, this person, this agent. Yes. Marketing that house. Now, I will tell you that the calls I’ve gotten, but I call them, you know, after prospect. So I made a listing grab a prospect and then as a result of that listing I get another listing because of the way that I marketed the first house. That’s where you’re really going to start getting your listing grabbers, going to get your foot in the door, but then your process and how good a job you do and how their job you follow up is really going to be what helps you start to dominate that neighborhood. So before the house ever goes on the market, they’ve got a card in hand. Within a few days of it going on the market, they’ve got a second card in hand and then depending on how you market what you do, they really ought to get that third card. Then when it goes under contract, they get in a cartel on that one under contract.
Stuart: [00:23:34.09] And the benefits of of that that seller derived from from my marketing and I’ll give you the example. I always tell stories. You guys people love stories. I ask my sellers permission, but I usually use their name. So I’ll say something like The homeowner, the homeowners at 307, Covington were ready to downsize. They wanted to take advantage of this hot market. Finally, we see a hot market. Well, they called Stewart because an expert in this neighborhood and they’re glad they did because they had received three offers and were under contract within 17 days. So the next question is, how in the world can Stewart do that? And I give them a very brief bullet point summary of why I can accomplish that when so many other agents cannot. So it’s under contract. It’s sold. Let’s talk about the people. Here’s the thing. If you can focus on the neighborhood, if you can focus on the people. Guess what? A lot of people probably know those people and they might just pick up the phone and call. They might just drop by and say hi and ask them about what’s going. Not not an unknown movement. And now they do. And they might want to visit with them. You guys, when you get into that neighborhood that way and you have people talking about you and you have neighbors asking about you.
Stuart: [00:25:03.95] Now you’re getting into a situation where you can become the dominant player in that neighborhood. I mean, it’s it’s Facebook on a on a literal geographic basis because the neighbors are talking amongst themselves, not just online. So that sure is a part. Now, I’ve known this for a long time, and this might help you whether you do any of those other cards or not. I always send out two sold cards. I send out one when it goes under contract and I send out one when it closes. So if the year goes by, let’s just say I sold eight houses in that neighborhood. So they got six SIM cards. So even though the contract card did indicate that the home just wasn’t in the contract and the sole card did indicate that that home just closed. What’s the perception? I’m. Twice as many homes in their mind as I actually am because they’re getting twice the the soap marketing. And I started that I learned that from somebody else. And the impact is huge. It’s actually tremendous. So double your impact. By doubling the soul cards. With the people in the neighborhood perceive is results one of the strongest words in marketing. Two very, very powerful words in marketing, guys. I believe they’re actually both in the top ten. Results is one of them. And the other one is proven. So if you use those words in your marketing, for example, Stewart’s proven strategy.
Stuart: [00:26:37.03] Or results. If you think the reason Stewart can get these results is because. So if you use those two words, you’re increasing. The impact of the postcard itself. So that series of postcards is what’s going to take you. It’s already starting to take me to the next level because I literally am about to list my second what I’ll just call it my second tier listing. You know, first was a listing for every listing I’ve got somebody calling me from the series of postcards. So that’s what’s going to take you into the next step. If, if, if you just want to sit back and take the leads and list the leads, that’s great. I mean, you’re going to you’re going to do absolutely fine. But if you want to multiply geometrically the impact that you’re going to have in that neighborhood, then just take the next step, put a little budget together. You don’t have to send a series of four or five cards. I do send three of them. Send two of them, but make sure that they’re impactful and poignant to the to the people in the neighborhood, if that makes sense. I kind of step back and see if anybody has any questions, maybe if I’ve brought anything up that has sparked a question in your mind regarding how this would affect your customers and anything I can do for anybody as far as questions or anything.
Beatty: [00:27:56.96] Yeah, so.
Speaker2: [00:27:57.80] I have a question. I’m sorry. Go on.
Beatty: [00:28:01.34] Go on. I’m just going to let everyone know. You can press Star six, unmute your line so you can ask those questions.
Speaker2: [00:28:07.04] Okay. So my name is Mariam. I am considering joining listing grabber. I talked to Shelly yesterday and and Stuart just to. I’m from Portland, Oregon. And Stuart, just to clarify, so you are listing Robert to get your first lead, right? And then after you get the listing, you do all of these rest of them on your own to multiply that. Is that correct?
Stuart: [00:28:30.02] Yes, ma’am. You’re exactly right. You got it, right? Right.
Speaker2: [00:28:34.54] Do you send these? I’m sorry, who do you send these subsequent, you know, four or five postcards to to again, the whole neighborhood or who to I mean, who? I’m just trying.
Stuart: [00:28:47.49] To see if it’s really up to you. In your budget now, I’ll give you an example. I’m sitting here looking at my spreadsheet. Okay. I’ve got a neighborhood that I listed a home in. It’s got around 600 homes. All right? I sent this series of cards to 167 people. So I’m not sending to the whole neighborhood. I’m sending to a a confined part of what I consider to be the most productive or best possible prospects. I’m not always going to be correct about that. But, you know, if we’ve been in the real estate business a while, we realize that someone who lived in the home five years is more likely to sell than someone who’s lived in their home for eight months. We know that if a neighborhood ranges from 250 to 500 in and 70% of the sales are between 350 and four, that’s probably a good place to send those postcards to people whose houses show to be in that value range. So that’s kind of what I’ve done is is narrow down based on that criteria where I’m going to send that those cards and you could send to the whole neighborhood if you have the budget, I think it would certainly be well worth your while.
Stuart: [00:29:59.91] But I do that. I’ve been doing that for a long time in other areas and it’s what I call mini farming. In other words, I get a listing somewhere, I will hit that area repeatedly, even even to the tune of 50 or a hundred homes. And inevitably I’ll get another listing within the next few months, right around the listing that I just took, if that makes sense. So I’ve just really tried to implement that successful strategy right behind the listing grabber strategy, which is getting me results. I’m just trying to follow up and and keep increasing the results in that neighborhood. So as the snowball continues, I’ll probably back off in not soon, four or five. I may back off this century because as my name gets to be known more and more in that neighborhood, the listing grabber cards are going in. My cards are going in. I just I just think I’m going to be, without any question, one of the agents that is going to be considered more often than. Than my competition.
Speaker2: [00:31:05.58] Mm hmm. Andrew, can I ask you another question? Go ahead.
Stuart: [00:31:09.73] Sure. Go right ahead.
Speaker2: [00:31:11.70] Okay. So so do we have personally gotten cards at our house from a realtor that specifically names our and puts our names down? I mean, these are printed cards. So do you send like to resident at such and such place or do you actually know the name of the people living in that house? And does that matter?
Stuart: [00:31:30.78] Know we do send it to the individual living in the home. And that’s that’s not difficult to do.
Speaker2: [00:31:36.37] Okay. Thank you. Oh, you’re welcome. Okay. This is Sheila Bruno calling from Michigan.
Stuart: [00:31:43.24] How are you?
Speaker2: [00:31:44.41] Good. How are you? I have two questions. This postcard mailing that you’re referring to, once you have the listing, do you market it to your seller or is that just something?
Stuart: [00:31:55.67] Oh, absolutely.
Speaker2: [00:31:56.64] There’s a marking piece.
Stuart: [00:31:57.41] You know, that is that’s such a super question. I’m glad you asked that, because one of the things that most agents do not do is explain to the sellers every area that’s going to that’s going to benefit when we go over the high points or in most agents don’t really even do listing cards anymore. Well, I actually show my sellers my pre marketing plan and what my pre marketing plan consists of is setting up this postcard, putting a sign in the yard and all might do this. We’ve been doing this market for a while. I like to claim that I thought of it, but actually somebody else in my office thought of it and I just copied them. But they’re not in the business anymore, so it’s easy for me to say I was the first, you know. But anyway, I put a sign in the front yard that says Coming soon. Okay, so I’ll put a sign on the front yard ten days to two weeks before the house goes on the market. If someone says, Hey, we want to be in the market in five days, then I’ll put it in the yard right away. But it says coming soon and I’ll.
Speaker2: [00:33:05.41] Hello.
Beatty: [00:33:07.39] Stuart, I think we. Stuart. I think you dropped out. Let’s give them a moment to see if he comes back in. While we’re waiting on Stewart, just an FYI. The postcards that Stewart is talking about are downloads in your. For those of you who are on the list and grab your system, if you click on your start here tab and go to the Mastermind Form page. We have all the previously recorded mastermind calls that you can download. And on last month’s call.
Stuart: [00:33:39.13] Okay, I’m back here.
Beatty: [00:33:40.62] We have this postcard. Yes, we can hear you now.
Stuart: [00:33:43.14] Okay. My I guess my line just dropped off. So, you know, we used to at least get a little crackling and a little bit of warning now just drops anyway. So the coming soon sign, they’re coming soon postcards, the the online ads, the online the web pages. I’ve got an entire pre marketing plan that that very often even before the market got really hot I had activity before the home on the market and that’s actually pretty impressive to the sellers and it’s kind of that psychology people really want to know about what they can’t have. So, I mean, I’m nearly have people sometimes. Not really demand. That’s not the right word. But I literally got a message on my phone right now at home that I’ve got coming to the market a week from tomorrow. But someone’s merely insisting that I find a way for them to see it before it goes in the market. And that’s not a bad thing to happen, is for people to really want to see your listings before they go on the market. And we we end up putting, you know, it’s not the dominant amount or the majority, but we consistently put listings on the contract before they go on the market because of that pre marketing strategy. Does that make sense?
Speaker2: [00:34:56.14] Yep. I did have one other question. When you between the the mailer that you sent out that says it’s under contract to the postcard that says it closes if that deal falls through. Do you find that beneficial? I mean, how do you handle that situation? I get the impact of getting your name out and it’s just notifying and and kind of trading the market. But also people are getting the cards are your eyes and ears and mouth for that listing. So what do you do in those in that situation?
Stuart: [00:35:29.11] Well, you know, none of us are ever going to be 100% and we will have transactions fall off. I try to use that as a is a benefit because when when a deal falls off, it’s real straightforward. Somebody wanted the house bad enough that they made an offer on it. So we put the market. I changed the remarks on the MLRS. We change our ads up a little bit. We go back and we say, Hey, it was under contract. We had some issues. It’s back on the market. So and if it’s so quick before, of course, say that it’s so quick for now, don’t send out a postcard that says, hey, had a deal, fall off, let me know, let me know if you know anybody wants to buy this out. But we do follow up with everybody that inquired about it. So I don’t of course that’s a closed card, but when I do put it under contract, again, I don’t send out the contract in cold part. I just send out the sole card again because that’s three sold cards on the same house are a little bit less than that.
Speaker2: [00:36:27.70] Okay. Yeah. Thank you very much.
Stuart: [00:36:29.38] All right. Oh, you’re welcome. Stuart. I hear me. I saw Tina coming through loud and clear. Scott, can.
Speaker2: [00:36:36.85] I ask another question? Okay. Sorry. Go on.
Stuart: [00:36:40.03] Go ahead. Go ahead. Great. I’m in Houston wishing I was in the hill country. Oh, man. Yeah. You probably got some humidity down there. Not yet, but it’s coming. Stewart, I got two questions. One of them is first on your mail pieces. Are you using every door direct mail or what price stamp are you putting on those 60 or whatever number you’re mailing? That’s a good question. You do have some alternatives. What I’m familiar with every I’m familiar with every door director is to make sure everybody else was well, actually might not be a bad idea for you to say something about it. It gets real quickly. Real quickly, the post office about eight months ago created a situation where you can you can mail to every house that a mail carrier goes to for 15.2 cents. So if you’re using a 39 cent stamp, you can reach double the number of people by going to every home, basically for 15.2 cents. It’s pretty easy. You fill out a form, you pick the postal route on the USPS site and you can go from there. So I just was curious how you were doing it. That’s cool. No, actually, I use a I don’t necessarily hand-pick, but I do kind of pull. As I said earlier, statistically, I go into the neighborhood and I use certain criteria.
Stuart: [00:38:01.49] I’ve mentioned a couple of them to pull the top houses that I want out of that neighborhood. I’ve got to tell you, though, if you’re able to for virtually the same price I’m mailing to make 167, if you can mail to, you know, all 400, there’s absolutely no reason for you not to do that. Yeah. So just for that, I use I use it, I use a mailing service online and I haven’t used the you know what, if you’d like, I’ll tell you real quick. All you do is go to USPS, you click on every door, direct mail, you set up an account, you drill down the neighborhood, it lights up and you can see exactly where it’s being mailed. You print out a form, you go to the post office, you have to pay in cash and it’s 15.2 cents, goes to every home that does not have a label, does not have a label on it, but it goes there. I’ve been meaning to do that. I just it’s one of those I haven’t gotten around to it. So my question I’m going to I hope it helps my question to you is you talked about grabbing the URL, which I think it’s a great idea in how easy it is to get them on page one on Google.
Stuart: [00:39:02.60] Is that a pay per click or how do you get them on page one? Oh, well, actually, I build a page on my website and there’s really three factors, and I don’t want to go into a lot of detail on this, but but keywords on the page, keywords and description in each and every photograph and repeat the address over and over on the page. So if you’ve got a website that works well online and is successful at getting your rankings, then then it may work for you if you’ve got one that that you just don’t know how to build pages on it, then it’s not really going to be a benefit to you. But the bottom line is, is truly you can use Google AdWords for a very inexpensive monthly fee and get that on on the first page, whether you know how to do it manually or with Google AdWords, actually either way is going to be successful. Okay. Thank you. Oh, you’re welcome. What is the name of your agency there? I’m with Remax one in in it’s it’s the Austin market. The suburb I’m in is called Cedar Park. Cedar Park. Yeah. Cedar Park, Texas. Sure. Thank you. Yeah, you’re welcome. Anybody else have any specific questions I can help you with?
Speaker2: [00:40:21.41] No. Stuart, how long have you been with. With Felicity Grabber.
Stuart: [00:40:26.59] Started January the.
Speaker2: [00:40:27.49] First. Okay. Okay.
Stuart: [00:40:30.36] Yeah. My goal and I don’t mind sharing with you guys. When I. When I saw this thing, I realized that they could do something that I could not do for myself, and that is, identify prospects who landed on my page without selling out all their information. And as you know, it’s getting more and more difficult to get people to fill out their information. That’s kind of a skill and a talent in itself. But if they just land on the page, I know who they are and I can follow up with them. When I saw that, I said, You know what? This there’s a lot of things I can do for myself. And to a great degree, that’s my measuring stick. When a service says, Hey, we’ve got this great service for you, you can become the greatest agent in the world. I just say, Well, you know what? I think I knew that myself. But when I saw Lizzy Grammer, I said, You know what? I can’t do that myself. You know what I mean? Maybe I can someday spend a whole lot of time and money, but, you know, nobody has that. So I started anywhere the first and basically I’ll share with you my goal for Listing Grabber was I would have been pleased to get five listings this year from listing grabbers in the year 2013. I don’t think I’ve ever told Maddie that, but my my goal was to get five listings with Listing Grabber in 2013. When I started, six would have been great. I’ve already gotten six and it’s not even the end of May yet.
Beatty: [00:41:46.86] So I’m on your rate, is that right?
Stuart: [00:41:50.49] Yeah. Well.
Speaker2: [00:41:53.43] I have another question for you.
Stuart: [00:41:55.86] Go go ahead, Stewart.
Speaker2: [00:41:56.94] I have another question for you. How big an area are you targeting? How many homes? Because I’m I just got my license and I obviously don’t have an income yet. So I’m just trying to see how big an area does it make sense to go with that?
Stuart: [00:42:10.76] That’s a really good question. I think that’s individual for me. I think and I’m just going by memory better. You can confirm I’ve got 13 or 1400 homes, something like that. But I think that the territories range in size and and just getting your foot in the door, even in one neighborhood is, I think, going to be impactful for you. But I’ll let Beatty clarify that.
Beatty: [00:42:30.10] Yeah. You’ve got 1600. The smallest window is about 500. And, um, uh, and one of the things that Stuart did, he shared on another call, but not on this one. The key to the success in getting off right is to target your area. Well, look in your Mlss. Find out where the homes are selling. I wouldn’t call it voluntary sales, you know, either equity or short sales, not foreclosures. And make sure that you’re hitting a hot area first where the home values are, where you want them to be. And you usually won’t go wrong if you do that research first.
Stuart: [00:43:08.41] Yeah. The prices here, you guys putting some time and effort into that research could truly mean the difference between, you know, ten cells this year and five or ten, ten or five and two or I mean, it’s it’s it’s going to make a big difference because statistically, it just makes sense if you have and grab or send mailings to an area. Let’s just say you’ve got 500 homes and there were 50 cells there last year. Well, the neighborhood next door has 500 homes and there were 30 cells there next year. Well, what makes more sense to mouse to. And then the homes that go on the market, successful sales is very important. If 50 sales were on the market and only nine sold, that’s not much success. You’re not giving yourself the chance to have much success. So you have to look at how many homes sold. What success rate of those that were first? How many homes listed? What’s the success rate of those who did list? And then, as baby said, the price range the better the you know, if you have an improved price range over your average every neighborhood I have listing grabber male two is a higher price range than my average, so I’m benefiting. In addition to getting listings, I’m getting listings above my average price. So I did that purpose. And a benefit for you comes in not only sales but in commission dollars. So the listings I’ve got with listing grabber are higher commissions. So it’s the sixth listing. To have a listing grabber are actually equivalent to about nine listings on my own, if that makes sense to you guys.
Speaker2: [00:44:53.28] Yep.
Stuart: [00:44:56.19] Go ahead. You had a question?
Speaker2: [00:44:59.68] Stewart. This is Shelly. I have a question.
Stuart: [00:45:02.23] Okay. Hi, Charlotte.
Speaker2: [00:45:03.82] Hey. I actually am a sales person for listing grabber, and I was looking at your marketing cards, and one thing that you offer is a staging professional photography. And one of the things I noticed is the home inspection. And on your card it says no cost to you. So how is are you paying for all that?
Stuart: [00:45:22.18] Yeah. Okay? Yeah. What I want to know, basically, here’s. Here’s what I do, guys. I have I’ve had this program for years, and I. I try to adapt to the marketplace. Okay. So I have my sellers, and I’m going to throw two things at you. So if you’re taking notes and have questions for me, feel free to email me. Text me, call me whatever you want to do. But for many years, I have a program where I would have my seller. Pay for the inspections. I would have them pay for the repairs needed for the inspections. I would have them pay for the staging. And then I would guarantee to sell their home in a certain amount of time if they did that process. Because I know it works. It’s a proven. I know the results because of the track record with it. So we nearly always sold it during the guaranteed time and never had to reimburse them those expenses. All right. When our market got hot. I would just be very blunt with you. I set aside a little bit of money in order to invest in buying listings. Now, I don’t mean buying listings as bad. It’s not bad. But what I’m doing now is saying, Guys, I will pay for this for you upfront. So I am I am hiring an inspector and I’ve got a special thing that we do. It’s called a walk and Talk. I don’t pay for a full blown inspections. So walk and talk. This is a cool idea if you can talk to an inspector into doing it. Okay. But walk and talk. The inspector walks around the house, goes through everything as if he were inspecting it, but it doesn’t rat a darn thing down.
Stuart: [00:47:10.41] The homeowner takes note and the inspector says, You know, if I were doing this inspected for a buyer, I would rat that up. And here’s what I’d say. So he goes through the house and it takes about half the time. So we now know what an inspector would write up if he were inspecting the house. Right. So now we can determine what should we have repaired? And I actually sent in a handyman. I pay for one full day of labor to make those repairs. Then I’m bringing into stadia. Now what I’m spending is a lot less than what the owner would spend. Because I get a pretty good deal from all these people because I send them so much business. So I don’t mind telling you guys, I spend anywhere from 600 to $900 depending on the House to take a listing. But I will pay 6 to $900 to make a. Six, eight, ten, 12, $15,000 commission any day that’s getting me listings that I don’t believe I would have had an opportunity to get. So I’m just adapting to a hot market and I’m doing something else too. I mean, I told Betty this, I’m actually going out with these listing grabber leads. I went out and talked to I dropped my two houses yesterday. I hadn’t done that and I can’t tell you how long, but listings are absolute gold. I mean, when I get a listing, my wife looks at the price, calculates the commission, and goes and spends it. I mean, it’s this is this is going to sold when you put a listing on the market in our town, if it’s if it’s reasonable. And when we go through that process.
[00:48:49.93] I only sell every single time. The only cellphone listings I have.
Speaker2: [00:48:56.23] Any problem with are the.
Stuart: [00:48:57.46] Ones who did not agree to go. That makes sense, you guys. And we know that. Here’s the thing. We know that. We know that if someone will. Repair their home. We know that if someone will save their home, we know that if someone will do the things that we recommend. So you’ve got to give them either a strong enough reason behind it or incentive. And that’s what my guarantee was. I wanted to do it so much that I said, Look, this is so important to you, and I believe in it so strongly that I’m going to reimburse you. Yes, we don’t have it. So in 60 days. So if we sell it in 70 days, you want you got the money back in, you got your home sold, you know. So now I’m just doing it up front. And I got to tell you, when inventory starts climbing, which it’s going to in the market slows, I’ll go back to where I’m having my sellers pick up that cost up front. And the reason I know that is because I did it in the last cycle. I paid for this stuff upfront and when my listing inventory climbed and climbed and climbed, now I’ve got a lot of cash outlay. I stopped that and went back to having it. It’s easy to do. All you do is change a little bit of verbiage in your marketing and you change your presentation a little bit and you just keep going down the road. But adapting to the market is is something that we all have to do. How well we adapt to a great degree determines what our income is going to be and sometimes whether whether we’re in the business or not. So anyway, I’ll get off that soapbox. But but, yes, Shelly, that’s that’s exactly what I do. I’ve got a program where I provide that upfront to them now.
Beatty: [00:50:41.15] There’s also.
Stuart: [00:50:43.19] Uh huh.
Beatty: [00:50:44.39] Uh. Are you interested? Did you have something else there?
Stuart: [00:50:48.62] No, I’m sorry. I just I felt the need to explain that if I if I kind of got off track or or confused anybody, I’m happy to do my best to clarify.
Beatty: [00:50:57.17] No, I think you did a brilliant job. In fact, for those who have stayed until the end here, I think this is some of the most brilliant marketing strategy. I mean, I’m over here, okay? You know, I’ve never been a realtor and I’m listening to this stuff and go, you know, this just makes sense. Maybe I ought to get in real estate. But the reality is, is this has been fabulous. I had to block out, mute everyone because there are some background noises, but we’re a little bit over time. So I want to be sensitive to everyone’s time. Stewart I’d like to suggest if you’d be open to this for next month’s call. These little practical things that you do that now, you’re explaining why you do it and how you do it, it just really makes so much sense and adds so much value. Would you mind maybe as a topic for next month just to go through, you know, what are the things that Stewart does maybe cover some of these same things again and and go in a little bit more detail because I don’t think you’re not belaboring the point. I mean, it’s what you’re doing is making it easier for us to go, Oh, that makes sense. This is a great idea. And as a result, I think everyone on the call will really benefit from it.
Stuart: [00:52:13.45] Sure. Happy to. Yeah, no problem at all.
Beatty: [00:52:17.89] Well, um, with that, I’d like to wrap up the call. We try to keep these a little bit shorter, but this call just was absolutely fabulous. The questions that everyone asks. Great questions. Sir, thank you again for just great words of wisdom and sharing, because you you paved a road that most agents would love to travel, and now you’re making it possible for them to understand how so. Thank you so much.
Stuart: [00:52:46.00] Oh, you’re welcome. Thank you for your time.
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