Watch the live interview below

Transcription (was completed by automated process.  Please ignore any speech-to-text errors)

Beatty: [00:00:03.06] All right. Well, hello, everyone, and welcome back to another session of Get Sellers Calling You and I have an really amazing guest I’d like to introduce you to. And his name is Ryan Smith, and I’ll let Ryan say hello in just a moment, but I want to share something about Ryan. Ryan is an expert in geographic farming. We’re going to talk about geographic farming today. And Ryan is the first person I have ever spoken with, interviewed or have been interviewed by. That really understands geographic farming at the level that I think an expert ought to understand. I try to stump them on some of the questions earlier, and he got all the questions right. And so I was really pleased. And you’re going to love this interview because I can tell you that he knows his stuff. So Ryan, let me let you say hello and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Ryan: [00:00:59.18] I’m honored to be on the show and thank you for that great introduction, and I’m looking forward to share my expertise and share what I know about farming. So as you mentioned, I’m Ryan Smith. I am the host and creator of the Launcher Farm Program, so I teach agents how to do geographic farming. I have an online show where I interview real estate agents and professionals about geographic farming and really dove into how farming should be done and in different ways. So I really take out the different ways people are doing farming because I feel that there are a number of strategies that agents can use. It’s finding the right approach for you, the right approach for your farm. And I want to teach agents that you can farm in different ways and get results, but you have to be committed and be willing to do that. So the show is about that. And then I also have some training programs and some teaching things that I do with geographic farming, and it’s something I’m passionate. So I’ll kind of give you the quick version of who I am and why I’m here. So I’m an agent myself. I’ve been licensed for 13 years now. I moved three different times in my career. I’m now onto my boat to be my fourth time in my career, and I had to learn to do farming quickly and had to learn to do farming repeatedly and change. And it’s kind of counterintuitive because a lot of times when you hear farming, you think farming is a long term play.

Ryan: [00:02:08.28] But what happened was I really started dabbling in all these different strategies. Each time I moved, I try something new. I’d learn to try to figure out marketing in different ways. And what happened was I failed at farming. The first time I tried it, I failed miserably. The second time I did it, I got a little bit better and the third time I got it, I got a little bit better because I kind of built off it. And then my fourth time I tried farming. I really I like to think I kind of crack the code on what worked for me and my business partner at the time. And what happened was I really was designing a system for myself that worked, but I really wanted to take that in and help other agents because I was coaching agents at the time. I was a productivity coach in our office and I was kind of cataloging what I did, what worked, and I was also learning from the other agents that I was coaching, and I also had a podcast. Then it was a seven or eight years ago and I was learning all these best practices and I started going, OK, what are the trends that I’m seeing? What’s really working for agents? What isn’t working? What can I kind of what, what, what would work well with farming? And I started kind of piecing it together.

Ryan: [00:03:03.87] I implemented my own business kind of as a proof of practice, and I started my farm and we got our first listing in January. And within 15 months, we end up getting 17 sales in 15 months. And if you know a lot about farming, it’s they say it takes six to 18 months before you start seeing results. And we kind of blew through that and really started doing well with it. And then I shifted back into coaching and training again. So I developed some of these systems and developed some practices and things around geographic farming that I know have worked for me that I know have worked for other agents. And I’m sharing that and always learning. I’m always honing my craft and learning from other experts like yourself, Beatty and really helping just drive the industry. And because I really am passionate about getting agents excited about going back to being that local expert again, because I feel that historically we used to do that and then we’ve seen a shift or agents jumped on the internet and they thought they could sell all over all different places. And they really lost that community focus. They really lost that hyper local focus, and I want to teach agents that they can do that again, not have to drive two hours away just to go do a deal, and they can really mine out the gold from their backyard if they choose to and do well with it. So that’s in a nutshell.

Beatty: [00:04:13.83] Well, that is exciting, and I want to encourage our listeners and even our clients to really check out Ryan after the call because I think he offers a lot of great value. And you know, the there’s great wisdom in getting expert perspective from a number of different directions and find the process that really works best with you. So I’m excited because I think a lot of times agents Ryan, they want to grow their business. But you look at their past clients and sphere event or you look at their past clients and it’s like it’s all over the city, you know, an hour and a half drive from one to the other at times or even longer and to be able to control your life. I was talking to an agent recently about controlling your life and. And letting your life control your business, not your business, control your life, and I think geographic farming can help with that. So let’s get into this just a little bit. I love the fact that I don’t want to start at the beginning and to find out the things that did not work OK too much. But I would love to suggest this a lot of times we can learn by what doesn’t work. What would you say are probably the key things that you learned that don’t work, that can save people, just a lot of effort and a lot of heartache

Ryan: [00:05:34.34] When it comes to farming specifically. One of the things I teach is that farming isn’t just getting your face out there, and so many agents have made that mistake that they think if I just get my face out there enough, if if I just get a billboard, if I just get a park bench, if I just people just know who I am, that I’m going to get business from that. And that is an element of it. And I can talk about some of the things I developed and the methods that I’ve created, like the scope method. That’s an element of it. So a lot of people put all their time and energy and resources and don’t have a system in place to capture leads. They don’t have a system in place to get people to put their hand up. They don’t have a system in place to actually create demand or create a reason for people to call you. And they think if I just get enough of my name out, my face out there enough, then people will call me. And the reality is, every other agent is trying to do the same thing and they’re all trying to do the same thing. They’re all just putting their face on things. They’re all like we talked about in our interview. They just think they’re great, they’re trustworthy, they’re honest, they’re great people. And that isn’t enough to get the business and people spend a lot of money and then they they blow through their list or they blow through the money and then don’t get the results.

Ryan: [00:06:32.90] And another mistake that I see a lot of agents make and made it myself is to give up too quick. They don’t have a plan in place. They don’t have a strategies in place. They try to do it, try to do a farm and then they give up too quick. Usually, the magic number is two to three months. I see that people are they want instant results and after about two or three months, they go, Oh, this isn’t working, and then they pull out and they’ve lost any momentum they even had at the beginning and they give up. And then the other thing I see a mistake I make, and again, I made it myself is they try to go too big, too quickly, and then they haven’t tested things they haven’t seen. If their marketing works, they haven’t really perfected their strategies. It’s they shoot from the hip and they go from this big area and then they blow through their budget. They don’t get the results and then they give up on farming. And I get a lot of agents coming to me who have tried farming. And those are usually the three things that I see coming up over and over and over and over again as these mistakes and those can all be avoided. If you have the right approach, the right systems and the right right mindset around it, you can absolutely succeed at a lot, a lot quicker and get better results than most agents.

Beatty: [00:07:32.78] Well, I’m all about avoiding mistakes. Unfortunately, I’ve done some things that I wish I could have avoided, so I’m looking forward to hearing more so. So let’s say, Brian, that I am an agent. I’m an average success level five to eight million somewhere in there in terms of those that would be doing farming. I’ve had some, some false starts. They didn’t work really well. And now I come to you and I say, Ryan, OK, I’m willing to learn, teach me, how do I do this thing? You start guiding me through what I need to do to be successful in farming.

Ryan: [00:08:11.48] Yeah. So that’s perfect tie in for the scope method that I teach. And one of the things I always look at is what strategies are you doing and what strategies are complementing each other or not complement each other? And what strategies are working together? Most agents, when they do farm, they’re kind of one trick ponies or they’re very they’re a pillar base, so they have one thing that they do, and that’s works. But it only is going to get a certain percentage of the deals. It’s only going to get a certain percentage of attention in your farm. So I would look at what strategies are you currently doing and what strategies can we layer in? So scope method is something I developed, and it stands for self-promotion, community, online prospecting and education. And in order to reach the most amount of people and have the most balance in your business to ensure you’re getting more market share and more mindshare, you need to make sure that you’re reaching people in different ways. And using that scope method, you can kind of work backwards and say, OK, where am I missing in my farm? What am I missing in my approaches and my strategies? Sure, I might be great at being self-promoting. I might be out there telling everyone how great I am. I’m telling everyone knows who I am.

Ryan: [00:09:14.27] But you may be missing the community element. And for a lot of people in their farm, that community element could be the missing piece that could really elevate that business. Or you may not have a great online approach. You may be mailing out stuff all the time. You may be going out with billboards and park benches, and you may have an offline approach, but you need to make sure you’re reaching people online and in various ways. And then the prospecting part, and that’s the part where a lot of agents don’t like to do, but you still need to make sure you got some prospecting in there because you’re going to again get more market share and more reach more people with the prospect element. And then lastly, the education is one of the things that’s one of the missing pieces that most agents drop the ball on. And I’m sure you would agree that a lot of people could definitely get help with education based marketing. If they learn to use education based marketing, they can tie all those things together and really pull it. Together, so when an angel comes to me, I would say I would look at their strategy and say, How can we raise the bar on some of those other parts that you are maybe subpar on or not even existing at all and then start to stitch those together? And what happens is, if you do it correctly, I call it the safety net approach.

Ryan: [00:10:19.13] If you build your systems in place intentionally and purposefully using the scope method, you’re you’re creating a safety net for your business and you’re creating a safety net for things like COVID was a perfect example. There’s a lot of agents who went out and door knocked and did open houses, and that was they. They crushed it with door knocking and open houses. Covid comes along and and where I live in Canada, we couldn’t go out and do an open houses. We couldn’t go out and door knock and their business completely got obliterated. So when you have the safety net approach, you can use different strategies that if one gets pulled out, you’re still protected. If one strategy doesn’t work or technology changes or rules changes or markets change or competition comes in, you’re able to really create a catch for yourself so that you’re not going to fall through. And if anyone’s ever played the game ker plunk when I was a kid, it’s the game with the marble. There’s a tube and there’s marbles and there’s a bunch of sticks. And I always say that you can hold up a lot of marbles with strategically placed sticks, but if you have a hole in it, it’s not really catching it properly.

Ryan: [00:11:17.66] All the marbles could fall out. So when you learn to layer them correctly, it’s like that game or plunk. If you can layer your strategies together, you can hold up a lot and you can really get a lot more business. But you have to be strategic with that, and you have to really make sure that the strategies are working together. When you do that correctly, you can start to see a much higher response rate. You start seeing better conversion rates, you start seeing people show up at your door or just listen, make calls because you’re reaching them in different ways. And one of the guys I had on my show, that was exactly what we talked about. He learned to layer his strategies, and he said he hacked his marketing expense and more than doubled his conversion rates, he said. And it was simple things that he said, but I just learned to layer them together. So I had a bigger reach in a much more effective reach. And he said it dropped his costs and he got way more conversions. So it really it becomes how do you build the right strategies that are going to work well together for you and the market you’re serving? You know,

Beatty: [00:12:13.88] I love what you’re talking about because so often, I mean, we’ve seen this obviously the shift with the Coben, but there are shifts all the time. And if you’re not careful, if you’re that one trick pony, this is how you build your business and the shift comes. Well, this is how you go out of business as well. Exactly. And one of the things I remember is, you know, I go back to the millionaire real estate agent book that Gary Keller wrote from a marketing perspective and understanding the psychology and the science behind building a business. It’s absolutely phenomenal. One of the things that he mentioned that as you were talking about the scope method, it just really hit home. He said, this is in the section where they’re talking about there. They came up with the average of 33 touches. The average agent who touched 33 times generated what is it, one out of every 12 one out of every seven. I forget the number of

Ryan: [00:13:08.96] Two for two for every 12 people.

Beatty: [00:13:11.87] For every 12

Ryan: [00:13:12.44] Run would be a direct deal in one

Beatty: [00:13:14.15] Or the other half. Yeah. See, I took that. We turned it around into 17 out of every 100, so I always remembered seventeen point one hundred, but I couldn’t quite get into that on this call quickly enough. But what he what he mentioned was really eye opening and is what you’re talking about, Ryan, and that is he said those 33 touches were not all the same. Yeah, they came in at different angles, different types, and it create a variety, a multiplicity of it. And that’s what it sounds like, what you’re talking about and tell me a little bit more when I think of. Hold on one moment, are you still on online with me? Yes. Ok, so I had a little note that said something about my zoom just changed. Ok. Tell me a little bit more, Ryan. Let’s start with what’s the most important part of the scope method. I know there’s there’s five of them, but if you could pull out, what is what have you found if there is one that’s most significant produces the most pull?

Ryan: [00:14:19.98] So I’m going to back up and start with kind of the fundamentals first. Ok. Yes, there’s an ancient was farming and you go back to the fundamentals and then we can work backwards from that. So one of the things I teach and I look at the core in my opinion of any farm is what I say to keep it alive because you need CPR. And that’s what the real fundamentals of what farming is, regardless of what strategies you do, no matter how you build, it’s CPR and it stands for community positioning and relationships. And in order to be successful in any farm, you need that CPR and you need to have a community that you’re serving. So whether that’s your thousand people, you’re farming, whether that’s a condo building, whether that’s a certain part of town, whatever that is, you need to have the community and what you need to do is you need to serve that community and put the community first. And so many agents become transactional when it comes to their real estate, and that’s fine. There’s a market for for transactionally based agents, but when you learn to put the community first, the community will put you first when it comes to real estate. So when you have to have that community and show the community that I’m community based, I’m for you.

Ryan: [00:15:22.17] I’m working in your best interest. I’m not just here to sell homes, you have to have that community. And then what happens? You take the next step, which is the positioning. Then you learn to position yourself and there’s two ways you do that. There’s one is you position yourself as the ambassador and the expert, you can do one or both, but really get the best results. It’s both. You need to make sure that you’re the ambassador for that community. So not only are you serving it, but you’re looking out for them, you’re their protector of that community and you’re there to help them. You’re there to become that person who is the the guardian of that community and serve them. And when you’re learn to be the ambassador, people respect you differently. They see you in a different light because they know that you care, not just about the sale, they know that you care about the community and then you can position yourself as that expert. And that’s through various marketing, whether you can position yourself as that person who knows more about architecture, whether you’re the person who knows more about sales or they know more about the local businesses or the history of the area. And there’s different ways you can do this that don’t have to cost a lot of money or not to cost a lot of time.

Ryan: [00:16:18.15] But when you learn to position yourself correctly, you then start to build relationships. And those relationships is where the deals happen. So you position yourself in the community, you position yourself as the ambassador, an expert and then you build relationships. And then what happens is you find a subset of people in your in your farm who you build relationships with and you start that process all over again. So you you funnel your farm of thousand homes to you may have 200 people now that you’ve built a community with and built relationships with, that’s your new community that you’re serving and you’re positioning yourself even further with them and you build relationships with them even more. And you’re kind of funneling your farm into those real, strong relationships in your farm. And if you do that correctly, the rest will take care of itself. So going back to your point, what’s the most important? I would say the community is super important and really taking that community seriously and in really changing your mindset about not just selling homes, you’re there to serve the community. If you come from a servant mindset, you will completely change how you do your business.

Beatty: [00:17:16.44] You know, that’s really interesting. And as you’re talking and thinking back on some of the agents I know personally who really dominate their farms, and that’s what I recognize with them. They were kind of the instigators of within their local farm community on all kinds of activities, and they were the cheerleaders and and everyone just kind of rallied around them. Yep, exactly. Give me give me an idea. Give me an example or two of how this has put in practice if I’m an agent. What does this look like?

Ryan: [00:17:51.06] Sure. So I can go from a community perspective, it’s easy to say like, Hey, I’ve been doing community events and things like that, and that’s great. A lot of people get involved in commune events, but you need to champion community events that are geared to the community that are serving the community and helping them. So I’ll give you an example of I had someone on my show, Mary Ann Gillespie. She’s a top agent and a coach as well, and she’s talked about how in her area, they had a new construction being built and there was this they left the developers left this giant mound of dirt and they were just they finished the development and they were walking away from it. So she championed that and spearheaded that and went to the town council, went and fought for that community and said, This is ridiculous. You need to get rid of this. She’s paid out of her own pocket. She spent the time and energy to do that. That community was indebted to her because she was fighting for them, and it wasn’t just fighting for a transaction, it was fighting for, Hey, I’m fighting for you guys. And they then had a connection with her from the positioning perspective. There’s a number of ways you can do that as well. One of the things that I think is key is positioning yourself as that expert in the community, and we do that. Branding yourself around the neighborhood that you’re farming, so instead of just saying it’s Ryan Smith, Ryan Smith real estate team, we when we did our farm, it was the Orchard real estate team. So right out of the gate, people knew who we were and what we did that we specialized in that neighborhood.

Ryan: [00:19:05.29] The neighborhood we farmed was called the orchard. So our first listing, I share the story all the time. We went in and the client met with us and we were talking about getting the property together. And she said, Well, you guys are the experts, so you tell me I’d never sold a home in that neighborhood before I was new to the area, never sold anything in that farm. But because we positioned ourselves as that expert, it was very easy to build a brand around that community as that expert. Then the next listing was, You’re the experts. You tell me, you’re the expert, so you tell me you’re the experts because we position ourselves as the person who is different than everyone else. We weren’t just Ryan Smith Real Estate, Andrew Wheeler real estate. It was the Orchard real estate team. So that helped position ourselves as that expert. The other thing we did was we learned everything we could about the builders and the development. The neighborhood was about 15 years old. It was a newer for the area, a newer subdivision, relatively speaking. We knew all the builders, we knew what when they were built, we knew we got our hands on as many floor plans as we could get. We knew the elevations so we could walk into an appointment and say, Well, you have the Empire model, that’s an elevation B, and that’s thirteen hundred and fifty six square feet. Here’s the plans that was built in this year and instantly that home seller has way more trust with us than the other agent who doesn’t even know who sold in there, doesn’t know who the developers are that helped build our rapport in the area.

Beatty: [00:20:25.30] I like that a lot. Yeah, that’s really cool because, you know, the homeowners are looking for someone who is an expert, and if you can share it that you know it, you know what’s going on. They feel more trust. One of the top agents in my area, you know, she actually brought the sellers, the buyers who bought our home that we sold and she was talking about the home that we moved into. We just moved them all down the road and she was saying, Oh, yeah, well, you know, this homebuilder built this home over here in your home. He built this and and given me details about it. I’m thinking she really knows this place. Exactly. I love that. And you don’t have to have that knowledge organically. You can go study it and then be the expert.

Ryan: [00:21:08.80] And what we did was we went to the developers, they were still in business, they were developing other homes and a number of them we got our hands on. Then we went to some of the builders and said, Listen, we want to be the experts in this community. We want to help promote your product. So I think with lasagna homes and we said, you know, we want to be the ambassador for your for your builds. Do you guys have the plans from when you built way back then and the admin, she’s like, No one’s ever asked us for that. I don’t even know if we could release that. So she’s let me talk to the boss. We met with the boss of the builder and he said, Yeah, your agents and you want to promote our listing, our development. So, yeah, he’s like, Yeah, no problem. So they gave us copies of every development they had with all elevations. So it was a simple thing that we did. We took the time to do it. And again, that established us as experts over anyone else. And again, we’d never even sold any homes in the area we just learned came in with with an expert mindset and wanted to be the expert. And one of the things we did was my business partner. I we we made a game out of it. We learned every street we could and then we’d quiz each other. We’d be door knocking and drive around the neighborhood and say, What streets this? What streets this and how? How many homes are here? And we broke it into quadrants. So we had like sections and we had what price points are here, what styles of homes are here. If I was to buy a home and in this area, where would I find this price point? We just learned as much as we could about the neighborhood so that we could answer any question that was thrown at us before we even sold the home. We were willing to do that, and by doing that, that elevated our expertize level in the community, and that was a big thing for us.

Beatty: [00:22:32.23] Now it’s interesting as you’re sharing, my mind is now going back to one of our clients named Stewart and and one of the farms that he does. He is branded himself as the expert, the expert in Barry Creek. And he has several websites about Barry Creek. And you go there and is all this information specifically about Barry Creek. And when he talks to people, he can tell you how much a pull in your backyard adds value in Barry Creek. If you’re on the golf course or if you’re away from the golf course, and it’s that level of expertize that you’re talking about and is also once he with that expertize with him. In his first seven months, he picked up 14 listing appointments because people trusted him because he they knew that he knew what was going on. Exactly. So I love that. What a great way, you know, up to a quick study in the farm. And now you’re the expert. Most agents don’t do that.

Ryan: [00:23:29.12] They don’t even know their town or the city, never mind that hyper local level. And if you’re willing to do that, the great thing is if it’s a small farm, it doesn’t take that much work. If you’re going after a thousand homes, you don’t need to know a whole lot, but that time to do that will be well worth and we’ll pay it off.

Beatty: [00:23:43.24] So now is Orchard the place that you’re talking about where in 15 months you’ll have? Was it seventeen thousand? Okay, all right. Yeah, tell me more about that story, I mean, I know you’re probably going to go through your scope process, but I would love to hear the the scope process in action with what you guys did because this is, I mean, just the fact that you would go to the builders, get the ah, the drawings, you know, go through, memorize the streets and quiz each other. I mean, it sounds like fun. Obviously, it’s a lot of work, but y’all made a game out of it. Yeah, and it was the average price point at that time.

Ryan: [00:24:19.45] At that time was five. Thirty five.

Beatty: [00:24:21.34] Wow. So seventeen homes at five thirty five. That’s a lot better than 17. Homes at 200000.

Ryan: [00:24:27.88] We ended up making two hundred and thirty five thousand. And then there were spinoff business over the years after that. But in 15 months or 15 months, we made two hundred and thirty five.

Beatty: [00:24:36.52] Yeah. So tell me more about the story of Orchard now that we know where it is. Sure.

Ryan: [00:24:42.01] So I’ll go through the scope and kind of share what we did with each one of those things and how we tie that together. So yeah, that’d be jumping right in with the self-promotion. We obviously committed ourselves with our branding as the Orchard real estate team, but we got

Beatty: [00:24:54.79] It real quick. I think that’s the most brilliant thing. I mean, I’m over here thinking, why did I never think of that? You know, if you’ve got a specific farm, you don’t need a brand, your big team name brand into the Orchard real estate team.

Ryan: [00:25:08.98] I just had, yeah, we had two brands, so we had the premier home group, which was our parent brand. And then it was brought to you by and power, powered by Orchard Real Estate Team, was brought to you by or powered by the premier home group. So we were doubling up so we could say, here’s our brand here and we specialize in here, but we also serve the other areas as well. So if you’re making a move, you can trust the the premier home group.

Beatty: [00:25:29.63] I love that. You know, one of the things we found to in marketing is, you know, the more specific you can make it to your prospect, the more likely they are to respond. And so in the marketing content, if we were marketing there, we would say, you know, sell your orchard house or we sold this orchard home for 10000, you’d always tie it back. But to tie your brand name, I love it. I just think that’s brilliant. So I cannot believe I never came up with that. Well, there you have it.

Ryan: [00:25:58.57] Ok, you heard it here first. That’s right. So basically, it’s hard to break it down directly because it was all tied together. So I’ll give you the fragments and the pieces, and then I’ll stitch it together and what we did. So we branded ourselves as the Orchard real estate team and one of the things we did, we did a neighbor and home price report. So that was one of our big things. So we did a neighbor monthly report and we would offer this report to people. It was a only to people who requested it, so we didn’t send it to everyone. It was not a mailer that we sent each month because this is what I was saying about that. You want that two hundred people instead of thousand people. So we wanted to get the people who wanted to know who we were and put our hands up. So we did a monthly report and what we did was I got the idea from bold. If anyone’s with Keller Williams, I’ve ever taken bold. The premise that bold is you sign up for the bold. You show up your first week and you get a binder and then you get your first week’s assignment with everything in the binder. And then what happens is you have to show up next week to get the content for the next week.

Ryan: [00:26:50.08] And then each week you show up, you get the materials for each week. So what I thought was, why don’t I create a guide and report each month and they get a binder? We get all the information up front, so they get some guides and resources and some tools. And then each month I’m going to drop off a new report for them. And I delivered the report. And then what happened was people started holding onto this binder and we had a hole punched ready for them to go. So it was already all. All I had to do is take it out of the envelope, stick it in the binder. And when we showed up our listing appointments, people would have the binder there. They’d have it ready on the desk, they’d have it on their shelf. And because what happens is they were holding on it because was a perceived value. There was all that data that was being shown, the newsletters in there and all that stuff was in there. And by putting in a binder, it created value and I would say I could send them a digital report but doesn’t have the same value as me.

Beatty: [00:27:36.01] Ask a question on that timeline. So they’ve been holding on to that binder. Is this over a three month period, a 12 month period?

Ryan: [00:27:42.67] What time tell whenever they call this? So we just kept delivering them. We kept we kept dropping those reports off each month.

Beatty: [00:27:48.31] So, so they would reach out to you and one time they got on your list and then received reports. And what did you do to what was the offer of that marketing that they responded to?

Ryan: [00:28:00.82] So the very initial was a door knock door knock the whole entire neighbor. There’s thirty six hundred homes we drawn on the neighborhood and said, Hey, we’ve got a report shows the all the home sales in the area and a newsletter that comes with it as well. There’s no cost, no obligation. Would you like to get a copy? And then they’d say yes. So we ended up getting four hundred and twenty five people on that report out of the initial thirty six hundred people, and it was I can tell you all the numbers. They know my numbers, the fact good hand. So it was one out of four people we spoke with would request a copy of this report. It was like clockwork and we worked on our scripts. We got people to sign up for it and that became our big differentiator in the neighborhood is we had this guide and then everything we did was just to try to get more people on that report. When we were at open houses, we had a copy of the binder with us and we’d say, Hey, instead of signing up, would you like to get a copy of our binder or of our report? And then people would sign up for the report.

Ryan: [00:28:48.67] We did online ads. We did the. Like that, and that was basically our number one marketer to get it to the area. Then we also did branding with our open house signs and we had open house signs with our logos on it. It was very different. Instead of just an open house, it was the branding around the thing we did community events. We organized a festival. So we got together with a private school that was in the area and we created a fall festival. There was a public school that had a fall or back to school fair, and it was like a table set up and we had giveaways and things like that. And it was really just getting involved in the community than at the event. We had our signs and our banners, but we had the report and we had two people could sign up to get a copy of that report. And then we started doing online ads. We started doing social media stuff and it just kind of all started really tying together. But the core premise was that was our reports and then our branding.

Beatty: [00:29:41.31] So, so it’s I really love it because if they request the report, they got a binder and I’m assuming, would you hand deliver the binder? Did you mail this stuff?

Ryan: [00:29:53.37] So we dropped it off, and that was where we built that face to face and that became that relationship part of it. We dropped the binder off. We’d say, Hey, we’re going to be dropping off next week. We’ll be dropping off. If you’re not there, we’ll just leave it on the front porch. So then we drop them off each month to build those relationships people so we could shake hands, talk to people, make mace, make a face to face connection. And then what happens if you’ve got too many people and it was just so time consuming. So we we capped off how money we did because it was just too time consuming.

Beatty: [00:30:18.99] So every time you delivered the report? Now that’s an opportunity to face visit. Yep, exactly. And if they weren’t there, you drop it off, but they still appreciate it. Yep. So now you have this interaction, a high level of interaction. So you track your numbers. You had how many of those four hundred

Ryan: [00:30:38.37] On average were floating at around four hundred twenty five to 450 at any given time?

Beatty: [00:30:42.51] Did you ever go back and do a turnover rate within that group and how many you took?

Ryan: [00:30:47.64] That was the next, the next thing. So the average turnover rate in the firm was six and a half percent for that area. Okay. And what happened was we went back and tracked it. I’m a numbers guy. So I tracked what was the average churn rate. Got a report, whether they did deals with us or not. Of those people who were receiving a report, those four hundred and twenty five hundred and fifty people, how many of them actually ended up selling? And in that 15 month period, it was two times the turnover rate compared to the average turnover rate. So there are two and a half times more likely to make a move because they requested a report than just the average person. And if you take those people out and then do the average turnover rate without those people getting report, the average would have been way lower. So we were two and a half times more likely to find someone who was going to make a move by getting them, by getting a report.

Beatty: [00:31:33.42] That is fantastic, and so. So you got two and a half times, so what’s that? Right, about 20 percent turnover rate.

Ryan: [00:31:41.31] Yeah, it was 20 and change. Yeah, just over 20.

Beatty: [00:31:44.31] And then how many of those did you get? What percentage of those?

Ryan: [00:31:49.08] So of those, we got 10 listings out of those people that were in there.

Beatty: [00:31:53.28] Ok, so 20 percent of four hundred is one out of five eight, maybe 880. Ok, and you got 10 of those? Ok. That is really good. That’s one out of eight in your first year. Yeah. Did you continue that the second year?

Ryan: [00:32:10.11] So what happened was after the 15 months I split off with my business partner, he kept calm and I I took over the other half of our business, so we parted ways. He kept that part of it and I won’t say anything after that.

Beatty: [00:32:20.90] So I was real curious only if you had the date of what would be the second year if that was basically your first, but that. That’s fantastic. Ok, so that takes us through self-promotion, community and then talk about the online approach.

Ryan: [00:32:38.16] So we were starting to get the online together and it was we didn’t have it mastered, but we were starting using social media. But one of the things we did that was really effective was we started focusing on local businesses and connecting with local businesses. And rather than promote ourselves online, we were promoting the local businesses and we would be in Facebook groups. And when people were looking for recommendations, they’d say, You know, a good plumber, does anybody know a good this or that? And we would recommend them in those Facebook groups? And that was a great way for us to promote other people, still add some value, still be present without self-promoting ourselves saying, Hey, I’m the best real estate agent you should call me. So we were able to connect that way. We were involved with some of the Facebook groups. We worked with a lady who ran a Facebook group that was there at the time. I teach agents to run their own Facebook groups. But at the time, this lady had, like at the time, was like sixteen hundred people in the Facebook group already, so I wasn’t going to recreate the wheel. She was already running a successful Facebook group. She was just a resident. So we started working with her and helping her and supporting her. So whenever there was any events and things like that, we’d support them that way.

Ryan: [00:33:41.04] And then she became a spokesperson for us. She’d tell people about us and let people know that we’re a great team. And and then what we then did was we merged offline into online, so we were using offline marketing to drive people online. So what we did was we started doing online or starting doing some events and we would use postcards to promote our report on one side and then support or promote the event on the other side. So it paired us with these things that were going on, and we had an example. We had a birdhouse kid that birdhouses and he sold them all and all the money, like every dollar, went to the hospital and him and his dad would build them and every penny they made went to the hospital. He lived in the neighborhood we farmed. And as soon as I met him, I’m like, This is the perfect partnership because it’s houses, it’s in our farm. It’s a kid who’s not going to support this and it supports a local cause. So we jumped on board and wanted to support him. And so from the time we met him to the time I parted ways, we had helped them raise over $8000 in through our sales. We brought him into our office and he did a presentation at our office, and then we partnered with a local bank and in the farm, and we did a giant one day sale.

Ryan: [00:34:54.87] We got on the news, we got the front cover of the newspaper. We had radio stations to come out. We had the bank all promoting it. We had a day at the bank where we were talking to the people that were working at the bank and then they were sharing it and it just got all that extra exposure. It got all the connection with the community and we had online website we’re driving traffic to. And then what we did was instead of giving money to support it and just say, here’s cash to support it. We said, Hey, in lieu of a sponsorship, will promote it to our audience. We’ll send out the postcards because we’re going to send them out and we’ll advertise the event on our postcards. So then again, we paired it with our marketing. We are going to send the Senate a postcard anyway, so we paired it with our marketing and now it ties us to that organization and that cause. And we were only doing a fraction of the cost because we would have spent the money to create a postcard and mail it out anyway. So we use that and it cost us a few hundred bucks instead of a few thousand bucks if we were to try to get the same type of exposure in the community. So, yeah, very cool.

Beatty: [00:35:56.13] Very cool. And then and tell me about so prospecting is a big, dirty word for most agents, and most agents don’t like the prospect. And so that sounds like kind of a scary thing to do. Tell me about it.

Ryan: [00:36:15.81] So my definition of prospect is different than most, and my definition of prospecting is consciously looking for people who are looking to make a move. And that can be anything to anyone. And that doesn’t mean that it’s I’m door knocking or cold calling, and I’ll use a strategy of strategy I used in my own business. After the farm I. What I do is I do reverse prospecting, so I borrow listings for people in my farm, and I taught this to my girlfriend who just moved and she started her farm. And so she moved to the area an hour away from where she was. She just quit her job as a full time teacher and it started in real estate and I taught her a strategy to borrow listings. And I have a whole process we do and how we do it. She borrowed the listings and in the last 30 days, she’s generated one hundred leads. In 30 days, she’s booked six appointments, took out two buyers and has seven or 10 people getting prospect matches and did a few online valuations. So that’s my opinion. Is Lee generating. But now the prospecting part is how do you take that and try to get more? Now it’s can you go there and try to look for more business out of it? And so just before COVID hit, I used this approach and I took a lead that I had, and I put it out to some Facebook groups and said, I’ve got a buyer who’s looking for X, Y and Z.

Ryan: [00:37:26.27] If you know anyone who’s thinking about making a move. Give me a shout or let me know. I put that ad or that post in two different Facebook groups, and as a result, I end up getting for listing appointments. Got two sellers out of it, and then my client bought with me and then sold their house with me, and they’re about to buy another house and then sell their other house. So there was seven transactions that came as a result of that one. That one process, one act. So that’s in my opinion, that’s prospecting. So that’s pretty good. It doesn’t have to be just, hey, think we’re making a move? Hey, or you think we’re making a move? It’s basically intentionally looking for people who are making a move and trying to connect with them. That’s that’s my definition.

Beatty: [00:38:01.61] So tell me again what that ad said and it was go ahead.

Ryan: [00:38:05.87] Yeah, it’s basically the the condensed version of it is I’ve got a serious buyer. They’re looking for X, Y and Z in this neighborhood. If you or anyone you know is thinking about making a move, please let me know. We have a we have a serious and legitimate buyer who’s prepared to put an offer in. If you know anyone is looking to make a move. Please let us know. I had like about 10 people. There were twenty two comments on the one and 12 comments on the other one. From that four appointments, I said to two of those listings I got and I probably would have got the buy side, but they’d already bought new construction. So it was just their listings and I got that out of it.

Beatty: [00:38:41.24] I love it. That reminds me. I was talking to an agent here in town. His name is Rob, and he had a client that wanted to live on this one particular street. So he wrote a letter and stuck it in everyone’s mailboxes along that street and never found a home for his client. But he picked up two listings. You know, and I’m thinking, What a brilliant way, because you’re not, you’re not. Most agents say I don’t want get on the phone and cold call. That’s what we think of is prospecting. But that’s such an easy way of doing it. Now I’m assuming y’all, did y’all run that type of ad again or that post?

Ryan: [00:39:19.01] And I thought other agents do the same thing and they get the results, but you have to be consistent. And this is the other thing I tell agents all the time is that you can’t judge it by one post, you can’t judge it by two posts, you can’t judge it by three posts. It’s the consistency that helps. And what happens is if you do that consistently, the people in your farm that you’re farming are going to see that you’re active and engaged. And that’s again going back to that positioning and building the expert. If you’re doing that on a weekly basis, saying, Hey, I’ve got a buyer looking for this next week, you’re saying, Hey, I’ve got a new buyer looking for this, hey, I’ve got a buyer looking for this. The people who live in those areas, if you’re in Facebook groups in your area, see that Ryan’s active. Ryan’s got buyers. Ryan’s proactive with his business, and he’s looking for me and the sellers then start to resonate and they reach out to you. And then you have other agents who are reaching out to you, going, Hey, I’ve got something coming up or do you have anything coming up? And it just builds that trust. So it’s consistency. You just got to keep doing it over and over again. If you do it, you’ll get results.

Beatty: [00:40:12.80] I love it. You know, I think that’s the number one thing I’ve always learned about farming is that word consistency. Yeah. At the beginning of this call, you were mentioning how some agents will try it for two or three months and quit. And you’ve got, you know, it’s a longer term process and everything you do is just, there’s a consistency there that is so important. What is it? Not never give up, just keep doing it.

Ryan: [00:40:38.01] Yeah, exactly.

Beatty: [00:40:39.35] All right. So then that anything else on price, because that’s a different type prospect than I was expecting. So any additional deals, yeah, absolutely.

Ryan: [00:40:47.99] Can do traditional prospecting. And this is where when you come back to that strategy, when you marry it with the other strategy you’re using, then it becomes easier. So this is where if you’re doing a community event, prospect it around the community event. So you can say, Hey, we’re out in the neighborhood letting people know about this community event we’re doing. Oh, by the way, are you thinking about considering making a move if you’re going to be out there might as well marry the two things and use it together. If you’re just there saying, Hey, you think about making a move, you’ve lost an opportunity to build relationships, you’ve lost an opportunity to connect with people outside of that. The other thing is doing things like open houses, so circle prospecting, I’m big on. So if you’ve got an open house, work the work, the listing and try to get your business around that area, do mailings around the area or knock around the area cold. Call around the area, do marketing around that, do Facebook Live. So it’s. It’s basically being intentional with trying to get more business from each one, and if you do it correctly, you can continually grow that.

Ryan: [00:41:39.10] I’ll share a story about that as well in my farm, like I said, we had sections that we broke down. There were six. We called them quadrants, but secondly, just four quadrants. But there were six pockets and we got our very first listing was where we got in this one quadrant. It was quadrant number one, and I think it was about 40 percent of the business that we got came from that one quadrant because what happened was that was our very first listing. We prospected the hack hack around that area. We marked it around that area and then another deal came from it and another deal came from it. And in that within that farm, we had a micro micro farm because we just kept prospecting and we just kept working the deals we got and the leads we got and we kept getting more and more business. If you do that, you can do that in any area and just keep working it, but you have to be consistently prospect around what you got.

Beatty: [00:42:25.93] I love it, and I think that is just what most people get tunnel focus. I do this one thing right, and they forget that it’s those multi touches on the multi touches. There is a little formula that we use when we teach, and it’s one plus one equals three. Yep. And if you’re touching in all these different areas, there’s a multiplying effect. And that’s what I’m hearing with you.

Ryan: [00:42:49.55] Yeah, exactly.

Beatty: [00:42:51.52] All right. What else? What, what other? So we got education. Yep. Tell me about education. Or is there still one prospecting that we can learn?

Ryan: [00:43:01.36] Well, again, you can tie the prospecting into the education, and that’s where it all starts, because for us, we were doorknocking in the area. So what we did was education based up front. We could offer the report and then then we’d get people to sign up for it. And then, regardless of what they said, they said yes or no, they want to report. Then we would say, Hey, by the way, are you thinking about making a move in the next three to six months if we came in hot just saying, Hey, you think we’ll make a move? People get turned off, they get pushed away. But we were able to have a lot more warm conversations. We got people who were saying, Yeah, I’d like to get the report. And then it was a lot easier to say. So by the way, are you thinking about making a move? And then they’d say, Well, actually my we’re waiting for my daughter to go to school or, you know, I’ve got to retire in two years or, yeah, I’m going to be moving in six months. So we tied the prospecting on at the end and we married it with the other things. And if you do that correctly, it’s not coming in as just prospecting, it’s an enhancement or an additional thing to it. And I think if you learn to do it that way, it makes it less scary, makes it easier to approach people and get more out of it than just straight cold prospecting.

Beatty: [00:44:01.36] You know, I love that approach because one of the things we teach and everything in terms of a direct response is that you offer information that someone wants to learn so they can respond. And what a brilliant way for someone who is. They don’t want to feel pushy. They don’t want to feel like I’m trying to, you know, knock on your door to say, Can I sell your house? So you simply go up and say, I’ve got this free report. Would you like to have it? Exactly. And the only the people who say yes are the ones who are likely thinking about selling sometime in some period of time. And that’s for so brilliant and so easy. Yeah, it is so easy. Well, if we were to kind of wrap up and and talk about the most important thing, if you want to, if if the if I were to ask you which I am. Ok, so Ryan, what is what is the number one most important thing that you could leave our listeners, either something we’ve talked about here or something that they can get somewhere else if they want to do geographic farming, if they want to mimic your your growth of 17 cells and 15 months, then what would that one thing be?

Ryan: [00:45:17.62] I would say add value to them, to the to the farm that you’re serving, come from a contribution and give first and don’t go in there expecting to get give first and then get back and take your approach to how can I connect with people and get them to give me their information rather than just try to get my name out there? And that comes from that going back to coming from contribution, using direct response, marketing, having something of value for them to put their hand up. And once you do that, then you can build a relationship. If you’re just trying to cold build the relationship with an unknown and unmet you’re, it’s harder to do that. So as soon as they put their hand up, as soon as they connect with you, as soon as there’s an exchange of information, it becomes a lot easier to build relationships. So it’s I’ll back up and then it’ll come back and wrap up where I’m going with this. Your farm really isn’t the 3600 people in your farm. Your farm is the four hundred and fifty people. The farm is really the funnel to get the people into your database. And when you can figure that out, how do you get more people into that funnel? That’s the secret sauce. Then you can build the relationships with the four hundred fifty people and not have to worry about the other thirty to thirty one hundred people or whatever it is. It’s the farm really is the people that get put their hand up that you can build the relationships with and further that the the process and move along.

Beatty: [00:46:33.94] Very brilliant. I’m writing that down your farm isn’t the 3600, it’s the 400 who request the report. Very brilliant. What a great way, that man. And I’m just thinking just cost and everything else costs focus. You just zero in on those few people. I could almost say an agent, just go through, knock in all the doors anywhere, just looking for those people who want the report and then that becomes your. You hone it in on that one group. Exactly.

Ryan: [00:47:04.18] And I tell people that you can save money and not have to put the energy on the other things. You don’t have to be doing all the other things. You can focus on that now. If you want to get more to your farm, that’s where you start layering the other strategies to hopefully get more out of it. But you can get more out of those 450 people than you can just coldly trying to go after the 30 600.

Beatty: [00:47:22.03] I love it. How did people? We’ll find out more about you. Tell us how they can find out about you getting engaged with you if they want to learn more on this stuff. Perfect. Awesome. I appreciate that. If they don’t, if they don’t like me and they think that they’re more brilliant than I am, I’m teasing. I don’t know. I don’t offer coaching and anything like that. So go ahead. I’m sorry to interrupt.

Ryan: [00:47:45.25] No, launch your firm is my my site, so you can find out the details from there. You can find the show if you go to the tab. It’s the launch of Firm Show. You can go back and watch all the episodes I’ve got at sixty two. I just put up put up sixty three episodes this week. The show is there, the courses and training is there and I’m just about to launch a membership site in January, so that’s a low cost monthly program. It’s fifty dollars a month for right now, so if you lock in in January, you’ll be able to get it at a good price and it’s ongoing training. I have other experts coming and I’ve got monthly webinars. I’ve got marketing strategies and tips you can use. I’ve got challenges each month and it’s designed to help people stay engaged with their farm and keep going and not just give up. And it gives you a variety of topics. So each month has a different theme and then we go through. So you’re covering all the bases and that’ll be launch your farm elite that isn’t available yet, but launch your farm is the best place to get a hold of. I mean, find out what I’m up to.

Beatty: [00:48:40.57] That is brilliant. And if you’re going to invest in a farm, you need to invest in yourself first. Yeah, because that’s where the results are. Well, Ryan, this has been really fascinating. I’ve been taking a lot of notes and trying to think which one of these I can still and apply into what we do. So this is really great. Thank you so much for your time and and for our listeners. Be sure to check out Launch Your Farm and launch your farm podcast

Ryan: [00:49:09.70] And you’ll be on there, so you’ll be out in December.

Beatty: [00:49:12.49] Ok, very good. And and for everyone else, you all have a great day. Thanks for allowing us to serve you and for Ryan to share his expertize with you to be blessed. I appreciate. Thanks.

P106