This one is for real estate agents.
Listen up. We’re evolving. In this market, we are always evolving, pivoting, shifting, adapting—whatever term you want to call it. We’re in the process of doing that this summer.
The market’s not tanking; we are just getting back to a neutral position.
I want you to listen. Recently, I had a meeting with my team. We sat at a coffee shop last week, and we talked for two hours to break down what action steps each member of the team planned on taking moving forward. For those of you who are a little bit stuck on what’s next, I want to share this with you.
Here are the things I told my team to focus on deeper, as well as some tech that you might want to check out.
This is probably the most obvious one. It is a little bit old school, but there is a process that we have that makes it awesome.
If you are asking, “Where do I get expired leads from, Tristan?” We use REDX. They give a lot of options, and expireds is one of them. You get their names, contact details, and the property data, as well as market insights.
So, when we call an expired lead, it is easier to pitch because we can explain the market insights to them. That’s why our team likes REDX.
But it doesn’t stop there. You need to have a plan. Here’s the biggest challenge: When we’re talking about expireds, it’s not just calling them and talking to them; it’s about the follow-up.
REDX just gave us the numbers saying we are 40% up on expireds just in the last few days. That means these homes were relisted because they couldn’t sell them at the price they were at before. That number is going to increase through the rest of the year.
Now, you have to add other features here. This is exactly what our team does. When we have them on the phone and have this conversation with them, that’s the first stage. Sometimes they’ll tell us that they are not ready to relist right now. That’s fine. Let them take some time to think things through, and tell them that you’ll text them after the call. That way, they have your information and you can stay connected.
After hanging up, if they gave me permission to contact them, I put them through the process we have over at Agent Legend, which is another drip process specifically for expireds that we have.
If you aren’t already automating the process for the people that you’ve talked to, you are going to fall behind. The idea behind this drip is for it to go out the day you talk to the expired listing, but better if it is immediately after. We use Agent Legend to automate this process for our expireds that are likely to list quickly within the next three months.
The other part of this is that, if I think it is a great listing that I really want, I am also going to do a handwritten note. For that, we typically use a company called Handwrytten.
Sometimes we even take it a step further, especially because I am in the Malibu area, with multi-million-dollar homes. We don’t have access to every home. Those we do have access to, we do visit in person.
The secret to doing this with expireds is really the follow-up. Expireds are really important.
The next one is very similar. We also use REDX or Vortex to get leads on FSBOs, and it mostly goes through the same process as expireds.
That’s what we do for the old school. Let’s go into a little bit of the new.
The new involves a plan for social media. The why is obvious. The most visited websites are Google, Youtube, and big social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, and LinkedIn.
There are two plans you need for social media; one is organic and the other is paid. For us, we decided to go deeper into what we are already doing on social media.
A lot of my team are on Instagram, and I always ask them, “What’s the plan? Are we reaching out to those people that are already following us, that show up on our feed? Are we taking some time, around 20 minutes a day to like, comment, message on their posts - to engage with people and make them feel significant?”
We need to go deeper into this. Social media is just another way to build relationships. That’s the key: it is important that we build relationships in this business.
How are you going to use social media? How are you going to connect with those other people? What about your content? What are you posting on a consistent basis?
Personally, I create a plan for social media content. I make a monthly social media calendar, and I give these out for free, so you can check it out in case you don’t know what to post.
This is June’s calendar. We circulate between these four things, and we use the acronym STAY: Sell with a story; Teach; give Advice; and talk about Yourself. That’s the idea. Have a plan for both content and engagement. The only thing left is to show up and execute this.
Here’s how I break it down. We’ve been using Google PPC and have been going deeper into this for several years now, and we use a company called Ylopo. They run all of our Google PPC ads locally.
You’ve got a funnel. At the top, you have Facebook and Instagram leads. You can get a ton of them at a very low cost. However, most Facebook users scroll through to check on their family’s and friends’ updates. When a property pops up while they are scrolling through their feeds, the intent is very low. Some might click on it if the home catches their attention. Some will call me, and that is awesome.
Now, think of how you use Google. You go there and type in “homes for sale in Malibu close to the beach close to Pepperdine University.” The intent is extremely high.
This is the advantage when using Google PPC and Google AdWords.
That’s the middle of the funnel. We go to the bottom of the funnel.
Typically, when the consumer is ready, they go to the portals: Realtor.com, Redfin, Zillow, and, hopefully, your website if you’ve been nurturing them, or they go to reviews. They look for the best real estate agent in the area they are interested in, and they are still using Google.
Then there’s farming. I’ve got a whole outline here for you for farming, so you don’t have to think about it. We’ve been farming for a very long time, and this is what we’ve broken it down to.
In 12 months, we do 24 mailers, and then I outlined what it will look like for the whole year. We give market updates as well as things that are of value. We treat the whole farming process like social media. What value are you giving? We approach it from the point of view of contribution.
By doing that, we noticed that the mailers we’ve been sending out recently have gotten more callbacks because we’ve changed that approach. We are asking questions that the consumer is thinking about. Have we peaked? What’s happening with the market? Has your home price dropped?
The other part is, are you going to door knock? Do you have a newsletter? Are you just saying hello and then never talking to them again? What about retargeting to a specific neighborhood?
These are the things I want you to think about deeper. As the market is shifting, I want to know what you are doing. Because, at the end of the day, real estate is a relationship business. And the biggest thing you can go to is your database.
I talk about it all the time. A lot of us add hundreds of people a year on our phones, but we never put them on our CRM. We use Follow Up Boss for one of our CRMs, and I’ve got 72,000 people on there that have come from either online, all of our open houses, or a lot of mixed interactions over the years.
All of their details, contact information, and a log of contact that happened are here.
Build your CRMs. That way, you can retarget them through social media, put them on a newsletter, or put them on some type of automated drip. Think deeper about what other possibilities there are, and there are a lot of them. You can even play around and mix the old school with all the new stuff.
And if you need some help, or have any questions, reach out to me on my socials. I love helping out and sharing what our team is doing. We are still practicing real estate and we are pivoting and evolving through this shifting market with you. Have a great day!
