February’s second Real Geeks Keeping It Real Training with Frank Klesitz and Greg Harrelson featured Steve Lamothe of Elevate Realty Group. Together they brought focus to 4 Steps to Get More Listing Appointments. Sharing that his primary sources of business are referrals from his sphere, agent to agent, past clients, repeat customers, and referral syndicates, Lamothe suggested four ways to ramp up business.

Four Methods to Get More Listing Appointment

1. Meticulously managed database 

2. Cold calling

3. Run ads as an instant home offer, NOT as a home value ad

4. Syndicated Referrals (radio, partner organizations)

Explaining that “all marketing is buying your time back as you run out of it,” Lamothe shared that he invests time, money and energy into his marketing. He’s partnered with several organizations, including HomeLight, Dave Ramsey, Open Door, and Zillow (with a small spend only strategically per zip) in order to build his business and his database, because in Lamothe’s words, “Your database IS your business.”

Setting Up an Effective Database 

“You should break your people up into two groups,” Lamothe suggested. “You have your not mets and your mets,” he explained, referencing Gary Keller’s book, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent. “The people that you have met, you would call your sphere database,” Lamothe said. “The real money making activity is taking that database... and then breaking it down into segments and groups. Really understand what’s in it. Think of your database as a way to get information to your clients.”

Lamothe modified Keller’s "33 Touch" system and actually contacts his database 66 times a year, and says it results in a million dollar business, where his team creates over $400 million GCI per year. He encourages agents to start now with messaging and growing their contact database, “do it from this point forward," he said. Lamothe found that events were key in growing his database, called “Touchplan Events” and said he feels it would take agents 24 months to create similar value and results.

Details of Lamothe’s Database Touchplan 

• 66+ touches (many broken down around events)

• 4 events per year - portraits in the park, movie event, Thanksgiving pie event, ice cream social

• 16 calls quarterly (4 around each event)

• 2 emails (requesting registration), 1 voicemail and 1 last-minute email, 1 text & 1 voicemail for each event (6 touches per event)

• Mailer (12 per year - 4 centered around event)

• 2 video emails per month to entire database (24 per year)

• 13 recurring holidays where past clients get a text message

• 1 educational webinar per month (12 total)

• 2 touches to each client on social media per year

Harrelson focused on the long term business plan Lamothe has created. Klesitz explained that is where agents experience “the shift from salesperson to business owner,” and begin to understand the lifetime value of each customer.

How to Make Cold Calling Work

“For every 100 dials, you’re probably going to speak to 7 people, so this is not the best job for someone whose dollar per hour is pretty high.” Lamothe revealed. He said if you used an overseas team, you’d probably see 1-2 nurtures per 1,000 calls and that it would take a year for an appointment and then 10% convert to a closed sale, making his investment $80 each. “It’s a long game, just like your database,” Lamothe said. "You should expect to burn that cash for the first 12 months," but in the second year you'll see a large return, he explained, and you’ll get some deals in that first year, too.

How to Warm Leads with Social Media Advertising

Harrelson shared that while both cold calling and calling leads yourself are effective ways to grow your database. He recommended that segmenting a social media audience is work as well, but results in a warmer lead than a cold call. "That's what RG specializes in," Frank explained. Harrelson shared that he has spent $1,298 on FB ads and has created 294 fully opted in seller leads from a What’s My Home Worth campaign. Harrelson has uploaded individual community segments to Facebook and targets them directly with messaging and exact neighborhood images, with a pocket area properties. An ad copy example, Harrelson shared, may be, “Attention Grand Dunes property owners, another property recently sold that could have impacted the value of property in Grand Dunes. Find out what your property is worth now.” Since these campaigns are run through the Real Geeks CRM, they are targeted and nurtured. Harrelson has 700-800 niche home value campaigns and uses cloned, not new creative in his ads.

Lamothe also calls, mails, but also retargets website visitors as listings go live in specific communities, and changes messaging as properties move through the real estate cycle in neighborhood (new, pending, offer, sold). Lamothe focuses two neighborhoods based on price point and zip code when running Facebook ads. “If you’d like an offer on your home within 24 hours, click now,” results in high conversion in Lamothe’s area. See a sample ad here. 

Lamothe also shared that targeting buyers with a follow up Facebook campaign using a mid-level, “move up” home specific to a 15 mile radius was very successful. He said this type of ad could be used for an entire database segment, even people in the active met list, due to its relevancy. This type of ad typically brings in 2 transactions, as it targets existing home owners who would sell their existing home when buying a new one. Lamothe said that in these campaigns, 2/100 are legitimate buyers.

Radio Ads & Syndicated Referral Systems Create Interest and Demand

Lamothe also uses radio ads (spending $10K annually)  and uses messaging that brands the company as a while and seeks to solve a problem. He says the ads rotate messaging based on options that show they are unlike any other agent in their market. They offer renovation loans, offers to buy homes outright, full listing packages, and a menu based approach of options with competitive listings. This competitive approach was taken once Lamothe realized that "Almost every appointment had an offer from OpenDoor or Zillow before the seller had been contacted. Lamothe had to find a way to be unique.

Lamothe suggests using an indirect circle prospecting script when calling, such as, “Good morning Mr. Brown. This is Steve with Keller Williams. We’re calling to notify you that we recently sold a home in your neighborhood. We had several offers on that home, do you happen to know of anyone that’s considering making a move in the next 12 months?” After letting them respond, the virtual assistant then says, “Have you yourself considered leaving the neighborhood, or do you just love it so much, you’re going to die in the home?”

As a recap, Klesitz and Harrelson shared resources discussed on the show and Harrelson underlined that Lamothe’s events were key to building his sphere because he went deeper than his competition. "There’s so many ways to build a business,” Harrleson said. “Choose a path and you go deep on that path."

Lead Flow Resources

• Dave Ramsey https://www.daveramsey.com/elp/real-estate-agents

• HomeLife https://www.homelifeus.com/

• Agent Pronto https://agentpronto.com/

• FastExpert https://www.fastexpert.com/

• Referral Exchange https://www.referralexchange.com/agents-web/

• Glen Beck https://www.realestateagentsitrust.com/

• UpNest https://www.upnest.com/

Skiptracing Email Harvesting Tools

• Cole Realty Resource https://www.coleinformation.com/real-estate/

• Exact Dial https://exactdial.com/

• Remine https://www.remine.com/

Here is a transcription of the entire discussion:

Frank Klesitz:

Here we go. All right. Hey everyone, it's Frank Klesitz. Welcome to another live show of Keeping It Real. You're going to learn today four ways to get listings. At the time of this recording, you can check out YouTube and look at the date, but we're entering the spring selling season of 2021. May not feel spring given most of the country is under a snowstorm right now, but this is where the leads come in and people thinking of selling their home in March and April as you guys all know. I'm here with my co-host, Greg Harrelson and a big thanks to a Real Geeks at putting on Keeping It Real. Our job is to get the detail that you need from people that are really crushing it and doing it well in real estate, so you can model what they're doing for yourself and your business to succeed.

Frank Klesitz:

A couple of housekeeping tips first is all the shows, we've been doing this show for I think maybe six years, about six or seven years. Go check out keepingitreal.com, keepingitreal.com, and you can go watch all the previous episodes. They're all completely educational, and you'll meet some of the top players in real estate from around the country that are doing a lot of business and with really good interviews because we're your hosts and they're great. You can also opt in and subscribe to the show. You'll only get notifications of the show on the Keeping It Real page, all right. You won't get any emails about anything else, and we're also on iTunes.

Frank Klesitz:

You can subscribe to the Real Geeks Facebook channel, and those are all the ways you can stay in touch. Co-host here is Greg Harrelson. Greg say hi.

Greg Harrelson:

Hey everybody, looking forward to another great show. Hopefully, you all got some value out of the show that we had a few weeks ago with Brendan. I know that was hot, and we're going to take a totally different direction today, and now start really focusing in on the listing side. I'm excited to see what comes out of this.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah. The last show, the previous one with Brendan was all about you have for the most part a buyer lead come in from your website, I mean internet lead. Maybe even like a light seller lead, like somebody wants to find out what their home is worth and Brendan gave us this incredible lead follow-up action plan. If you watched the previous video, the previous episode for a solid lead follow-up system with diagrams, like operational diagrams, what to do that-

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

... that's something you got to check out. Today, Steve welcome. Say hi my friend.

Steve LaMothe:

Good morning.

Frank Klesitz:

You made it.

Steve LaMothe:

Sorry for being a little behind. Yes.

Greg Harrelson:

No, you're good.

Frank Klesitz:

No, you're all set man.

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. Obviously, he's on the West Coast, but well that's right. You guys are both on the West Coast. I'm thinking good morning. It's 2:00 where I am.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah. It's still good morning here, it's 11 a.m.

Greg Harrelson:

That's right.

Frank Klesitz:

Steve really quick, let's get right into it. You are probably one of the more.... I don't know the rankings of one, two, or three, but you're in the top couple listing agent, not necessarily something that runs a whole bunch of transactions with their team, but just to give the audience some perspective, how many homes did you sell last year, and how many of those were listings that you took?

Steve LaMothe:

We closed 135 units last year, totaling right under 55 million and 90 of those were listing signs and pretty much, I'm the only listing agent. I think we had one closing that was a listing from one of our team agents.

Frank Klesitz:

Got it and last year, just give us the makeup of your support team that helped you do that.

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah. Last year, our core team that was not newly hired towards the end was one full-time ops person who is listening manager/pre-listing, everything catch-all. Then we had two outside sales people that were virtual assistants, and then two full-time buyer's agents, and then I'd call her half of an admin. She is a showing partner/does the mail and in-person stuff that's low task stuff for our team.

Frank Klesitz:

You're pretty thin?

Steve LaMothe:

Very thin, yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

Very thin.

Steve LaMothe:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Frank Klesitz:

Okay. The title of today's interview is four ways to get more listings essentially, and let's just start off with the four things that we're going to share in this video, in this interview is the four ways that you get most of your listing, Steve. If I'm correct, let me go through them is you have a meticulously managed database. Your database is pretty incredible. I want to go deeper on how you organized your database and what the definition of a database is, and really how you work all your past client and sphere relationships without being a pest. They use you to list the home or refer you. That's the first thing I'll talk about Greg.

Frank Klesitz:

Second is cold calling. Some straight up cold calling, whether it's yourself, or you've hired some people to call homeowners to ask them if they're interested in getting offer on their home. I like to learn more about that and how that works, if it still works. Given all the technology out there, is it even worthwhile? Apparently since you're doing it, I'm sure it is. I'd like to know some of the details of that. Third is you run ads on Facebook and Google ads, pay-per-click Google ads for getting an offer on your home. Not so much find out what your home is worth, but from what I'm understanding, you run ads for someone to get an instant offer on their home. Is that correct?

Steve LaMothe:

Yes.

Frank Klesitz:

Got it. Okay, so a little bit difference in the message in there from what you more traditionally see with a seller lead type of ad. Then finally, you took a deep dive in the Sacramento market on buying radio. Is that correct?

Steve LaMothe:

Yes, amid the pandemic.

Frank Klesitz:

Right in the middle of the pandemic, you made a radio buy, that's right. Yeah.

Steve LaMothe:

Go big.

Frank Klesitz:

I think where we should start the interview off today is those are the four things we're going to cover, so let's go deep on those four things today. Let's talk about where most of your business comes from. The majority of your money is made on which of those four pillars?

Steve LaMothe:

Definitely referral, sphere. I lump referrals together in one, group agent to agent, sphere, sphere referrals and then past client referrals, and then repeat customers, people we've serviced seven years ago who are repeating again. Then I do lump the referral syndicates I call them, HomeLight, Dave Ramsey, Opendoor all into one group. That's the number one as a percentage, right? Then the rest are split pretty equally between prospecting and marketing based. Gary Keller says, "You want to be prospecting-based marketing enhanced." As you scale your own time, you can afford... All marketing is, is just buying your time back as you run out of it honestly.

Frank Klesitz:

Got it. You put the referrals from third-party sources inside the database. Is that correct do you think of in terms of database thing?

Steve LaMothe:

It's considered a referral to me. It's like a referral from an agent, similar cost of sale.

Frank Klesitz:

Fair enough.

Steve LaMothe:

It's not a big component of our business, nor am I planning to make it that. I look at that as something that can get taken away like that, and I'm not going to build that as a real pillar of my lead gen.

Frank Klesitz:

Let's start there then before we get into your past clients and steer, and Greg feel free to ask any questions here because you know a lot about working with third party providers and their leads to come in.

Greg Harrelson:

I sure do.

Frank Klesitz:

Who do you buy direct pay on type of referral leads from again? Who are those sources, the listings?

Steve LaMothe:

Well, Dave started charging for his service, but I don't buy any referral leads. HomeLight, it's a 25% referral or something like that. To me, if I can add scale by partnering with those and we have a lot of closed transactions, so we're going to get quite a few referrals, right? Then Dave's system I think costs 350 a month, but Dave's system is more of a strategic partnership because I'm a Dave Ramsey follower and have been for 10 years. I just like his clients. It's a good client to have. The only what I would say aggregator we pay is Zillow at a very small spend, and we've been slowly cutting that back. It's a strategic zip code that we really wanted. Of the aggregators, that's the only one we actually pay on a monthly basis besides Dave.

Frank Klesitz:

How much business do you get from Dave in HomeLight?

Steve LaMothe:

Both of them are very small. I would say I've closed more Dave Ramsey referrals, just because I think I speak the language and those people resonate with that, so I have high conversion. I think last year, we did somewhere around nine transactions sides because some might be a seller buyer, right? Four or five listings and the rest were buyer sides. In HomeLight, I think we closed one deal last year. Just like any other internet lead, and I think that's the thing to remember is even if it's Dave or HomeLight, they're doing the same advertising that we are, Facebook, PPC and they're just getting them to opt in with several more questions. They're further down the funnel versus like, "Hey, I want your name and phone number."

Steve LaMothe:

They go, "I want your name, phone number. Are you selling or buying? How much would you like? What is your timeframe?" Every question you add adds another 25 bucks to the cost of that lead.

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

What's the qualification for somebody in the audience that maybe want to go check out partner Dave Ramsey or HomeLight? You just know what they look for?

Steve LaMothe:

Dave is looking for someone who's been an agent for four years, and you have to have at least 25 sales per year I believe for those four years. It's pretty heavily screened and then HomeLight, I think anyone can sign up for HomeLight, but their algorithm uses sales statistics to refer you based on where that buyer or seller is thinking of moving. You need to have sales in that zip code or area. Both take heavy management to get set up and keep up to date, and it's almost like its own little CRM. If you're going to opt in for one, just know how it works.

Frank Klesitz:

Greg, what are your thoughts on those sources?

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. First of all, I think these sources are fantastic and there's multiple. I just wrote down a list. He said Dave Ramsey, HomeLight, there's Agent Pronto, Fast Expert, referral free [crosstalk 00:10:30].

Frank Klesitz:

Whoa, slow down. Hold on. Let's hear them all. Go Greg.

Greg Harrelson:

All right, slow down.

Frank Klesitz:

Tell us where someone can go to basically buy those types of referral listings.

Greg Harrelson:

Okay. First of all, let me say something about this. You use the term buy, okay. I want to make sure that we clarify this for the consumer. There's certain things like a Dave Ramsey where you can go ahead and you can pay a fee upfront or reoccurring, and then there might be some back-end referral fee in addition to that. That would be to me more buying, or go to Zillow and you can buy leads, right? Now with HomeLight, you're not buying anything, you're pay for performance. They're going to send you leads and you pay if that lead performs and you perform in a form of referral fee. I just want to make sure there's no buy-in to this.

Greg Harrelson:

There's just a back-end referral fee if you perform, but HomeLight, Agent Pronto, Fast Expert, Referral Machine, Glenn Beck you can do that. What is it? Gosh. I keeps thinking nest, that's not nest. I can't remember exactly what the other one is, but...

Steve LaMothe:

UpNest.

Greg Harrelson:

UpNest, UpNest.

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah.

Greg Harrelson:

That's all I have right there Frank. All of these are pay on performance, okay. I love what Steve says that it's important to know that they do have their algorithms, and they're going to direct traffic based on what they know about you, but the lead flow, they've got plenty of lead flow. I've got agents in my own office that probably do 20 listing closings off of HomeLight. I got a few agents that probably do at least 20 off a HomeLight alone. Okay, and that's not including any buyer business they get from HomeLight. That's just seller business, but the key is, is the most important thing that's influencing their algorithm is going to be how quickly you respond, how quickly you update and things like that.

Greg Harrelson:

They're monitoring your activities in addition to where your sales are, and how you relate to their portal is going to influence how much business that they're going to send your way. I'm sure there's a lot of hidden factors that I would not even know, but if you're going to play in this game, you got to understand they police it better than anybody in the industry.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, you're taking to the edge of their employee I would assume.

Greg Harrelson:

Yes. If you're willing to do and follow up the proper way, you will be rewarded. You just got to know how to play the game, and the game is not hard. The game is should be a minimum standard for real estate agents. The challenge is, is we're so poor as an industry in making notes and following up and doing all these things that these companies will lose their tails financially if they don't actually put high policing on us.

Frank Klesitz:

That's a good tip. Those are some solid resources everyone can go toward to maybe a referral fee or a flat fee, plus referral fee model of someone who can just send you leads, right Steve?

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah, 100% and I think that it's a real estate team without being on a team, right? They're taking all the upfront cost of the marketing, and they have years of that marketing track record, HomeLight in particular, but I think you're also susceptible. Don't let this be your leg, because you're susceptible to HomeLight taking that business at some point. Just like Zillow and their flex offering, Zillow saw Dave Ramsey and HomeLight getting closer to the consumer. Zillow's model is going to be moving towards the pay by referral, heavily tracked, heavy accountability on their agents to update nodes and update calls, but they're going to be able to use that data, how many calls does it take to get to an appointment, right? They're chasing the same things that real estate teams are chasing.

Frank Klesitz:

Let's move into database. I almost call it section five. The fifth way is partnering with other lead providers than what we just discussed, but you talked about long-term profitability, which is really coming down to all the contacts you have that you built relationships over the years that convert or to a sale, or you stay in touch with the past clients and sphere. Why don't you share with the audience, give us a little lesson if you will of how you've organized your database and how you stay in touch with it? Teach the audience what you've done, so that they can model it too.

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah. I would start with, and I believe that your database is your business and I've been on an independent agent. I've been on a big team, and I had to launch my own team, right? I've had a lot of experience at the highest of levels with tens of thousands of leads, and not knowing what was in that database, or not having it segmented. It was just a repository of contact info. Having learned those mistakes, I created a database philosophy per se, and you should break your people up into two groups, right? If you know that MREA, your have your not mets and your mets, right? I think you should take it deeper...

Frank Klesitz:

Let me just jump in. That's the book, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent?

Steve LaMothe:

Ah.

Frank Klesitz:

Many people probably consider that one of the Bible if you will of how to become a real estate professional and do well. Go to Amazon and check out The Millionaire Real Estate Agent book. Gary Keller wrote it and it's wonderful, and the concepts that Steve's going to talk about are in that book, right Steve?

Steve LaMothe:

Yes, definitely. It's a great business book whether you're an agent or any kind of business, but you break your database into two groups, which is your people that you have not met yet, and the people that you have met. The people you have met, you would call those your sphere database, right? I think the real money making activity is taking that database, and then breaking it down into segments and groups because you may have met someone, but they're not going to refer you business because you're not close to them, or you don't have that relationship yet, right? The whole goal with that sphere database is break it down, really understand what's in it.

Steve LaMothe:

Our sphere database is probably 1900 strong, thousand past clients which I would have a whole section of past clients. It's different than your whole sphere database because you may know someone, but they're not a past client. Sphere, engage everyone that you know, and then have a segment for your past clients, so you can clearly delineate who you've done business with and who you haven't, right? Then in your past clients, I would recommend breaking those up into four groups. Group C is someone who you've done business with and then for whatever reason, you never really talked to them after that point of sale, right? Not that you didn't try, but they're not the type of person that really cares to talk to their real estate agent after the sale. That's a group C.

Steve LaMothe:

A group B is someone that had a great experience, and you think would refer you and would pick up the phone if you called them, or would talk to you at the grocery store when you see them. Group A is someone who you know has referred or has referred once, but not multiple times, had a great experience and that group... Every group that you segment should get smaller and smaller, right? Then we have a group called our raving fans, which are people who have referred at least one deal, or will refer one deal per year and we keep that updated and constantly review that. We treat those people differently, and I think the real key is whether it's your sphere or met database or non-mets, if you have a very good philosophy of how to break those contacts up into groups, you have special messaging for each group.

Steve LaMothe:

You're not going to send a text to your group C and say, "Hey, it's Steve. I'm thinking of you and was curious if you want to get together for five minutes," right? Or let's say a big problem we have in California, we move so many of our sellers out of state that when we text them, we don't want to say, "Hey, do you want our vendor list for Sacramento," because 60% of our sellers leave the state, and that vendor list is not relevant to them at all, right? Think of your database as a way for you to get messaging to them and also, it allows you to have scale and manage more contacts at a higher level.

Frank Klesitz:

Steve, how long did it take you to do that because that sounds exhausting?

Steve LaMothe:

I mean it took six months to really gets get it all dialed in and it's still not a 100%...

Frank Klesitz:

I mean you went name by name, by name-

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah, we printed it out.

Frank Klesitz:

... and classified them.

Steve LaMothe:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes.

Frank Klesitz:

What motivated you to do that?

Steve LaMothe:

Well, I was on a big team within Keller Williams, top 100 team. I mean we're talking a $4 million GCI team, right? I witnessed all the challenges that we had with that team going from 100 units to 500 units, and three agents to 25 agents. We were spending close to 60K a month on advertising filling this database, but we had no idea what was in it and our referral rate was 10%. I watched for five years as we were trying to build this team all of these challenges, and I was blessed with an opportunity to start from scratch. I figured I had one chance to do this right.

Steve LaMothe:

It was of high value to me to get it, and Gary Keller says, "If you have 1260 people in a database and you market to them effectively with a 33 touch that is items of value and good content, you should be able to run a million dollar business and 100% accurate, you can."

Frank Klesitz:

Wow. Wow. Greg, I want to ask you a question.

Greg Harrelson:

Sure.

Frank Klesitz:

You have a lot of agents to work for you.

Greg Harrelson:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Frank Klesitz:

How many of your agents have done what Steve has done?

Greg Harrelson:

Well, in my case, the majority because I do it at the top level. Basically, I've created all of the databases or the CRMs to house the databases, the segmentation and all the drips and everything. We've created basically as a company, and then they're putting their databases in those particular systems. Now would all the agents go and do everything he said? Very seldom are you going to see an agent do all that. I mean I really [crosstalk 00:21:51].

Frank Klesitz:

Like name by name, A, B, C-

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

... specifications?

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. The trick is at least when I get new agents, what I'm doing is I'm training them from their first name they ever put in their database to put it in there the right way.

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah, nailed it.

Greg Harrelson:

That's what's critical is you put it in the right way on the first time and so you don't have to go back, but we've had to go back and do the same thing to ours or similar, similar, but different. We do some things not like what he's doing, but similar, but most of my agents are going to do that. They're just going to do it from day one.

Frank Klesitz:

Steve, last question on database. What is the 33 touch? What do you send these people now that you probably have the whole list, everyone? What do they get, and then you probably have your more niche segments, like your As and your Bs?

Steve LaMothe:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Frank Klesitz:

Could you share with the audience what your touch plan is for your database or...

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

We're not coming across as a pest, right?

Steve LaMothe:

Well and I'll add one point to what Greg said. It was a great point. Even if you don't have the patience or the wherewithal to go back and do all that, at least start now. It's super easy to do it from this point forward one at a time for your 20, 40, 60 transactions a year, right? Do it from this point forward because five years from now, I promise you, you're going to see multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars of return on that short 2-minute effort to just be organized right now, but to get to the point of our sphere, and this is something that we constantly work on, but in The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, it says there's a 33 touches over 12 months. We've doubled that.

Steve LaMothe:

We have somewhere around 66 touches in our sphere plan. That looks like four events every year. COVID really hurt that, but we do portraits in the park. Last year, we got to do that because we can stay far apart. A movie event where we rent the theater out, and that's a very effective event, people love it. Then we do of course a pie event for Thanksgiving and then this year, we're still trying to figure out what that fourth event is. We're going to do maybe an ice cream social something, and the reason for the events is not for the people that come. In my first pie event, there was only 46 people. I ordered 100 pies, I wasted a lot of money, but the key is you can call your database four times around that event, and you can also build your email campaigns and any text campaigns around that.

Steve LaMothe:

It gives you something to call, rather than just calling and saying, "Hey, do you know anybody that wants to buy or sell," right? Four events, two...

Greg Harrelson:

Can I interrupt real quick because-

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah.

Greg Harrelson:

... I tell you, we need to put a little bit more emphasis on what he just said, okay because most people... Steve, what you just shared and what I want the audience to hear is you're getting more mileage out of this pie thing that you're doing, this pie event. You're getting more mileage than the average agent who's actually doing a pie event. See, there's people that are going to do pie events and they're going to go out there and say, "Okay..." They're going to email everybody and say, "Hey, let me know if you want to pie or text everybody and let me know if you want a pie," and they're going to have people come to them or they're going to go to them, right?

Greg Harrelson:

What I hear you saying is you're being a lot more strategic and you're saying, "Okay..." I'm visual visualizing that you're saying probably a month before the pie event, send this out and then two weeks before the pie event, text this out, and then make sure we call everybody a week before the pie event and then after the pie event, do this. I would imagine you have some sort of formula there and that right there, you're getting so many touches around that one event. Like you said, it's everything outside of the pie. It's the outskirts of the pie, it's the outer layers of that whole pie event that's really important to your database. I mean I think that's important because I think people do think that they don't do enough.

Frank Klesitz:

Steve, excuse the cost, so you're not a pest.

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah. As a team leader, it's how do you get your agents to call clients, right? How do you get them to call and I'm not afraid to call, but other people are. There's nothing better than calling clients and saying, "Hey, we rented out a whole movie theater. Would you like to come? It's free," right? Yes, we have a very strategic plan. We try to be strategic. Oftentimes, we're scrambling at the last minute to execute this, but usually, we hit him with the mailer. We mail one piece of mail to all of our sphere, right? Our whole sphere 1600, 1800 people, one time per month and four of those mailers are centered around invitations to the event. We're not just sending them these pre-canned cards, right? They get hit with the mailer.

Steve LaMothe:

A week after the mailer hits, we'll call and then they get several... We usually send two email invitations before the event, and we have them register, so we know who's registered and not, so we're not double hitting them and whatnot. Then a week before the event, I'll drop a voicemail to our whole sphere database. Then usually a few days before the event, right at the last minute, I drop that's all of those same invitations email, text, and a voicemail drop to our whole database of not mets. I do that at the last minute, knowing that they don't have enough time to register, but I want them to see what we do for our database, right? It's a great way to touch the other 10,000 people I haven't met with a call to action of value versus like, "Hey, are you considering buying or selling your home?"

Frank Klesitz:

I love some good takeaways so far. Signing up for these referral sources like Greg shared and what you used to, whether it's paid monthly or referrals. The fact that you start from day one actually having a list of all of your past clients and actually having a list of the people you know somewhere further segmented down by A, Bs and Cs. You want to go really deep which is what you've done Steve. I think one of the big challenges everyone has is how do I work the people I know for business about being a pest, and it's the strategy of holding four events a year of some type. The event is one of the excuses, or the reasons to reach out, that leads maybe to a business conversation. Am I hearing right, Steve?

Steve LaMothe:

Yep. Super easy and I want these guys to get value today. Four events, that's four touches and then around those events are phone calls, emails, texts, and then also mail, right? We send 12 mailers to our database of sphere people every year. There's four, 12 and then so what is that? 26. I'm not going to add it all up, but I'll just tell you what we did.

Frank Klesitz:

Eighteen, okay.

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah. Oh yeah, 18 because I was counting the phone calls per event. Mail 12 touches, four events and then we try to call quarterly around the events, that's another four touches. Oftentimes, we're calling them more than quarterly, but let's just leave it at that, and then we get two video emails per month to our database. That goes to everyone in our whole pipe, everyone, thousands of people, but our sphere gets that too. Then we have 13 holidays where we're texting them on that are recurring every year, and they don't change the day of the year like fourth of July right or Christmas. Every past client in our database gets that text message. Not all of our spheres get that text, not yet anyways.

Steve LaMothe:

I'm still trying to work on that, but they'll get 12 text messages on those holidays and then let me just think. I'm trying to make sure I hit all those. Our goal this year was to do one webinar per month as well, an educational webinar. We're also sending our database an email invite to that webinar every time that we do it, and then also our goal is touch every past client on social media at least twice per year. We're trying to add them on social too and re-target them there. I don't know how many touches it is, probably more 80 or 100.

Frank Klesitz:

It's enough. Yeah.

Steve LaMothe:

We have it all in a spreadsheet.

Frank Klesitz:

How much business comes from your database here? How much money that system that you shared with us that could seem tedious to sit up and do? How much money last year did that system make you from working your database like that? Commissions.

Steve LaMothe:

At least 400,000 GCI, at least. Yeah, I don't have my spreadsheet up in front of me, but well, let me just tell you this. Our closings this year so far, we're at I think 16 closings. Over half are from our sphere database and referrals, and so 160,000 GCIs from referrals already this year.

Frank Klesitz:

Set up referral relationships, work a database. With time, we can go super deep on what you just shared there Steve, but I think there's a principle there of you've got it together, you segment it, you have a constant communication plan that adds value. Sorry Greg, what was your question?

Greg Harrelson:

I was going to say for somebody that's starting out, okay, and they say, "Man, this is just brilliant. I want to start doing this," if you're starting today, today's the first day and you implemented a good many of these strategies, at what point do you think that one would start seeing some results? Because I don't want people to think they can start this tomorrow and like, "Oh, you know what, I'm going to get five come list me calls in the next two weeks." Could you just share with them what would the expectations be? You do, this you're investing in your future. How long do you think it becomes you measure something?

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah, this is your foundation of your company, right? This is not a lead generation campaign, right? This is how you treat your clients long term, so they stay your clients, right? I want to give that disclaimer. If you don't have past clients yet, you're not going to see those returns from your sphere at all I don't think. I think this is a 24 month at least game plan to start building... this is a philosophy of how we do business. Keep in mind and as we get later into the other legs of how we do business, that's why I keep filling my database, right? That's why I'm spending money on radio and internet and all of that stuff. I want to keep filling it, so I can keep adding past clients because they're fruitful.

Steve LaMothe:

Once I do have them as a past client, I know I'm going to touch them and squeeze as much opportunity out of them as I can resource.

Frank Klesitz:

Referral sources...

Greg Harrelson:

Do you see Frank how important that is? How important that is because see... but think of what the long term... Most people are calculating ROI on I spent X in January, I got X amount of leads in January, and I converted X amount of those leads by February and that's their ROI, but see, he's saying I'm spending X amount of money on leads, sure there's going to be some conversion in the short term, but he's going to add the short-term conversion with the long-term conversion of what he's going to do with some of those people that he captures that are not interested in doing right now that no one makes any money off of. He's going to make money on the back end and on the front end. [Crosstalk 00:34:19] That's why it's teamwork.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, that's the shift where you go from salesperson to business owner.

Greg Harrelson:

Yes.

Frank Klesitz:

Isn't it?

Steve LaMothe:

I want to interject. Zillow, Opendoor, and this is why we do what we do, right? This is why I have this philosophy and Elevate was built this way. Zillow, Opendoor, and all these other disruptors will take that cost, that opportunity costs to acquire the customer from the very beginning to zero, and probably even negative so that they can have that customer. If you look at the businesses at the highest level, they have something called... Frank, you probably know this. It's a customer value, right?

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, lifetime value.

Steve LaMothe:

Lifetime value for customer...

Frank Klesitz:

They'll take a loss.

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

They'll take a loss just to get the customer because they can afford to outspend the competition and make it up long term on the back, and that's why the capital is there to fuel it.

Steve LaMothe:

Hence, why Opendoors buying homes at a loss, right? It's an opportunity cost for them because they're playing the infinite game, not the today game. Anyone who's calculating ROI on the month that they get the lead is you're totally not getting the picture. You have to have a 12-month horizon, and then look at it and be okay. Just like an investment, you have to be okay losing that money. If you're not willing to wait out whatever campaign you're going to run, 12 months, you shouldn't do it, honestly.

Frank Klesitz:

Well, that leads to the next pillar. We talked so far about I'd say referral sources from third parties and meticulously communicated with touch plan database. I really like set around events as one of the reasons to reach out to your database, where you don't feel like a pest. That's one of the biggest objections of what do I say and what do I do to communicate. Let's now move on to the other pillar, cold calling, straight up cold calling. Now I just know out of this that obviously before you do cold calling, you're going to be getting people that aren't even thinking about selling their home that they happen to call out of the blue. All right, which requires a great nurture plan.

Frank Klesitz:

Before we even go into this pillar, you want to make sure you have your database nurture system set up, probably before you invest in cold calling. Am I correct, Steve?

Steve LaMothe:

Yes, yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah. Why don't you tell us your thoughts behind cold calling, and how you do it, the dials, the contacts, who you call? Give us the rundown of how you make it work.

Steve LaMothe:

Got it, and I will put the disclaimer, like just as important as your database philosophy is for your sphere. For your non-mets, it's just as important. You have to be very clear about what constitutes a hot lead, what constitutes someone a nurture lead, right? What is the time horizon you're going to place on your different categories of leads, so that how to follow up with them. Again, it goes back to the messaging. How are you going to provide messaging to someone who says they want to sell in two years, not today, right? The KPIs on outbound cold calling are I will add that they're continuously going down, and it's becoming less effective as it was five, seven years ago, but it's still an effective way to find seller nurtures.

Steve LaMothe:

For every 100 dials, you're probably going to speak to seven people. This is not the best job for someone who's dollar per hour like me at this point is extremely high because you're not going to get a good return. If you're brand new, hammer the phones, but as you start to grow your business, you should offload this to a virtual assistant or something, but a hundred dials should get you seven to 10 contacts. You're going to need to make contact with probably 40 people before you get at least one verified nurture. If I personally was calling every 20 contacts, I could probably get a nurture. If you're sending this overseas, it's going to take them probably double the effort that it would you to generate someone who they get in rapport with to tell them yes, I'm interested in selling my home our.

Steve LaMothe:

Virtual assistants are making about a thousand dials a day, generating one to two nurtures per day. Then conversion on those, once you get the nurture, now you have to follow up with them and provide them value, and meet them and sell them. On average, it takes about 12 months for one of those nurturers to turn into an appointment, and my goal with these nurturers is around 10%. I'm happy if around 10% of those leads I generated 12 months ago are converting into a sale, an actual closed sale.

Frank Klesitz:

Wow.

Steve LaMothe:

It costs about 80 bucks per seller nurture. That's what I figured out. The real cost challenge I say with this methodology is if I'm the one following up on those leads, once we get them, I have to factor how much time I invested in that lead over the 12-month span to get in front of them and close that deal. If I'm investing 40 hours or 60 hours and my hourly wage is $800 an hour, you have to add that cost, right? You have to figure out what it costs you to do it, but I would say on average, it takes about 12 months. It's a long game just like your database.

Frank Klesitz:

Wow, so much to impact there. First off, what I heard is you're probably spending all in for your callers, what, two grand a month, $1500 a month?

Steve LaMothe:

They're 1500 each-

Frank Klesitz:

Okay, you have two?

Steve LaMothe:

... and you can probably save a little money there, I'm sure.

Frank Klesitz:

Okay. You're in a couple thousand bucks, so you got to spend a couple thousand bucks hiring callers for a year of cash outlay before you start getting your appointments?

Steve LaMothe:

Yep, 30 grand. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Frank Klesitz:

Thirty grand.

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

Okay, so let's get that...

Steve LaMothe:

You're going to close deals in that first year, you will. I mean if you're following up like you should, you're going to close some deals in the first year. You're not going to break even I don't think. You might if you're in a high price point area like mine, but you should expect to burn that cash for the first 12 months, but by year two, now you should have 400, 500 nurturers that say yes, I'm interested in selling my home in 12 months, 24 months, something like that.

Frank Klesitz:

Not very many appointments you're getting off those outbound calls, they're mostly nurturers?

Steve LaMothe:

No. I've never had them set an appointment off the initial call.

Frank Klesitz:

Interesting.

Steve LaMothe:

I'm sure I could, but if you're outsourcing this to the Philippines, imagine you getting a call from someone in the Philippines, what do you do? Click, right? It takes them more effort for sure.

Frank Klesitz:

The ROI is there for you.

Steve LaMothe:

Yes, yes. The way I look at this is what other ways are you going to get people who say they want to sell? Again, I go back to I'm competing against the disruptors, right? That's my competition 10 years from today, that's the way I look at it. I need to have a huge database, and I'm trying to get people way up the funnel before they could ever get in front of... I want to sell my house to Opendoor, Zillow or the next competitor that I have, right? What's better than calling someone two years out from when they're going to sell, and they build this connection to my brand and I'm their go-to? Oftentimes, they call me when they're ready to sell. Basically, "Hey Steve, we're ready to go, you're our guy."

Steve LaMothe:

Oftentimes, they're not interviewing, right? It's a relationship at that point because I've been speaking with them for two years.

Frank Klesitz:

Here's a couple thousand bucks a month you're out laying for hiring people to make phone calls to find people who are just thinking about selling the future, and just putting a couple people a day into the database, let your database do the work to build the relationship with them before any other competition does it.

Steve LaMothe:

Exactly and oftentimes, we pull referrals from those leads. They're valuable all the way up until when they're ready to sign or close, but there's not very many ways to get people who want to sell their home, unless you're spending serious money on direct mail, or big call to actions like radio. You can go to your database. You can go to outbound marketing or you can go to pure effort, which is cold call, door knocking, and neighborhood stuff, right? Well, I can't go door knock everyone, right? It's the fastest way for me to pay someone to get me leads. I know if I get a lead, I'm going to close it if they want to sell, right? I'm going to at least get the appointment. That's how I would get it.

Frank Klesitz:

Greg, what are your thoughts? Steve, you were a team and Steve outsourced much of his outbound cold calling overseas, and he's going just for straight nurtures. You run a very large brokerage where the agents are probably cold calling, and they're calling to work for appointments. I just want to hear your thoughts on cold calling to build sales.

Greg Harrelson:

Well, I think both are effective. If you have the money to invest to have other people, do it. Then I think you can make that investment and if you don't, you do it yourself, just like anything else. Okay. If you want to build a house, you can build it yourself, or you can hire someone to build the house. If you can hire somebody to cut your grass, go ahead and hire. If you can't, then do it yourself. The key is, is it's got to be done. That's what's important. Now I also think it's very interesting that he says that you haven't had any direct appointments set. Now if somebody's going to do it themselves, they should be setting direct appointments.

Steve LaMothe:

Yes, yes, for sure.

Frank Klesitz:

That's an American calling a highly skilled, yes.

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, yeah. There should be a plethora of business out there if that's going to be the route you're going. He's choosing to do it a different route, which is equally effective. It's just it's different. Different is not bad, it's not good, different is just different. Both of them work, so I think it's highly effective. Of course, there's enhanced ways to call now. Outbound prospecting is shifting. Like he said, you don't get as many people on the phone, but going to social media, creating custom audiences in social media, neighborhood after neighborhood, sending information, posting information to get them to opt in to either what's my home worth or something like that, you can create a huge list of people by doing that at a very low cost, and then you start calling that list.

Greg Harrelson:

Now you're shifting from a cold call to a warm call, and your conversion rate is going to be significantly higher by doing that. Those are some of the things that I'd be recommending to people.

Frank Klesitz:

That's what Real Geeks specializes in. If you guys are looking for a CRM, go check out Real Geeks because essentially, what they'll do is what's Greg saying is you can make a cold call, but just to shift it just slightly, which is the next pillar for you Steve we're going to talk about, is putting up ads on Google, putting up ads on the social media and Facebook that says basically, "Hey..." I mean the script when you're cold calling is essentially, "Would you like an offer on your home? I can tell you what your home is worth. Would you be interested in selling?" Right? You essentially take the same script and put in a Facebook ad, and you get the same script.

Greg Harrelson:

I'll give you an exact example, okay. I have spent $1298, let me just confirm that that is correct, on Facebook ads. I have created 294 fully opted in, meaning all data information, 294 seller leads off of a $1200 spend.

Frank Klesitz:

What was the offer in the ad?

Greg Harrelson:

It's the what's my home worth-

Frank Klesitz:

Got it.

Greg Harrelson:

... but I uploaded individual communities, so then it's not what is my home worth. It's...

Frank Klesitz:

What is my pocket area home worth.

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. What attention Grande Dunes Property Owners, another property recently sell that could have impacted the value of properties in the Grand Dunes find out what your home's worth now, and then the picture is an entrance sign of Grand Dunes. It's a custom audience of documented Grande Dunes Property Owners. Now it's like okay, my lead cost... so my average seller lead cost right now is $2.20, somewhere in that range. I can produce enough of them, where instead of just cold calling through white pages or whatever the mojo list and things like that that people are doing. I'm going in and focusing on calling these people that have actually opted in on these things, and the conversion ratios through the roof.

Greg Harrelson:

Then what I do is I'm running that through Real Geeks by the way. Then everyone that opts in, then I connect them, now they're going to get a monthly market activity report from Real Geeks. They're going to get a sold report from Real Geeks. There's two things through automation, and Real Geeks that's going to be hitting those people in addition to all the other touches that I have planned outside of Real Geeks.

Frank Klesitz:

Greg I'm curious, how many niche free value report campaigns are in your Facebook ad account?

Greg Harrelson:

700, 800.

Frank Klesitz:

Seriously?

Greg Harrelson:

I never do a blanket. Every one of them is...

Frank Klesitz:

You broke down your markets to 700 to 800 neighborhoods-

Greg Harrelson:

And buildings, yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

... with specific...

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah, who did that for you?

Frank Klesitz:

With messaging-

Greg Harrelson:

My staff.

Frank Klesitz:

... for each. Oh my goodness.

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. Well, specific message, it could be the same messaging. All I'm doing is...

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, just attention...

Greg Harrelson:

[Crosstalk 00:48:13]. It's not new creative, it's just cloning, but changing it a little bit. Yeah.

Steve LaMothe:

Are you pulling that data from Cole, do you know? Is that what they're doing?

Greg Harrelson:

I'm using Exact Dial.

Steve LaMothe:

Exact Dial. Okay, just drawing the neighborhood. Yep, okay. Yeah, smart...

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, you can draw the neighborhood, but I actually do a CSV export out of the county courthouse records, so I get the actual documented of property owners. Then I go to Exact Dial, have that data appended, then we go into custom audience on Facebook.

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah, I've got it.

Greg Harrelson:

Then what I can do to what Steve says here is think about how we can niche out now, okay, because then I can take my favorite communities that have custom audiences, and I can do a video on the latest real estate news for the Grand Dunes attention. Then I can do a video on a Grand Dunes's market report, say a market update for the Grand Dunes, do a video, and then I can go back to that same custom audience that's saved there, and now I'm just constantly using that as a way to generate mind share. I'll just call somebody else or...

Frank Klesitz:

Greg, that's just mind-blowing.

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

Steve, are you mind-blown?

Greg Harrelson:

I mean...

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah. I mean we're doing this at a smaller level, but yes, most definitely, if I had more people, I would do more of it.

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah.

Steve LaMothe:

Definitely.

Frank Klesitz:

Well, which leads to the next pillar. We talk so far about setting up referral sources and by the way everyone, I see your questions coming in. We're going to get to all of them here at the very end. Just sit tight and feel free to ask any questions because everyone wants no specifics. Referral sources from third parties, a very meticulously managed database segmented and properly communicated with with mailers and events and emails to stay in touch, but you're not a pest. Maybe you or agents on your team, or hiring overseas to consistently call homeowners to probably some type of compliant dialer, using phone numbers. You mentioned earlier Cole Realty resource Steve.

Steve LaMothe:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), that's what they're getting at.

Frank Klesitz:

That's where you're going to get the phone numbers-

Steve LaMothe:

Yep.

Frank Klesitz:

... for making those calls, all right, which are all by the way nurtures in your case which are going into database, which by the way, a great CRM is Real Geeks to put all this in. When segmenting all these A, B and C in your database and your sphere and all these nurtures, and many of the drip campaigns are created through that system, so go check it out. You're moving on now to Facebook ads and Google ads, which is one of your next pillars before we get to radio. We already got Greg's insights on how he sets up his campaigns, which is just mind-blowing 800. Okay, different campaigns in there. What do you do for your Facebook and Google leads, and what are the messages that you put out, Steve? What's your cost per opt-in and what you spend, and tell us how those come into your database?

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah. I think that you need to... and Greg that's crazy. I wish I had more of them, but we are running a very similar strategy, but I think you need to separate two things when you're advertising on social media, specifically Facebook. I think Facebook is definitely crowded now, and there's a lot of agents running the wrong advertising entirely. Oftentimes, I'll see a picture of the agent and it will say, "I'm Joe real estate agent. Call me if you'd like to buy or sell," and it's just a picture of them. I feel like gosh Facebook is just making gobs of money off of these people because that's not what the consumer wants. Remember, Facebook is it's actually interruptive marketing, right?

Steve LaMothe:

You're going down the Facebook feed and the advertising is interrupting the client. You need to have a call to action that's relevant to that consumer. I break it into two sections. One is lead generation, which are trying to actually get customers contact info who want to buy or sell. Then the second leg within the social sphere is retargeting. Our clients that we already have in our database, what are we sending them? What call to actions? What are we wanting to tell them the story, right? For sellers specific, we break it down to the neighborhood level. We have two neighborhoods that were specifically targeting on social media based on price point and zip code.

Steve LaMothe:

I wish I had 800 because I'd do it at a much higher level, but again it goes back to being omnipresent. We're not just doing that on social media. We're calling them, we're doing events, we're mailing to that neighborhood so they really know our brand, but those messages are whether we have a listing in that neighborhood and it goes live, so we'll do just listed retargeting to those specific custom audiences. Then every stage, once it goes pending, we'll change the message, run a new ad to the same audience. Once it sells change, the message, run a new ad, and now we're targeting with a real call to action, like get the value of your home, or we have buyers for your home now, submit your information if you're considering selling your home.

Steve LaMothe:

For sellers, it's very specific. If you'd like an offer on your home, property values are going up in Sacramento, we have buyers if you'd like an offer on your home within 24 hours, click now, right? Then we do mess around with home value, but I think the direct offer in our market pretty sophisticated client, Opendoor and Zillow are heavily in our... Again, it's moved away from the home value to a cash offer, get what your home can sell for now with a cash offer. That call to action is most definitely generating far more interest than our home values.

Frank Klesitz:

Let me try my screen. Let's take a look at one of your ads. Is this one of your ads, Steve?

Steve LaMothe:

Yes.

Frank Klesitz:

That works well?

Steve LaMothe:

Dang, you went and just called me out, huh?

Frank Klesitz:

I got them.

Steve LaMothe:

Yes, yes.

Frank Klesitz:

That's it.

Steve LaMothe:

Absolutely. This home just closed yesterday actually. That's a brand new messaging. That same video has been repurposed two or three different times.

Frank Klesitz:

Got it.

Steve LaMothe:

Okay.

Frank Klesitz:

By the way...

Steve LaMothe:

We also hit a direct mail campaign around that same property, and we've probably generated five leads off of that campaign when that home listed, when it went under contract, when it inevitably sold. We're just getting ready to fire off and just sold card. If I'm a newer agent and I don't have thousands of dollars or staff to pull this off, here's what I would do. I would not go target sellers just yet. I would go run targeted campaigns for buyers and keep in mind just like cold calling these are not, I'm going to buy a home right now. This is you have to have some kind of follow-up campaign no matter... even if you get a referral from your database, oftentimes they're not ready to go for three to six months.

Steve LaMothe:

No matter what, you need to be good at your follow-up. I would go take a mid-level home in your market. Not on the lowest end, not on the highest end, but a move up buyer, and then I would run ads with a move up level home that is a specific to an area, like a hot area people want to be in. I would do it to the whole 15-mile radius, and I've had more success targeting sellers that way than I have running specific, like I get the value of your home or cash offer so far. So far, I found...

Frank Klesitz:

Steve, I had this pause here. This is incredibly insightful for the audience. Everyone listen, if you want to get seller leads on Facebook, you could run an ad to find out what your home is worth. You can run an ad and you get a cash offer on your home, right? You run an ad for maybe attending a seller workshop, right? You may run an ad where we just sold a home for 45,000 over asking price, and I have buyers and come talk to me. I just showed you here. What Steve's saying here is don't run any of those to start, right Steve?

Steve LaMothe:

Right.

Frank Klesitz:

What you're saying is-

Steve LaMothe:

It's too expensive.

Frank Klesitz:

... find maybe an upper middle-class home, a trade-up home in your market and run it as a Facebook ad saying, "Hey, is it time for you to get out of your small house and upgrade to a pool, or upgrade something you really want? Basically, is it time for you to trade in your home and move up?" Check out what's for sale in this hot area that's a pretty desirable home for a lot of people, and just run it 15 miles around the entire city because you can't really drill it down because of what Facebook calls a special ad category. The leads that come in are buyer leads because they're interested in buying, right Steve?

Steve LaMothe:

Yep.

Frank Klesitz:

Since it's a trade-up home, they have a home to sell-

Steve LaMothe:

Right.

Frank Klesitz:

... and you got more benefit from that ad than anything else. Am I correct?

Steve LaMothe:

I have found... and again, a heavy majority of our ad spend is not going to Facebook, but after testing this for two years, I would say that the best way to generate the best quality leads is getting a trade-up home, one picture and a short call to action. Those buyers tend to be legitimate buyers like two and a hundred or legitimate buyers, but also have to sell a home, right? If you're good with your follow-up, you're going to get an opportunity.

Steve LaMothe:

The cash offer call to action is a newer option on Facebook that we've been working and I still think there's value there, but I think if you're a newer agent and you don't have the capability to buy that home, you're going to be at a disadvantage and honestly, it's going to be much harder to convert if you're not able to buy that home, or make them an offer, or a subject matter expert yet on that component.

Frank Klesitz:

Let's move on, there's one last pillar we'll touch on very briefly just for a few minutes Steve, and then let's answer some questions Greg and have some overtime. Does that sound good?

Greg Harrelson:

Sure.

Steve LaMothe:

Sounds good.

Frank Klesitz:

The interview today was four or five ways, four, but it was really five ways to get listings. We talked so far about third-party referrals, and Greg gave us a whole bunch of options, your existing past client and sphere database that's meticulously organized and communicated with, ideally around maybe four events a year, which is a good excuse to communicate. All right. Then we talked about cold calling, whether it's Americans doing it, agents on your team going for the appointment, or hiring overseas joint nurturers that go on your database. Then we touched on a little bit of Facebook, just some of the messages that go out there. By the way, one of the things I showed everyone is if you go to the Facebook ad library and you type in any page, you can see everyone's ads.

Steve LaMothe:

This is a great nugget by the way.

Frank Klesitz:

I went to the Wall Street Journal top 100 teams, and I took all their ads. I had a VA go through and find the Facebook pages, the top 100 teams in United States and take a look at all the ads to find similarities in the messaging, so you know what's working for response. Facebook ad library, you can check that out. Facebook made that information public due to privacy concerns.

Steve LaMothe:

Namely Zillow, Opendoor, and all those big competitors as well.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, you can go to Zillow and see all their Facebook ads realtor. I mean anyone running a Facebook page, you can see all the ads. When someone says they're running Facebook ads, like, "Oh interesting, let's take a look at them." With that, the last one is I'll talk about radio. Obviously, radio is expensive. We don't have a lot of time to talk about radio, and that's not going to appeal to a lot of people here. The question I want to ask you about radio is the messaging.

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

When you're spending those kind of checks, by the way, what are you spending on radio right now, Steve?

Steve LaMothe:

Just shy of 10,000 a month.

Frank Klesitz:

Okay, so we won't have to go down to ROI on that, and the leads are very good when they come in from radio. When you're writing that kind of check and you have to write the spot, what they're going to say, you obsess over the messaging. Am I correct?

Steve LaMothe:

Yes, yes.

Frank Klesitz:

What's the message?

Steve LaMothe:

It's the message of our whole company and when I had to found our team. It's only two and a half years old now, right? I obsessed over what is the problem we're trying to solve as a real estate agent, right? Because let's face it, there's other options now and those options are getting cheaper by the day. Our unique value proposition of our team if I can break it into one word, it's having options. We rotate messaging based on... Elevate Realty Group can provide you options unlike any other agent in our market. We can provide you an instant offer. We'll buy the house, let you move out when you want you pick, your close date, you can stay for up to 30 days at no cost. We have a renovation loan.

Steve LaMothe:

We call it concierge where we'll loan up to $20,000 for repair and the seller can pay us back at closing. It's more of a partnership on a flip renovate now, pay later. Then our full package listing package where we'll pay for inspections upfront, pay for a deep clean upfront, pay for staging upfront. If we're getting a full fee and then more of a menu menu-based approach from there if we have a price conscious seller, and we're competing on it and I want that listing, I'll start giving them a menu of options they can choose to select and deselect, but really, it's three core options and the reason I did that is because what I believe will wind up happening, and guys you got to remember, I've gone on close to 15,000 listing appointments over seven years, right?

Steve LaMothe:

Literally, thousands and thousands of meetings and the consumer over the last two or three years consistently commission objections, going to things like HomeLight first because they're spending so much money on pay-per-click, they get to the consumer first, right? Now with Opendoor and Zillow, almost every appointment... Whoa.

Frank Klesitz:

[Inaudible 01:02:48] Steve. Yeah, yeah.

Steve LaMothe:

Am I muted?

Frank Klesitz:

No, you're all set.

Greg Harrelson:

You're good, you're good.

Steve LaMothe:

Okay. My mic almost fell. Almost every appointment I've gone on in the last six months had an offer from Opendoor or Zillow first. I want that to sink in. It is becoming commonplace for the consumer to go to there first, so I want to be able to provide that option and not get the call. It's not that I'm going to go buy those homes. It's that I want to have it too, or at least tell the consumer about it, so that I'm the one that's there between the investor and the consumer to be part of that transaction. That's the key is coming up with you have to be unique when it comes to what service you're providing. If our only uniqueness is that we provide great customer service, well I don't think there's really anything unique about that.

Steve LaMothe:

I think that's expected when you're getting a 5% or 6% commission at this point in time.

Frank Klesitz:

The messaging you're putting out to the marketplace is I help you understand all of your options and there's many ways to sell a home, and I'll personalize the plan that's best for you?

Steve LaMothe:

Not even understand them, we provide you options unlike anyone else, right? Very point blank. I can give you something that no one else in our market can.

Frank Klesitz:

Cool. Let's move on just because we're over a little bit of time. Steve, lots of information. Thank you. This is something someone can take to think about how do you go about getting listings. I think the big takeaway here is we start off with databases, where most people should start before they go and spend more of the more expensive options, and maybe even some Facebook ads. A couple questions. Let's see here. The mailers, do you have an example or an idea of what you sent out every month to your database?

Steve LaMothe:

Can I share my screen?

Frank Klesitz:

Sure. Just don't share the whole screen. It's really small to see on YouTube.

Steve LaMothe:

Oh.

Frank Klesitz:

When you click screen share on Zoom, just share the window and make that window look a rectangle-

Steve LaMothe:

Okay.

Frank Klesitz:

... and it will be easy for the audience to see that way on the screen share.

Steve LaMothe:

All right. Well, let me pull something up real quick. I'll just show you.

Frank Klesitz:

For drip campaigns, Real Geeks. You can load all of the drip campaigns, all the contacts that come in from your radio in this case, all the nurtures that come in from the calling team, all the leads that come in from Facebook, that's what you use Greg. Real Geeks follows up with those. Your entire database of past clients and spheres segmented by A, Bs, and Cs, put it inside Real Geeks. All the drip campaigns can be automated directly through that.

Steve LaMothe:

I will say I want to add to that. No matter what kind of lead generation you're doing, the fortune is in the follow-up. If you're chasing now business only, you're going to get tapped out, or you're going to spend a lot of money to get there, right? Eighty percent of your business and closings will come from your follow-up. If you haven't set automation up or drip campaigns, I wouldn't do anything until you have that set up honestly with really clear messaging and value to the consumer. Don't have just canned emails. You have to have it custom tailored to their specific situation. I'm clicking screen share, and it says host disabled participant.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah. Problem solved. Hang on, done.

Steve LaMothe:

Okay. Can you see my screen?

Frank Klesitz:

Not yet.

Steve LaMothe:

Okay. Hold on.

Frank Klesitz:

Yay.

Steve LaMothe:

Does that work?

Frank Klesitz:

Perfect.

Steve LaMothe:

Okay. Here's one. I mean this is going to the printer as we speak, right? Sample front, record breaking sale, 700,000. We use text codes where it drops a link if they text, and then we get their phone number in our database. Then we also have a home valuation website as well.

Frank Klesitz:

Great.

Steve LaMothe:

Right? This is also a farm to us. We are omnipresent there with listings and mailers and social media marketing, whatnot.

Frank Klesitz:

Very nice. Thanks for sharing that.

Steve LaMothe:

We're using Canva to do that by the way.

Frank Klesitz:

Cool.

Steve LaMothe:

Okay?

Frank Klesitz:

Really nice. Let's see here. Who could run your PPC for you? Really, it's Real Geeks.

Steve LaMothe:

Yep.

Frank Klesitz:

They can do a great job of that over in the paperclip campaigns. You want someone very knowledgeable doing that. Pay-per-click requires a lot of management with regard to negative keyword management of which most people type in certain phrases, you don't want it to show up. Someone has to go in there and take a look at the phrases and run the negative campaigns all the time. It's probably one of the biggest things with pay-per-click. Let's see what else. I lost my spot. When your VAs are making their outbound phone calls, just how do they open the phone? Give me the script that someone uses just to open the phone conversation when somebody's calling.

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah. These are pure circle prospecting, and to improve the results, we've been calling around listings that we've either listed or sold. The script is, "Good morning Mr. Brown. This is Steve with Keller Williams. We're calling to notify you that we recently sold a home in your neighborhood. We had several offers on that home. Do you happen to know of anyone that's considering making a move in the next 12 to 24 months," and let them respond, right? If they say, "Oh no, I don't know anyone, "Well, have you yourself considered leaving the neighborhood, or do you just love it so much, you're going to die in the home," right? You're really digging on... first, you make it about the neighbor, then you make it about that specific owner.

Frank Klesitz:

You're going a little more indirect than straight up? "Do you want to sell your house?"

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah, if you go straight to you want to sell your house, you're never going to get any nurtures honestly.

Frank Klesitz:

That's essentially...

Steve LaMothe:

It may be really tough.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah. Okay, cool.

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

Well Steve, that's all I got man. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you so much for giving so much great information. If anyone has any referrals for Steve up in Sacramento, I'm sure he'll close them and do a good job at them.

Steve LaMothe:

We will take those, yes.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, yeah.

Steve LaMothe:

I appreciate it.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, he wasn't paid. He came on here totally free to just share his knowledge with all of us to learn. Steve, I really thank you for being here my friend. Greg and I just have a 20-minute conversation without you being here, just a little recap for everyone after the show. Thank you so much.

Steve LaMothe:

Thank you. Hey Greg, I followed you from afar and very insightful. I would love to connect on that 800 neighborhood on ads...

Frank Klesitz:

800 Facebook campaign, yeah.

Steve LaMothe:

That's crazy. All right guys.

Frank Klesitz:

Hey listen, if you want to private message me on Facebook, we can set up a call and I can explain to you what I'm doing and how I did it at scale in order to keep costs down.

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah, I would love that. Cool.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, sure.

Steve LaMothe:

Thanks for it.

Frank Klesitz:

Thank you so much.

Steve LaMothe:

Yeah, thank you. Thanks guys.

Frank Klesitz:

Craig, what'd you learn?

Greg Harrelson:

What I'm present to is there's so many ways to build a business and as long as you choose a lane, you choose a path and you go deep in that path. He's doing a lot of work on his database, right? Because past customers and centers of influence or sphere, 50% of his business, right? You're not going to get that much business from your centers of influence and sphere if you just use the standard well, I'm going to mail them once a month, or I'm going to mail them every other month, and then I'll call them once a quarter. It takes more than that. Ten years ago, you could get away with calling them once a quarter, or maybe 15 years ago. Then 10 years, it was call them once a quarter, email them twice a month.

Greg Harrelson:

Now it's like call them once a quarter, email them twice a month, then you do this on social media, then you do this on direct mail, and that's what I see that he's done. He's gone deeper and deeper than his competition most likely, deeper than his competition in that pillar, and that's where success comes from. We need to decrease the amount of things that we do and increase the depth of the doing on the things that we're going to do.

Frank Klesitz:

His database, going through a thousand past clients because Steve's backstory by the way, he's with a big team that moved.

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

He went through and probably called his broker, because he was probably on a high internet lead cold calling transaction treadmill and decided all right, I've been doing this for a while, give me the names and phone numbers and addresses of all my past clients, let me put them into a CRM, figure out which ones moved here and which ones moved out of state. Super painful and time consuming, right?

Greg Harrelson:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Frank Klesitz:

Then from there, let me go through my Facebook, let me go through my cellphone and I believe if the numbers were correct, I think he has 900 sphere. People that he just knows, maybe he has a transaction with and enter all those people, and let alone finding their contact information. This took him six months.

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, and some of those people that he calls his sphere might not have been his fear in the beginning. He's creating sphere-

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, constantly he's adding to him...

Greg Harrelson:

... because he's doing such a good job.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah.

Greg Harrelson:

He's learning how to take a stranger, turn them into an acquaintance, and then take an acquaintance and turn them into an advocate or a sphere.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah.

Greg Harrelson:

He's manufacturing sphere which is fantastic.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, put small in there, segments them down by A, B, and C and puts very specific action plans, or type of follow-up plans for each of those segments.

Greg Harrelson:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Frank Klesitz:

Really centered around the four events a year I think is really probably where it sounds like he gets his most bang for a buck, and what he said in there was not the event. He doesn't really care about the pies, let alone who even comes and gets them. It's the excuse to call where it's not just one by yourself. You're inviting them something.

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

Also, as he builds his team will make it easier from the higher agents who don't want to do the cold calls, but they can call the database and invite events to start getting conversations started.

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. His events brings everyone's guard down.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah.

Greg Harrelson:

It brings everyone's guard down. It doesn't feel like it's a sell. He's not just communicating to sell them something. He's communicating to give them something it brings the guard down. It really softens up the conversation, and people are going to reciprocate by talking to him because he's coming with a give, not an ask.

Frank Klesitz:

The second thing that stood out to me which I think is a... Obviously, database is this big thing to go do right now. I think anyone could leave this right now by changing up one of their Facebook campaigns, especially for all these customers-

Greg Harrelson:

Sure. Yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

... is what's the message you brought to the market, and I love putting a little more expensive, home not a luxury, like home a trade-up home, whatever your market is with some type of ad copy that I'm sure is available. You can find online of it's time to sell the one you've been in and get something nicer for yourself now that you're stuck at home with COVID, and you learned the value of the house, right?

Greg Harrelson:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Frank Klesitz:

With that opt-in, the opt-ins, the registrations on your home search site that come in from that specific ad, those leads need to be treated better because they probably have a home to sell and you have to slow down that leap follow, but I just assumed this went by.

Greg Harrelson:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Frank Klesitz:

I thought that was pretty insightful.

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, I think it's fantastic.

Frank Klesitz:

Cool. Well, let's take a look here. Let's see, do we have any other questions at all?

Greg Harrelson:

I can tell you one thing Frank, I got 1% on my battery. I just looked at it.

Frank Klesitz:

Oh.

Greg Harrelson:

If I happen to disappear everybody, you understand what's happening, but again I can appreciate the depth that everything he did, he seemed to go deeper in. He's going to just continue to grow his business well beyond where he is right now if he continues that methodology. There's no question. His trajectory... Oh good. Hey, can you just plug that in real quick? I just got somebody... My good bud...

Frank Klesitz:

That's happened to me in the middle of the meeting, all my batteries died.

Greg Harrelson:

My good friend Abe Safa who I do much business with, just take the black, plug out. I just text him. He lives next door and I said, "Do you have a charger," and then all of a sudden, my son just comes in with his charger.

Frank Klesitz:

No and Greg, I just... Man dude, you just continue to impress me.

Greg Harrelson:

What's that?

Frank Klesitz:

The fact that you went through, I don't know Myrtle Beach where basically your main office is, and you basically had to go in I'm assuming and drawing little areas of little pockets of neighborhoods, all the way even down to the building, 800 times, 800 little niches of neighborhoods for the most part. Then you would go to county records or something like Cole and Cole Realty and get the first name, last name, property address, mailing address that you could probably get a penny a record, depending upon where you get that data from. Then you went to a third party source, and you appended all the phone numbers that probably come back to that address, which generally if you're going to do that append a mailing address, not property headers.

Frank Klesitz:

That's a tip by the way, and email addresses. You had, I don't know, over time 800 spreadsheets. Okay.

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. Well, I mean look, Frank, I was just getting on the computer right now to see if there's any way I could find this old video. You and I did a video when you first started your business-

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah.

Greg Harrelson:

... and you were the hustler, right? You were going around...

Frank Klesitz:

Flying around, meeting everyone, all excited.

Greg Harrelson:

... every convention. You caught me somewhere. You and I did a video. I don't know how many years ago that was. It was years and years ago, and I started doing this back then. Now what I did is it didn't have anything to do with Facebook back then, but I'm starting building...

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, I remember that. It was segmenting your databases back...

Greg Harrelson:

I was building databases.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah.

Greg Harrelson:

I was segmenting my databases, I don't know...

Frank Klesitz:

By neighborhood.

Greg Harrelson:

... 12, 13 years ago by neighborhood, so I've been doing that. Because I did that, then as the technology advances and new opportunities show up and there's new ways of doing something, because I had my databases segmented the right way years and years ago, it was easy for me to just be, "Oh Facebook, custom audiences, already got the databases, already had them." Now I update them. Every two years, I update them, but I had in Infusionsoft years ago. I think I had 700 condo buildings segmented in my email database in Infusionsoft, and another 800 residential communities. I think Infusionsoft themselves I think I had the most tags in my database of anybody in Infusionsoft at that time.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah. I remember back in that conversation, at the time, I believe you had about 30 agents, and they would all make about 30... They would speak to 30 people a day. That was the goal I think.

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. So many years ago, yeah. I don't remember but...

Frank Klesitz:

I would say, "Greg, your office speaks to 900 people a day?" Like, "Ah, yeah, sure." Oh my God, I mean it blows my mind, right?

Greg Harrelson:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Frank Klesitz:

At that time because I never saw that. It was so new to me and being the marketing guy, I'm like, "My goodness, are they asking for email addresses and information to stay in touch?" I think it wasn't much. It was like, "Nah, not so much." I'm like, "Man, you really need to get these guys to slow down and ask for their best content if they stay in touch." Then when you put in the database, tag the neighborhood they live in, or tag the area they're interested in buying it, and you started that seven or eight years ago.

Greg Harrelson:

I probably started that 10 years ago.

Frank Klesitz:

Ten years.

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. I started building databases... I was lucky I attended the first business mastery course that Tony Robbins ever did. I was actually in the first room, and there was only 150 people in that room. That was when a guy named Chet Holmes was still alive, and he was Tony Robbins' partner.

Frank Klesitz:

He wrote The Ultimate Sales Machine book. Great book.

Greg Harrelson:

The Ultimate Sales Machine, and there was a segment on there that he taught at the business mastery course on monetizing the database. Basically it was really how to deliver value, but what was interesting is that he came from a publishing company and he was selling products. It was how to deliver value, and he was speaking on how can you deliver value if you're trying to sell a product to an audience. I was struggling for a little while because I'm like, "Well, what is our product? We're a service-based industry. We're not a product-based industry." I really thought about it and thought about and I said, "Well, our product is information. Our freemium has to be information." Okay.

Frank Klesitz:

Which has to be very niche and relevant.

Greg Harrelson:

It has to be niche and relevant, and then to take it a little bit deeper, we have to compete against Google because Google is actually their value is information. Then when I realized that okay, I thought my value was information, well Google's going to beat me because people are going to go to Google before they come to Greg Harrelson if it's just what's the importance of a home inspection. They're going to actually go to Google and Google that stuff, right? Then what I realize is that the real value that we can deliver to our database is the interpretation of information, and that's the future right now is as agents, our value is not delivering information to the database because too many people are doing that.

Greg Harrelson:

What our value is now is the interpretation of information that people already have. When the consumer goes to Google and says what's my homework, they get a zestimate, then they get something from Trulia and Redfin and Movado and you name it. They get 10 different zestimate or estimates of their home, and not one of them are the same. They're going to range anywhere from, let's just say a $200,000 property. It could range from 200 to 275 to $300,000. Somebody's property, they go and look at all the estimates. They're going to have about a $50 to $100,000 range. When it was only the zestimate given evaluation, then it was because right or wrong because everyone's going to sit here and say, "Well, it's the worst valuation ever."

Greg Harrelson:

I'm not trying to argue that. I'm saying that when there was only one, then the consumer actually thought they knew what the value of their property is. Now that there's 15, now the consumer's more confused. Information is not the value, it's the interpretation. A video on confused on what your property's worth, tired of inconsistent valuations on the internet, here's how you determine the real value of your property, that would be a great video. Well, I'm saying that because I made it up. I'm a little biased there, but that would be a great example of an interpretation, versus just giving information, here's what your property's worth.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah.

Greg Harrelson:

Interpretation is very desired right now. Anybody that's working on database thinks that...

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, bringing on FaceTime and the answer to that by the way is you got to see the house. Someone needs to go inside and see the unique features.

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

You probably want a stranger going through your home, but just FaceTime me and walk me through-

Greg Harrelson:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

... and I can give you a more accurate estimate of what it's worth.

Greg Harrelson:

Fantastic way to do it, a great way to capture it.

Frank Klesitz:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

Let's think about that guys...

Greg Harrelson:

It's really evolving.

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah.

Greg Harrelson:

This whole thing, it's like things don't die, things evolve. When I were talking about cold calling, it's like man, cold calling is it is an old thing, right? That's old stuff, but calling is not necessarily old, but how we're generating the list may be totally different. Generating a lot of lists based on opt-ins, so then it becomes a warm call, it's a more efficient way of doing it these days.

Frank Klesitz:

Great stuff today. A couple other questions I want to answer. Kim asks, where do you find email addresses? Kim, it's called a skip trace.

Greg Harrelson:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Frank Klesitz:

Just Google skip trace-

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

... and you just want to use a compliant database that you put the name of the owner in there, you put the mailing address and the property address that you get from property records. Many companies will send you the detailed neighborhood data from property records. Cole information or Cole Resource Realty is a good place to start. PropStream is another one. There's a Remind...

Greg Harrelson:

We're using Exact Dial is what we're using.

Frank Klesitz:

Exact Dial. Yep, Exact Dial. You can also check out Remind. Remind might be something inside your MLS that you can use to get it. It's pretty cheap. It's where the money comes which is usually between three cents to 20 cents, 25 cents is finding the phone numbers and email addresses for that homeowner. That's really what I called. It's called an append or a skip trace, and you can go check out any sources to add that to the spreadsheet. Just basically adds an email column and phone number column, may be up to like seven even phone numbers about what's associated with the address and name. There you go, and what Greg did is he uploaded all those to Facebook to create an audience to market just to those people on that list, which is super niche.

Greg Harrelson:

Yep.

Frank Klesitz:

Pretty cool. All right. Yeah, I'm happy with everything else. Good stuff. Greg, good show today.

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. Yeah, man. I look forward to the next one.

Frank Klesitz:

We wanted to know four ways to get more listings. I got four ways. I think the two takeaways-

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah.

Frank Klesitz:

... two of those take requires some money. The two takeaways is a trade up Facebook ad and get very serious about the nurture program that you have with your existing list. All right, the existing database and the replay for this show is right here on YouTube. When we leave the show, it'll be right here for the replay, so you guys are all set. We'll see you next time.