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Blog Bulletproof Real Estate Lead Follow Up Plan w/ Brendan Bartic

This month’s Keeping It Real hosted by Frank Klesitz and Greg Harrelson summed up Brendan Bartic’s “Bulletproof Real Estate Lead Follow Up Plan.” Discussing the value of each lead as a person, and the need to nurture individuals on their home buying journey, Harrelson suggested a standard for agents to aspire to with clients. "If we courted all of our new leads like they were a new relationship,” he said, “it would be amazing!"

 



 

Click the links below to access Brendan's forms and flow charts referenced in the video above: 

What is a lead?

Before discussing the details of follow up, Bartic stressed the need for agents to understand that a lead is someone that has interest at some point. "Every single person that comes in has to ‘be processed or nourished 100%’," Bartic said, though he added that all need to be nurtured in different ways.

Bartic uses giveaways, radio ads, workshops and seminars, and traditional signage and advertising, alongside online advertising to attract and capture leads. Retargeting has been particularly successful for his team (who closed 230 transactions in 2020), and Klesitz suggested agents search The Bartic Group use the Facebook Ad Library (linked in the resources section below) to understand effective advertising language and images.

Once a lead comes in, Bartic’s team segments that person into one of two database categories, “met” and “haven’t met”. Describing online leads as “top of the funnel,” Klesitz had Bartic and Harrelson share their nurturing processes. Harrelson suggested that understanding a person’s motivation was important. “Do they really want to buy a property?” Harrelson asked. “Yes. Then they’re a good lead… Let the timeframe dictate what you’re going to do to incubate that opportunity so you’re still at the top of the mind whenever that time frame comes.”

Bartic further explained that as every lead represents a person with family and friends who could later be referred, his team responds as such. “We are looking at just trying to get into relationships and look at not every single person, not just as a turn and burn ‘Hey, I got this lead. They need to buy in the next 30 days. If not, I’m on to the next’.” Instead, Bartic evaluates whether the person’s needs can be “met” now and needs immediate engagement or if the person is considered an “unmet lead” and needs to be nurtured through automation. 

Harrelson and Bartic agreed that the relationship is very similar to courtship and, in most cases, requires time investment and multiple, consistent touches. "If we courted all of our new leads like they were a new relationship,” Harrelson explained, “it would be amazing!" Bartic agreed. “We have to court them over a period of time for that relationship to occur,” Bartic said.

Klesitz delved into the financial aspect of lead generation, asking Bartic for real advertising spend numbers in Bartic’s Denver area. Stating that his team spends $5-8 per general Facebook lead and that specific ads such as making an offer on a home, are about $15. Google adword PPC leads are closer to $40 per registration form completed. Bartic’s cost per lead numbers are determined by how much is spent on advertising, divided by how many people opted in.

Bulletproof, solid lead follow up is critical
Bartic shared his process for training his sales teams on follow up by referencing his flowcharts (linked below). “We’re going to call them [leads] immediately… right out of the gate,” Bartic said. “If they answer, then there’s a path that we’re going to take that allows us to move forward with them. If they don’t answer, we hang up immediately, and then we call back a second time. In the industry, we call this a “double-tap.” The key to that call is that it is ‘unbranded,’ with no company or call details being shared in the voicemail as that often causes people to call back.

Bartic went on to describe his F6 lead follow up plan where the agents put in 6 days of consistent effort with daily calls for 6 days. If there is no response then the lead is placed on a weekly automated contact list using a Mojo dialer. Typically Bartic said they see interest from a lead on the 5th or 6th call attempt where guilt is often used to get leads to respond and engage by asking the lead to call and let the hard-working agent who wants to help know if there is no interest. Often, his team finds they’ll get a response.

Nudge your leads
Bartic describes another technique called the ‘nudge text’ saying, “People respond to it like butter.” The nudge text results after no response are given to a voicemail. The voicemail is followed up with one text. When that text doesn’t produce a response, a second “Did you get my last text” message is sent 6 minutes later. Bartic explained that the nudge text is phenomenal at producing a response from a lead.

Once a lead is engaged, other tools are used such as customized market reports and handwritten notes (addresses are looked up through a service). Bartic explained that it’s important to use the lead’s name in all contact, from the personal note to the custom home search alerts. "We know that the personal touch part is critical," Bartic said. Using these techniques, lead response grows and percentages change. He shared that if only 1 call is made the response rate is 1-3%, but after implementing F6, that rate changes to 73%. "We have to go deeper, not wider,” Bartic reminded. 

As a review, the F6 plan includes the following steps:
• Call them immediately.
• Call a second time (unbranded).
• Call once every day for 6 days.
• On days 1-2, look up the lead’s physical mail address and send a handwritten note.
• After 6 attempts, with no response, categorize the lead as “unmet” and begin that follow-up sequence with email campaign drips and automated property searches set up which include the lead’s name, and personalized market updates, and a market report.
• Once the lead responds, build rapport and set an appointment asking, "...are nights or weekends better for you?"

Bartic feels that "People jump off the phone way too early,” rather than recognizing every call as an opportunity to build a relationship. He said that he’s had people who've never bought or sold a home with him refer ten people to him.

Overall, Bartic wants agents to know not to give up too early. "It takes time to convert internet leads," he said. To Bartic the lead always has potential, even when wrong information is given. "That's not a dead lead to me,” he said, “it's an 'I gotta do more work'." Harrelson and Klesitz agreed that gaining details about each lead and creating that relationship, is most important and helps agents stand out. "We've got to bring some of that personal connection back into our lives," said Harrelson.

Bartic Group Shared Resources

Timestamps:
00:00:00 Welcome back
00:03:28 Introduction to Brendan 
00:05:56 The definition of “lead”
00:08:09 FB ads
00:11:16 Finding the balance
00:13:02 A lead is a person
00:15:20 Brendan’s costs per lead
00:17:47 Bulletproof lead follow up
00:22:03 Follow up nudge text
00:25:48 Finding contact info and sending handwritten postcards
00:27:31 Creating growth by engaging with a higher percentage of leads
00:31:33 Using the person’s name for the property search
00:33:07 Brendan’s follow up diagram and scripting 
00:35:24 Role playing and the importance of knowing your leads
00:44:15 ROI
00:53:37 Q&A
01:03:15 Frank and Greg’s wrap up

Here is a transcription of the entire discussion:

 

Frank Klesitz:

We're live. What is up, everybody? This is Frank Klesitz. It's been a long time since I've seen many of you on The Keeping It Real Shows. If you go back to keepingitreal.com, we started these shows, I believe back in 2013 or '14, when Google Hangouts was actually, just came out around that. It's actually crazy to think how far technology has come. Only a few short years, but the Real Geeks team invited me back to host along with my partner, Greg Harrelson here, my co-host, some really good in-depth detailed, specific, actionable interviews for you, where it's our job to ask the detailed questions that you need and keep these interviews moving so you can get a plan to go sell more houses and make money.

 

Frank Klesitz:

That's what we're all about. I'm glad to be back. I'm Frank Klesitz. Co-Host Greg Harrelson. I'm going to introduce you to Brandon here shortly. All of his details are in the description. With that, a couple of housekeeping items. First is we're on YouTube Live. If you're on YouTube Live, that's probably the best place to watch this. It'll redirect you there in some way. There's a little chatbox there on the right for you, so feel free to ask any questions. If there's anything you want to know, feel free to ask in the chat.

 

Frank Klesitz:

I'll either interject and ask Brandon during the interview, and we'll have some time afterwards at the end where it is dedicated Q&A. Sound good? Second, I'd like you to subscribe to our new season of Keeping It Real. You go to keepingitreal.com, put your email address, and you will only receive Keeping It Real updates of the show, so you know what's going on, what top realtors are doing to sell houses. You won't get anything else. You're not going to get any other pitches or anything else to buy anything else. It's purely just subscribe to the show.

 

Frank Klesitz:

We're also on iTunes, YouTube. You can also join the Real Geeks Facebook page. You can like us in the Real Geeks Facebook page, and you'll see it there. With that, I think we're ready to rock. Greg Harrelson say, hi.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Man, I'm excited. I tell you what, I'm like you. I was just thinking when you said. What is it? Google what? Google ...

 

Frank Klesitz:

Google Hangouts.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Google Hangouts.

 

Frank Klesitz:

They just came out like in 2014. That was like a new technology.

 

Greg Harrelson:

That really kicked off a whole nother direction of us and the way that we curate content and we go out there and speak to the real estate industry. It's amazing how far we've come since then. It's awesome. That was what started it all off. So, I'm excited to be here. I know we're going to have a great guest today, and Brandon, I've got my notepad. I was actually calling some of my staff and said, "Make sure you watch this guy." I'm excited about not only himself, but what we're going to have over the rest of the year. Let's get rocking.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Real quick before we get into Brandon, before we do introduction, my farm is Vyral Marketing. We partner with Real Geeks and we help you stay in touch the database. That's all you're going to hear about that so you know a little bit who I am. Then Greg Harrelson are the top selling realtors in the nation, arguably some of the highest per agent productivity at his brokerage. Greg, just let us know maybe how many agents you have and how many homes are sold through the organization you run to give people some context of who you are.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, right now I have around 187, I think, 185, 187 agents broken into three different marketplaces all within the State of South Carolina, and we closed right at 3,500 transactions last year. A lot of transactions, a lot going on and having a lot of fun doing it, man, [crosstalk 00:03:22].

 

Frank Klesitz:

That is an incredible organization you built, man. With that, we're going to move on to Brandon. Brandon say, hello.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Hey, how's it going, everyone?

 

Frank Klesitz:

We're really glad to have you here, man. The title of this YouTube video is Bulletproof Lead Follow-up. If you click this on YouTube and you're watching live, Frank, get to the point, I want to know how to follow with my leads and convert them to business. I'm going to ask you to kind of the first question Brandon. You sold about, I believe in the writeup I have in front of me a lot of windows up about 230 homes last year, is that correct?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah. Well, our team sold about 230 last year. I also, like Greg, have a brokerage type setup, so we sold about 1500 homes with the brokerage. But yeah, and to be on here with Greg, I mean, Greg was probably the game changer that got me to this level. I mean, once we realized what he was utilizing with Real Geeks, and he was cutting edge so far ahead of his time that we started kind of doing everything he was doing and then, of course we tried to evolve at the best we could, but I really have to give thanks to Greg.

 

Brandon Bartic:

If it wasn't for you, I don't think I'd be sitting here today. First of all, thank you so much. It's an honor to be on this with you.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. You're welcome. I didn't realize that, but you're very welcome. I'm excited to learn from you, because I know that, like you said, you've taken it on your own direction and just seeing some of the small things that, or the few things that I've seen about what you got going on, it's like, hey, I'm going to take some notes myself. It's amazing how it goes full circle.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Love it, love it.

 

Frank Klesitz:

For our viewers here, if you're on the YouTube page, I'm going to post some assets for you that Brandon's shared with us, which we'll be covering today. The first is a PDF of Brandon's bulletproof buyer lead followup process. There we go, just four minutes of introductions, we're into the content guys. There's a link that should work. It's a public Google Drive file. Let me know if it doesn't for you in the chat. That says buyer lead follow-up plan. It's in the chat link. I'm also going to put these center of influence or sphere of influence, or sphere followup plan, like the diagram. I'll put that there in the chat for you guys.

 

Frank Klesitz:

In addition to that, when you have a seller lead coming in, probably from maybe instant offer or find out what your home is worth type opt-in, which we're going to talk about how do leads come in, I'm going to put that in the chat as well. So, you'll be able to follow along with those assets and pull them up as we talk about the buyer lead follow-up. Here's the promise for today, Brandon, you have dialed in, in great detail, a bulletproof real estate lead follow-up plan. We have an audience of real estate professionals here that are probably generated leads, many on the Real Geeks platform, but you could be doing on many platforms.

 

Frank Klesitz:

You got to follow up with these leads. I think the very first is the definition of a lead. It's a very loose definition for many real estate professionals. Let's talk about how you generate your leads and the offers you put out on AdWords, the offers that you put out on Facebook, and really people are ... How do you capture information where people are responding to? As soon as we know what leads we're talking about in the first place.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah. No, and Frank, that's the big thing. That word, lead, in classification is, it's just someone that has interest at some point. They could be sitting in their pajamas at two in the morning on Facebook and a little ad pops up that says, hey, curious how much your value has gone up in the last 10 years on your home? Click here to find out how much it's gone up. They click on that ad, put in some information and we have two different types of leads. One, they fill out the complete form and put an email, phone, and all this, or they just put in their address.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Frank, that's the big piece. Once we get that address, if we have the address, because they're going to put that in regardless, now we can go behind the scenes and not to say stock them, but hunt down the rest of that information later, or just market to them via direct mail, door knock them, or whatever it is. That's an entry point lead for a seller. For the buyers, we know the whole thing is they want to look at properties. On our pay-per-click, we have ads running that says, hey, look at denverloftsonline.com.

 

Brandon Bartic:

All the latest loft listings in Denver for you automatically for free. They click on that lead. They go look at one property on our website, and then a little pop-up, which we call a forced registration pops up saying, thank you for being on our website. If you'd like to see all the amazing properties that are available, we're going to need a little bit of information. They fill out that contact information form, and then of course that turns into a registration. Registration/lead. Once that comes in, then ... I guess, I can talk about all the lead sources.

 

Brandon Bartic:

We do radio, TV, we do all kinds of different things. Depends on what that entry point is. We still know that every single person that comes in has to be, in our phrase, processed or nurtured 100% [crosstalk 00:08:07].

 

Frank Klesitz:

Before we get in that processing, Brandon, because I want to talk a lot about those diagrams here. What are the Facebook pages that people could go to, to see some of the content you're publishing? What are the names of the pages you're running the ads in there? Do you happen to know?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Well, it wouldn't be through the pages. You can go to the Bartic Group Facebook page and you can see everything we're doing there. In addition to what we're doing, as far as the Facebook ads, it's also obviously the big thing right now, Frank, and I'm sure Greg knows, is retargeting. As soon as we have somebody even slightly interested that ends up on our site, we have retargeting ads that are popping this up over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again, where they're basically like, I see your bald head everywhere. It's like, but that's the amount of consistency we need to have to make sure that it's triggering it. Also, one of the bigger leads forms that we have that we really try focus on is we do giveaways on our Facebook page.

 

Brandon Bartic:

So, people call in for a giveaway for ... we do random things like Yeti cooler, the Dyson vacuum cleaners, all kinds of things. The entry point is still the same, however we get them into the top of the funnel, once we start that, we do investor seminars, buyer seminars, all these different things. We know that there's an incubation period that has to happen on average before any of these things are going to turn into a transaction. We're more concerned about the relationship, not, hey, we got a bunch of them. This person's not interested right now, so I'm just going to throw them away or I'm not going to mess with them.

 

Brandon Bartic:

For us, it's how many people can we put into our met database, meaning people that we've had a conversation with, interacted with, and then we have this other database called our haven't met. We nurture both of those databases very differently because we know that ... I always give the analogy of a big mining machine. The mining machine can process 10 tons of dirt an hour and process out all the gold, where a lot of agents are out there with a pan of gold in a river trying to just do it individually, and you have to have the machine working the system.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Before we get in that machine, I want to share a tip with all the viewers. You said your Facebook page is the Bartic Group, correct?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Correct.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Where you run the ads. For everyone watching here, this is the thing most people don't know, but you can use the Facebook ad library. Just Google Facebook ad library, and type in anyone's page, any page on Facebook, and you can see all the ads that run. As we talk about the types of leads that are coming in, I'm going to share my screen briefly. Brandon, these apparently are the Facebook ads that you run.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah, there's my head.

 

Frank Klesitz:

There we go. You can go do a search on anyone, any business, Zillow, I mean any agent, and actually see the ads that run. Here's an example, here is what you're curious what your home is worth. Someone goes there to the landing page, you could see all the details. But these are the types of ads, you could spend time researching the types of ads, the types of messages that are going out to the marketplace, whether it's on Facebook or direct mail, or whatever, maybe radio. Probably internet leads, we're talking AdWords and Facebook for the most part. Right?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yep.

 

Frank Klesitz:

You're capturing them all into one system, but they're general little more top of funnel is what you're saying.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Correct.

 

Frank Klesitz:

They need some time to nurture, which we alluded to in the description of 540 days.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Exactly right. As I said with ... I mean, we also do Zillow leads. There's a combination of these things, and as we were talking about a little bit earlier, it's just finding the right balance, right? A lot of people just think it's quantity, quantity, quantity. I need more leads, I need more leads. It's not the case. You need the amount of leads with just equal parts of time and investment of you nurturing them, and that's where you find that balance that really starts to produce.

 

Frank Klesitz:

One last question before we get into the nurture, which Greg, you're going to really help out with the scripting and some questions on what to say.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. I have something to comment on this too, if I can, before you get into your next thing, Frank, and that is, I just want to make an observation. I wrote down one of the challenges that I see in the industry. I love Brandon's opinion on this, is real estate agents have the tendency to determine the quality of lead based on the timeframe they believe that lead's going to convert. Okay. When we talk about how good is a lead, I would say, do they really want to buy a property? Yes? Then they're a great lead. But the agent is going to look at it as, but they really don't want to buy for six months so therefore the lead's no good.

 

Greg Harrelson:

I think we've made a mistake. What I'm picking up here, Brandon, is that you've recognized that, and so you understand that all leads are good. The timeframe may be different. So, you can be a great lead, but have a different timeframe and let the timeframe dictate what you're going to do to incubate that opportunity so you're still at the top of the mind whenever that timeframe comes. I just wanted to kind of throw that out there because that's what's going through my mind as you're talking.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah, and that's exactly right. Then it's also just looking at that word lead and switching it up and going, it's a person. That person might have a mom, a dad, a grandma refer your business. We are looking at just trying to get into relationships and look at not every single person as a turn and burn, hey, I got this lead, they need to buy in 30 days. If not, I'm onto the next. It's, is this person someone that I can work with over time? If they're not, then I put them in my haven't met bucket, my bigger kind of churning machine that we use more automation for, also mixed with personal touches, but I'm not going to invest so much personal touch into them.

 

Brandon Bartic:

But a lot of agents, as you know, they just don't have the back office system built, and so they get frustrated when they start in the internet lead game because they're like, I'm buying these leads, but I'm not getting anywhere. It's like, well, because the average turnaround time is way longer than you think, and you're just thinking that I'm spending 200 a lead from Realtor.com or Zillow or whatever it is and they should be buying right now. Well, as we all know, Greg, if that was the case, we'd all be kajillionaires, right? [inaudible 00:14:08] for $200 bought a house, it'd probably be the best day ever [crosstalk 00:14:13].

 

Greg Harrelson:

People need to understand that, like your new lead is actually some other realtor's old lead, and your old lead is actually going to be in some other realtor's new lead tomorrow. That's a mindset. If we actually looked at all of our leads and we courted all of our new leads, like they were new relationships, then it would be amazing, because the guy that gets the new lead tomorrow and sets an appointment and writes a contract in the next week was an old lead in somebody else's database that wasn't doing what you're talking about doing.

 

Brandon Bartic:

The words you used that jumped out at me was courted. I love that word. People have to look at it as you're courting this person. We're trying to go to the movies. We're going to hold hands. It's going to take a long time before we get married. I can't just meet you day one and be like, "Hey, want to get married?" I mean, some people do that. You might find that lucky once in a while, I don't know how many times it works out, but we have to court them over a period of time for that relationship to mature. Yeah, that's a great word.

 

Frank Klesitz:

The question in everyone's mind I want to get back to, and we're going to spend more time on the economics and profit of this, but just from some of the Facebook ads that you run, so you have some ads running, find out what your home is worth. Do you know what you're paying per lead or per opt-in on that page, roughly for the audience in Denver?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah. Well, for the Facebook ads, I mean, we're anywhere from $5 to about $7.50 cents per registration.

 

Frank Klesitz:

For a home value report. Then you also run the cash offer ones. What's your price you pay in Denver for get an offer on your home type of an ad, which is probably more stronger lead.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah. It goes up to about $15.

 

Frank Klesitz:

That's really good.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Frank Klesitz:

$15 is really good. I'm curious for search for homes. You probably have another page running search for homes type of ads. What are you paying for a buyer lead in Denver when someone registers on your, in this case, Real Geeks site to find out more about a property?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah. It's right around $25 right now.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Your seller leads are less than your buyer leads?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah. As it stands now, because of how hot our market is, I mean, we're such a heavy listing side market right now that we've been putting so much effort into those campaigns. Yeah, that is the heavier thing for us right now.

 

Frank Klesitz:

So, we're paying about $25 an opt-in off Facebook for find out what your buyer [crosstalk 00:16:34].

 

Brandon Bartic:

Registration. Yeah.

 

Frank Klesitz:

$15 for get an offer on your home. That's really good. Five to 750 for find out what your home is worth. You're doing a little of ad words. Do you know your cost per lead on AdWords is for those same types of things, what you're running right now, just to give the audience an idea of what you have to pay for leads maybe in Denver market today?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah. Well, so with the company that we utilize that it's doing it, you're asking for the cash offers or which ones for pay-per-click?

 

Frank Klesitz:

Whatever you're running on AdWords. AdWords is Google. Someone goes to Google and types in something. There's generally a higher search intent, a little more expensive. Your ads show up at the top of Google. We just gave some Facebook cost per leads. I'm just curious to know cost per lead on AdWords.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Average across the board on pay-per-click on AdWords is about 40.

 

Frank Klesitz:

$40 a lead?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Correct.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah. That's not per click guys. That's per lead. It only takes a few clicks to get there.

 

Brandon Bartic:

No, that's per registration form completed.

 

Frank Klesitz:

If you took your total ad spend for, let's say the month on that campaign, divided by how many people opted in, that's your cost per lead?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Correct.

 

Frank Klesitz:

That's what we're talking to get you guys caught up. Okay. You saw some of the offers, names, numbers, phone numbers are coming in. This is the big question. Let's talk about seller lead follow-up, bullet-proof seller lead follow-up. Brandon, I'm a new agent on your team, I want to convert these leads, what do I do? What's the plan?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah. No, and absolutely. I don't know if you want to pull up the flowchart or we can just talk about the flowchart, but a lot of times it's easier to see it. It's a tale of two stories, right? Of course, no matter what, we're going to call them immediately. When we call them right out of the gate, if they answer, then there's a path that we're going to take that's going to move forward with them. If they don't answer, we hang up immediately and then we call back a second time. In the industry, they call this a double tap. Some people think it doesn't work, some people think it works. We do that immediately. As we take them through this progression, then of course, you're going to leave a voicemail.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Now, when we go to leave a voicemail, if they don't answer the phone, we never tell them that we're in the industry. We never tell them that I'm with XYZ real estate company. It's hey, this is Brandon, I have a quick question for you. Can you give me a call back? Because we know if we can't get them on the phone, then we're never going to have a chance to talk to them about buying or selling real estate. We never use our real estate information, never have any of that in there. Then as it progresses, if we're still not able to talk to them, then we put them into our CRM, which we happen to use Real Geeks for years and years and years and have had great success with it.

 

Brandon Bartic:

But you can apply this system to any ... I mean, I coach agents all across the country that use XYZ CRM and have the exact same success with it the same way. All we're doing is, Greg knows, and I learned a lot of this from Greg, is we have to classify lead types and source them, of course. We bring them in with type buyer F1. When we talk about our F1 system, we just developed a hybrid system of different agents out there where for the first six days in a row, we do a certain amount of ... We call them every day, we text them every day, email them every day for six days in a row. On the seventh day, we rest. Then after that, we put them into a classification. Go ahead.

 

Frank Klesitz:

No, I said that's good. I like that.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Then we put them into a classification called NC Weekly, which means not contacted weekly, because what we found that was fascinating to us is if you continue to schedule actual followup calls forever and ever, and ever, the agents and myself gets so inundated with past due followups, that they were just going ... They get overwhelmed, they'll go, I have 163 past due followups. The tweak that we made is we said, okay, instead of continuing to schedule follow-up calls, put them into an NC weekly, use Mojo, or a dialer system to export them out weekly, and then call that list until you make contact, they either say, go to heck, we love you, or do something with them.

 

Brandon Bartic:

We do that every single week until that happens. That process was a real game changer for us as far as after the F6 process. Then we have campaigns set up. So we have a text campaign.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Brandon, can you be clear on F1 and F6. That's a follow-up I'm assuming.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah, exactly. Follow up one day, two day, day three, day four, day five, day six. When I go into my system, if I called them and they don't answer, I'm going to put in the notes anything that ... Well, if they didn't talk to them, there's probably not much notes. Then I'm just going to set a follow-up for F1. When I pull up my dashboard, I'm going to go, wow, okay, today I've got six F1s, three F2s, four F3s, five F4s, and then I go to all my people that I've actually spoken with, and so-

 

Frank Klesitz:

Which is what follow up stage they're in.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Exactly, exactly. We know, from doing this, usually, the highest level of return is on that fifth or sixth followup call because the person and the way the script is, is, hey, look, Frank, I'm not trying to bother you, but we just take such pride, and when someone says that they have a request for information in my organization, I want to do everything I can. So, if you don't have any interest, just give me a call back, let me know. So, it's the psychology of more the guilt. right? Human nature is, man, I'm going to call this guy back because he's probably not going to stop.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Then we had to leverage technology with a dialer to make sure that it wasn't taking so long to do every individual call after that six day process. Does that makes sense?

 

Frank Klesitz:

A lot discussed here. Let's step back and maybe summarize this. This is pretty sweet. So, lead comes in, how fast do you call them?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Immediately. Seconds, [crosstalk 00:22:08].

 

Frank Klesitz:

How do you know that? How do you know how fast your leads are being called?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Well, so in the Real Geeks system, we're able to reassign that lead, so our agents know if it's not addressed within five minutes, it's being assigned to the next agent. They know that clock, when they receive a new lead-

 

Frank Klesitz:

That's an incredible feature.

 

Brandon Bartic:

It's an incredible feature. It really is. That's kind of the thing, but it's also just a cultural thing going, look, we know that speed to lead is everything. I have team meetings where I go over all the stats, and hey, this is why it's so important. I think I got a lot of them probably from Real Geeks, but yeah, absolutely, speed to lead is-

 

Frank Klesitz:

Second thing, when you call, they don't answer, double tap.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Double tap.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Just call back right away, right?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah, hang up. Don't leave a message. Call back a second time.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Then leave a message?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Then leave a message, but not giving any contact information, just saying, Hey, this is, Brandon, I have a couple of questions for you. Can you give me a call back? They don't know who you are, why you're calling. Well, they don't have to. They will normally call you back out of curiosity.

 

Frank Klesitz:

So, an unbranded double tab.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Voicemail, yeah.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Voicemail. Guys, catch that? Okay. Now, you're calling email and texting every day for six days?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Correct.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Once a day?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Once a day. Yep. Usually, on the first day, depending on what time the lead comes in, they'll call twice that day. We usually try to double call that day, ,but it just depends. To the text campaign, and I don't know if I got this from Greg, I believe that was Greg that taught this, I mean, is the nudge text. So, you send a text right after you hang up the phone with them because you're going to click the workflow to start in the CRM or in Real Geeks. Then six minutes later, it sends what we call a nudge text, which says, "Hey, I'm not sure if you got my last text. I just wanted to make sure it went through."

 

Brandon Bartic:

The psychology behind Frank is so bizarre, and people will respond to that nudge text like butter. I don't know what it is with that [crosstalk 00:23:50].

 

Greg Harrelson:

The response rate to that is incredible.

 

Brandon Bartic:

It's insane.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, it's incredible.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah. I think I got it from you. When I heard it, I was like, really? I was like, that's going to make it? Sure enough, everybody on the team was like, "Man, the nudge text is amazing." I was like, "Thank you. Thank you."

 

Frank Klesitz:

Let me slow it down because this is gold. So, you call, leave a voicemail, and then I guess you text right away. They don't hear anything. Six minutes later, the nudge text gets their response.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Correct. Hey, did you get my last text? Question Mark.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah. Got it. Okay.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah, [crosstalk 00:24:26].

 

Frank Klesitz:

Then you're doing this every day for six days, then it's off, then it just goes into a bin.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yep. Also, well, the rest of the process too, is we're also setting, if it's a buyer lead, we're setting them up on a search on the site based upon, if we have any clue of what they're interested in, we automatically set them up on a search. Let's say Denver 300,000 to 400,000. If we have any indication of what they were looking at, then we'll do that. If we have no idea and it was just a random Facebook buyer lead, then we'll still just put them on a general campaign, Denver 350 to 450, and when they start getting the properties, because we know buyers want to see properties, if they're on the wrong campaign, they'll usually respond back to us and be like, hey, why are you sending me Denver properties? Oh my gosh, my fault. I'm so sorry.

 

Brandon Bartic:

When can I talk about your actual home search? Right. Again, it's still just an automated touch that they're going, oh wow, this guy's sending me properties. So, we set them up on the custom search. Then the last step for us is putting them on a market report. Now, you have the market report built into Real Geeks in the CRM. We also have a third party that we use, it's called Altos Research, and we just happen to use them because it's part of our CMA process that we do, and has really pretty graphs and charts and all of this great looking stuff that we utilize just as another layer of contact point, which we get a lot of responses on.

 

Brandon Bartic:

There's a whole kind of series of these things that have to happen. Then mixed in that, behind the scenes, we use what's called truepeoplesearch.com. We'll try to find them, connect with them on social. Try to find any other information we can. If we can find a home address, we'll let's send a handwritten note card as well. There's a lot that goes into it.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Why True People Search? A lot of those. You tried a lot, why them?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah, True People Search seems to be the best source that we found for free. We actually pay for another company that's similar to what's called Nexis Lexis, if you know what that is. Nexis Lexis is what bounty hunters use to find people that skip bounties and what people use to find to serve papers for divorce. It's expensive. It's like $1,500 a month, so we also use that because we believe that data is the ... it's more [crosstalk 00:26:36].

 

Frank Klesitz:

What happens when a couple of mailing addresses come back? Do you mail them all?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Say that again?

 

Frank Klesitz:

What happens when a couple of mailing addresses back from the people search?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah. No, on True People Search? If your name is John Smith and we can't really narrow it down, we won't send the mail. We're not going to sit here and write five hand-written note cards to five known addresses. It's usually just if we really feel confident that we can pull that-

 

Frank Klesitz:

Those are actually written by the person that mailed to them, nothing automated. It's just real ...

 

Brandon Bartic:

No, everyone on their desk has stacks of cards. Bartic Group cards. Hey, thanks for reaching out on our website. We know that that personal touch game is critical. It really is. We get a lot of response from that because someone took the time, your business card's in there, it's a handwritten note, and it ends up in the thing and they're like ... Then they're plus getting all this barrage of touches from you on top of it. They have to feel guilty about picking up the phone. You get a handwritten note card and you're not going to answer my fourth phone call, come on.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Hey, Frank, I want to stress a point think is very important for the audience to understand here. Let's go back to the leads that you're capturing. Wherever the funnel is, you've captured that lead and you're starting F1. Listeners, that means his first attempt, his followup one. Okay, if you were to get a hundred leads and you only did the first call and never made another attempt, what do you think? What percent of the people would you actually get on the phone if you only called 100 people one time? What do you think that percent would be?

 

Brandon Bartic:

I would say 1% to 3%, and I think 3% would be generous.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Okay. After you go through your F one, two, three, four, five, six, and everything that you do in between, if you were to buy a hundred leads, or generate a hundred leads, so we know you're only going to get three, maybe three of them on the phone in the first call, but if you take them through your system, how many of those 100 are you now engaging with?

 

Brandon Bartic:

We gauged that, Greg. We're at about 72%.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Okay. Frank, listen to this, man, listen to this. While everyone's trying to figure out how to solve their problem by getting more leads, Brandon has solved his, not that he had a problem, he's created growth by just making sure that he's engaging with a higher percentage of the leads that he already has. So, think about what that does to profitability. I mean, it's like if he goes from, I buy 100 and talk to 70, versus somebody else buys 100 and talks to three. I don't know how many times I did. I have to do that one on a calculator, because that's going to be like 700%.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, Greg just showed you how not to go broke doing this.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yes. That's it.

 

Frank Klesitz:

There you go.

 

Greg Harrelson:

The golden rule is you have to build the system, and it's not build a system, I mean, this is a one page flowchart. Even if you don't have the automated, people get stuck, as we know, on trying to build the text campaigns, the email campaigns, and they think that this is like building a spaceship. Even if you just didn't do that, and you just really had it in your system to call them six days in a row, like you just said, it would change it. The phrase I use all the time is I go, guys, we have to go deeper, not wider. We just have to go deeper, not wider.

 

Greg Harrelson:

I swear, if it wasn't COVID, I would have that in our office on a big, huge thing, but it's like, that's it. Everybody wants to go more and more, and more.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Let me just rephrase everything you covered on what just initially happens when a lead comes in. Because I think anybody watching this can just take some of these things, like yeah, that's a cool process. Then I'd like to go deeper on the scripting and the language of the note cards and what you say, and maybe, you don't have to be exact, more the principles behind what you say, I think are most important, I think, people know the language is theirs. But here's what I got so far, you call them immediately and you have a CRM that knows that, that's key. Call them twice unbranded. Don't leave a voicemail the first time, leave a voicemail the second time.

 

Frank Klesitz:

But just say, call me back. Don't go in more detail that you're a realtor at that point, and you call that the double tap. I love that. I've heard that called war dialing as well. Okay. You call every single day for six days. That is a call, I'm sure a voicemail, text, email, trying to reach them. Also, probably on day one or day two, you're looking up their mailing address through True People Search or some skip tracing service, and you're sending them a handwritten note manually. Just one handwritten note?

 

Brandon Bartic:

That is correct.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Just one handwritten note, business card in there. We'll talk about the scripting for that. After six attempts essentially, they now just go into bin, or now you're just trying to get ahold of them as one big thing versus scheduling all these follow-up tasks. Someday, you have a hundred that are overwhelming and distracting from the real followup tasks.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yup. Then the text campaigns or email campaigns are still running behind the scenes. I mean, [crosstalk 00:31:32].

 

Frank Klesitz:

There's also automated text and email drips, which are compliant because they gave the permission to do it from the website and the terms of service dripping out behind the scenes. Right?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yup.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Got it. Man, there's no stopping this.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Then also property search. If it's a seller lead, we still put them on a property search and we just title' it. I want to make this point. It's very important when you're titling searches to make sure that the person's name is in that subject line. So, Susie, I created a custom home search for you, or Susie, here's the competing, or here's the active listings in your neighborhood that are currently competing against you. [crosstalk 00:32:07].

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, that's a good one.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah, we see that to be very powerful, because again, it's all about open rate. If I see my name, then I don't think it's ... Maybe it'll get less to spam and hopefully get open, but we're just trying to hedge the bet on any odds of just getting it to be open.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Brandon, on behalf of everyone watching this, we respect the detail. Thank you.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah, it's good.

 

Frank Klesitz:

The person's name in the subject line. You have automated texts and emails going out, in this case, the Real Geeks, they're dripping, which we'll get to that messaging. I want to talk scripts and language here through all this stuff. If it's a buyer lead, you adjust their buyer search and putting the name in the subject line, probably formatted correctly, not like all caps or whatnot, or lowercase. If it's a home buyer lead, they're getting the market updates, and again, adjusting the subject line to include their name.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Then also, then the last piece, one we call processing 100%, a market report.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Market report. Again, if you guys scroll up in the YouTube comments, if you're joining us, if you scroll up, there'll be a comment from Real Geeks on ... There's a diagram here that will show this to you. I don't know if it showed the first time I showed it. I want to speak while my screen shows to the audience really quick. I'm just going to briefly show you what these diagrams look like if you don't have the link on the YouTube chat. It looks something like this. It's very easy to explain to himself and to his agents, and we'll talk about hiring a VA to police this, that this is going on with the agents on your team. This is essentially what this checklist looks like. So, you'll probably come back to the replay and pause the YouTube video and take a look at this.

 

Frank Klesitz:

This is before a new listing lead that comes in. These are all the actions that need to be taken for every single lead to go super deep. We're essentially going through this process right now. Now what I'd like to do is talk about scripting. I'd like to talk about what you say on the phones, what you say in the voicemails, what you say on the handwritten notes so everyone kind of gets an idea of how to approach the messaging regardless of the media. Everyone, before Brandon shares this, don't write down exactly what he says. That's not the way to do it. Focus on the principles and the feeling and the approach he's taking to come up with what works for you. Brandon, talk to us.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Then also, Frank, just on that list, on that flowchart, I just want to give a shout out to Meg Everett. She's my director of operations. She is a flowchart ninja. If I would have tried to make that flowchart, it would have never happened.

 

Frank Klesitz:

[crosstalk 00:34:29].

 

Brandon Bartic:

I think she just does it in actual Word. I really believe it was done in Word. She's probably going no, that's not it. But yeah, no, I think that's the other thing too. The takeaway on that flowchart is just what I tell people that I coach is I go, let's get all the steps, even if just one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. The flowchart makes it pretty, right? That makes it pretty. But first, let's go, what are the 10 steps you do if they don't answer the phone? What's the 10 steps you're going to do if they answer the phone? Just start there and then make it bubbles. Make a flowchart. Sorry, just wanted to give her a shout out. She's phenomenal. All right, let's talk scripts.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah. Let's just do, I'm a buyer, like call me. Just opt it in.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Again, if they don't answer the phone, hey, this is Brandon, can you give me a call back? If they answer the phone, everything is related around, I have availability to show you homes this weekend, or this week, are nights or weekends better? I'd be like, hey, Frank, hey, I just got your information. It looks like you had some interest in looking at properties in Aurora. That's fantastic. I actually am available to show you some homes, are nights or weekends better for you? That's the line that we literally use right out of the gate, and then you're going to say, "Go ahead."

 

Frank Klesitz:

I was just looking, man. I mean, who are you?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah, no, no, my name is Brandon with XYZ real estate company, or for us, Keller Williams. Keller Williams Real Estate Company. Yeah, no, I was just giving you a call because we had saw that you'd come through our website, looked like you had some interests, would love to get you out to look at some properties this week.

 

Frank Klesitz:

That'd be cool, man. I don't think I'm interested in that right now. I think I wanted maybe by next year. I was just seeing what's available.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Oh, I love it. I love it. Well, Frank, if it was the perfect situation, when would you like to be in the new home, or when would you like to purchase the new home?

 

Frank Klesitz:

Probably next year is when I'll be able to be in a position to have a down payment.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Okay, so looking about a year out to get that down payment. Fantastic. Have you started the prequalification process? I have an amazing lender that I'd love to have to give you a call this afternoon. She'll take you through the entire process because it might be a lot faster and easier than you think.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Well, I've seen the rates are so low, but you probably need a down payment for a house, don't you?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah. Well, there's a lot of programs out there, it just depends. I mean, it all depends on your situation. We have no money down. We have very little money down. There's federal grants, so there's all kinds of things. The first step though, Frank, is to literally make sure that Annie has the opportunity to speak with you. She'll let you know and then we can create a plan that I guarantee will probably get you there a lot faster than you think. When's the best time for her to give you a call she could do this afternoon, or is tomorrow better?

 

Frank Klesitz:

The lender to figure out how much house I can buy?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah, exactly.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, you can have her give me a call tomorrow.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Okay, perfect. Excellent. Then, since I've got you on the phone, I just want to make sure I have all the best contact information for you. I'd love to send you a buyer consultation guide that explains this entire process. What's the best home address for you right now?

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yep, It's frank@getvyral.com.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Excellent, Frank, and the best email address is frank@gmail.com?

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Okay. Obviously, is this your cell phone? Is this always the best number to reach you on?

 

Frank Klesitz:

This is the one you got me on. This is the best.

 

Brandon Bartic:

I love it. Frank, are you going to be the only one living in the home, or is there going to be anybody else involved in the purchasing process?

 

Frank Klesitz:

It'll be my family, my wife and kids.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Your wife and kids, oh my gosh. How many kids you got?

 

Frank Klesitz:

Two kids, five and six, four and five.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah. Then Frank, from here, I would go into building rapport. This could go on and on and on. What I'm going to then go through is I'm going to coach and talk about their perfect dream home. What I find a lot of people do, Frank, is they jump off the phone way too early. Like we were just talking about courting, I'm going to go through here and play the ... We call it 20 questions. It's really for me a hundred questions, and I'm going to find out everything I can, so by the end of this conversation, we're homeys.

 

Brandon Bartic:

You're going to be like, oh man, he knows my wife, my thing, he knows my dog's name. I'm going to find out what type of property you like, what your dream home look like. If you could have anything on our ... Because what people get scared of is exactly what you just said. I have a 500 credit score and I'm not going to be ready for a year, or whatever it might be. Okay, that's cool. That's not why I'm calling. Let's see what we can do. I always want to set that appointment with the lender first, but then I want to go very, very deep on everything about you and what would be the perfect home buying situation and try to keep you on the phone as long as possible.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Do you measure that like talk time?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah.

 

Frank Klesitz:

I want you to try to keep the person on the phone for 30 minutes and I'll give you a reward if you can type of thing.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Well, that would be difficult because the calls come so randomly. These aren't [crosstalk 00:38:49] Mojo, so you can't really dial it, but we have what we call, and I can also share this later on, is what we call our buyer pre-qual form. We call it our buyer trust qualifier.

 

Frank Klesitz:

These are the questions that keep them on the phone.

 

Brandon Bartic:

These are the questions that keep them on the phone because yeah, I'll ask questions like, oh, so great. What's the most important to you? Do you have any pets? Do you have any toys? How about garage space? If there was a perfect situation, would you like to be close to the airport? What's your work like? Where do you work? Oh my gosh, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Then just rapport, rapport, rapport, and I just want to make sure again, every call is an opportunity to build a relationship. I've had people that have never bought a house with me that have referred 10 people to me.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Brandon, it's so good.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, that's fantastic. Following the diagram, by the way, just following the diagram. Basically, still on the buyer pre-qual script/set by our console. Well, we know exactly what he or his staff is going to do, team's going to do when that phone is hung up. They're going to create the new lead in the Real Geeks, [crosstalk 00:39:50].

 

Frank Klesitz:

I felt it too, man, even when you asked me about my kids. I forgot their ages immediately. I was like, wait a minute. I'm going to really answer. I do have a four to five year old, and it immediately changed the conversation to now being more adversarial to personal. It's so cool that you had questions to get agents to like, how do you do that in that buyer pre-qual form, which I'd love to share. We'll see if we can get afterwards and post it.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Absolutely. Yeah, that, and we have our listing trust qualifier, so yeah, two different questions because it's two different types of things that are happening there, but yeah, and they're all very comfortable and scripted, and one question leads to the next question and so on and so forth. But that's my goal. Now, if you would have said, hey, you're possibly more ready now, then I would have set a buyer consultation. So, it would have been at our office. If the office isn't convenient, then I would have meet at a Starbucks and I would go through that entire appointment, or if one of our ISA set the appointment. We would set the consultation for that.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Let's talk about if I didn't answer, let's talk about the handwritten note and some of the texts that you would use to get someone to respond.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Sure. Yeah, so the handwritten note is simple. Hey, Frank, I saw that you were on our website, looking at properties. I'd love to show you some homes this week, give me a call, Frank, or whatever it is. I mean, it's really ... There's no magic seed to this. A lot of it is, is there any information I can use that came through on the site? The more specific I can be, if they were looking at homes in Denver, then I'm going to say Denver. If I know they were looking at condos, if they're looking at condos, I might say something like, "Hey, I noticed that you were looking at condos. I have a lot of off market properties that aren't even on the MLS right now. I'd love to talk to you about all the shadow inventory we have. Give me a call."

 

Frank Klesitz:

Nice.

 

Brandon Bartic:

You're trying to always think of ways of, why do they need me and [crosstalk 00:41:34].

 

Frank Klesitz:

Give me some up messaging for a seller lead.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Follow up messaging for a seller lead, meaning my-

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah. Email, text, try to get ahold of a seller lead, cash offer lead, and some offer lead, or home value lead.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Oh yeah. In fact, you just nailed the head. We have seller options. Instant cash offer is, and again, all of our texts and email campaigns are built around this. Instant cash offer, fixing list program, sell it in 60 days or we'll buy it. We found that giving these people options, we have a trade-in program, and then our traditional program. But we always try to come with this different options of going look, there's so many things that we can do to help you as a seller. Just let me know if I can get in front of you, or let me know. I'd like to meet with you so we can discuss what option might be best for you.

 

Frank Klesitz:

I want to share really quick, and maybe Greg you can add to this, but there's definitely been a trend in the past couple of years with all the buyers and the open doors and Zillow offers, to add a third option. You typically have buy a home, sell a home, and there's also some type of instant or guaranteed offer. There's companies that you could partner with that you don't have time to go into how you provide those cash offer deals to people. But I just want to pull up your website. It's just the barticgroup.com, right?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yup. Yes, sir.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, here it is. So, here we go, the barticgroup.com. Here you go guys. As you can see, very nicely done. Again, search for homes, sell your home, or get a cash offer, that third option there, and you're really following up with your seller leads. It sounds like, with the messaging, is that there's many options, I'll help you understand all your options. Let's talk. Is that right, Brandon?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah. Frank, there's not a one size fits all. We want to make sure that we're delivering to you exactly what makes sense for your scenario. We've got a lot of things to make this process very simple, but again, Frank, you're an individual, your home is a unique. Let's get together. Let's talk about your options. I've got availability today at 4:00 or is tomorrow at 1:00 work better for you?

 

Frank Klesitz:

There's probably a lot more we can spend on more detail on the follow-up, but for time purposes-

 

Brandon Bartic:

Frank, just so you know too, I have my entire script book with all of our scripts, objection handlers. It's just brandonbartek.com. So, just my name, brandonbartek.com. You can go download it. It's everything we use on a daily basis that's helped us along the way, and it's free, no issues, enjoy it.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Totally cool. Yeah, so go there. If you wanted to really kind of get comfortable with what to say, Brandon's made all of those scripts and we'll get to spend time on that there for you. But I think the biggest takeaway is all those things that happen once a lead comes, and we shared so far, right? I want to shift the interview here a little bit toward return on investment. One of the things that stood out to me when we did a little bit of the pre-interview, is I said, Brandon, but from the time that you spend, probably a couple thousand bucks, more now, but I want to get caught up in the amounts of money.

 

Frank Klesitz:

You're spending money on leads, whatever's comfortable for you, and you have to take that lead all the way through to when you get a commission check to get paid back and have your profit. For you, it's 540 days, is that correct?

 

Brandon Bartic:

That's correct. On average, we might have some-

 

Frank Klesitz:

On average.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Day one, we might have somebody that hits a day a thousand, right? But yes, on average from all the data that ... We've been collecting, the Real Geeks, we've been collecting this data for years, that's the average.

 

Frank Klesitz:

My question for you, Brandon, and for you, Greg, is for an agent that wants to use a service like Real Geeks or a CRM to do AdWords online lead generation at this level. They don't have enough money to spend for a year and a half until the money comes back. What should your agents do? Or what does someone do to deal with that challenging cash cycle of internet leads?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Well, I can go to that immediately. First of all, if I had told any agent before they do anything else is, you have to exhaust your current, what we call met database. You shouldn't even be doing internet leads. You should be going through your center of influence and building that system and making sure that you have a 33 touch or more program for everyone you already know, and people go, "Well, I don't really know that many people." Yes, you do, and you know more than you do. I would be exasperating that bucket before I would get into that.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Once I have that system built, then I would say, okay, I've really nurtured everything there and the foundation is built. My next biggest, I guess, piece that I would add on to that is, it's all going to be what you pay for it. If you're going to be paying $5 a lead for Facebook leads, but you know that these leads are not going to be as pre-qualified, does that make as much sense than paying for a higher quality lead, which maybe is, I hate to say it, but a Zillow or Realtor.com, or something like that, where there's already kind of been scrubbed for you? Again, you're talking if I'm a new agent.

 

Brandon Bartic:

I don't know how to do pay-per-click and I don't know how to do all this. Once I get to those sources though, then you're going to go there. You still have to understand that, even with a more expensive lead, you're just paying for them to do the process that you didn't want to do. Right. It's going to be one way or the other. They're either washing it more for you to charge you a higher amount, or you're going to do this washing process yourself. Does that answer your question? Do you see what I'm saying?

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah. What I want to share with everyone here is that the title of this video is Bulletproof Lead Follow-up, which makes the assumption, you can just go online and buy leads right away and have an ROI. The answer here is it takes a long time to nurture most of them, in this case, about a year and a half from you. Really, to make the economics work of online lead generation, you have to start with loading up your database into the software first, your existing contacts. One of the documents that I shared again, in the YouTube chat, is you say, agents, hey, we're going to generate some leads for you. Go generate leads, but there needs to be a foundation here of some other business coming in [inaudible 00:47:24] to sustain the year and a half conversion cycle of some of these online leads.

 

Frank Klesitz:

I'll just show this to you really quick. Why don't you just share, everybody watching this can immediately go do this to establish the foundation, to then implement the Bulletproof lead follow-up plan because it takes about a year and a half to convert. Here's Brandon COI lead flowchart. You add them into the system. Tell me about this.

 

Brandon Bartic:

When you see this, so schedule appropriate follow-ups and check-ins. For us, and every person in our met database, we're going to call four times a year. Every 90 days minimum, I don't care what's going to happen. If I go to put this first person in, I'm going to schedule that up call immediately for 90 days. Now, the second piece is, everyone in my center of influence database is also going to be on a search. If they own a home, or if they're a potential renter, they're going to either be receiving properties or they're going to be receiving their ... We do homes that are a hundred thousand dollars above or a hundred thousand dollars below in their neighborhood.

 

Brandon Bartic:

You can use the map search in Real Geeks, or whatever it is, so if they own a home, every month, and again, this is a big difference, monthly, not weekly, not daily, especially, if this is your center of influence you're sending from daily, they're going to unsubscribe.

 

Frank Klesitz:

It's too much. Yeah.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Exactly. A lot of this is balancing human nature. Once a month, they're going to receive properties a hundred grand up, or a hundred grand below what's in their neighborhood, and we go, Susan, active homes in your neighborhood a hundred thousand dollars up, a hundred thousand dollars below. People love looking at their neighbors houses that are for sale. That's an easy touch for us to do.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Take all the homeowners of your Facebook friends, the people in your sphere, in your cell phone, people you know, anyone that you think may own a home, reach out and ask them, and put them on the home value updates.

 

Brandon Bartic:

That's exactly right. Yep.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Got it.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Then again, market report. So, you can add on that extra touch of market report. [crosstalk 00:49:13].

 

Frank Klesitz:

Home value update and what's going on in the market messages.

 

Brandon Bartic:

That's exactly right. Yep. You want to have the big picture in your neighborhood got it.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Got it.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Then, what's the real key for us, and this is the killer of most agents, is the five personal touches. In our database, with our center of influence, we really try to go deep. Our 33 touches are 12 digital market reports, 12 direct mailers. So, one month something quirky, one month, something informational. Then four phone calls a year, and five personal touches. Frank, these five personal touches is where agents kind of missed the ball is they go, well, I'm going to send them the old boomerang card that gives them $5 off at Applebee's, or whatever it is.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Well, that doesn't make your client feel special. That means you just did this cheapest postcard you could possibly send. We try to, first of all, using technology, get their birthday, if you don't already know their birthday. That's one touch. Then the rest of the other four are going to be something personal. Are they a mom? Are they a dad? Are they a veteran? Do they love tacos? I'm going to send them a national taco day card. I'm going to do something that's individual to them that they go, remember when we talked about courting, they go, "Brandon, aw, Brandon actually knows me and cares about me."

 

Brandon Bartic:

I do. I'm not saying that as ... People go, "Well, Brandon, you sound like you have this machine." If you're doing anything at a high level, there has to be a process to it. Otherwise, you could never touch this many people in a personal way if we didn't have these systems, but it's still personal. I just have reminders reminding me to do nice things. I don't think that's a bad thing. That's where I feel like we win, is on that personal touch scale, more so than anything.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Greg, I'll let you ask the question here, but I just wanted to share with everyone, is yes, it takes time to convert the internet leads, and the elephant in the room is I had to spend the money on leads until I get paid my commission. What do I do in the meantime? Well, existing database.

 

Brandon Bartic:

And process. Yeah.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, do what Brandon said, and those are all leads essentially, too.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Let's make sure that we're not sending the wrong message because I think there's one thing I need clarity, and maybe Brandon will comment on. I don't necessarily agree that if you were to start buying leads right now, it's going to be one and a half years before you can [crosstalk 00:51:25].

 

Brandon Bartic:

No.

 

Greg Harrelson:

I just feel like maybe one way that something was worded, the audience may get that ... They may start to believe that. That could be very discouraging, but I think what we're saying here to the audience is, look, you've just got to understand that you're going to get people at different stages of ... You're going to catch them at different phases or stages of their buying in the funnel. You're going to have some that are going to be really dreamers, and that might take you a year and a half, but you're going to also capture people that have already been dreaming, and it may take you a week and a half. I think that it's not [crosstalk 00:52:08].

 

Brandon Bartic:

Just like an open house. Some people might walk into an open house and never be ready to buy a house for five years. Somebody might walk into an open house and want to buy that house. You don't know, but if you don't have open houses, you're never going to find out.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, and if you don't follow your process or a process, you're never going to identify, is this five years out, or if this is tomorrow. Where people, Frank, are missing, they go in and buy leads. If the person doesn't sound like they're a tomorrow lead, then they neglect them. If you follow that process, you're at risk of losing money from this business model. But if you follow the process of getting these leads, talking to them, listening to them, not rejecting them because the timeframe isn't tomorrow, then you'll find you should be converting leads within 90 days, not a year and a half, but you have to follow these systems.

 

Greg Harrelson:

In our industry, people will say, well, gosh, you go on and buy those leads and you get a bunch of junk, and they don't really this, and they don't really that. I couldn't get an ROI. It wasn't the lead flow. It was the process. I think somebody can start off tomorrow buying leads if they have the right process and be profiting within 90 days to six months. 90 days for sure.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Thank you for that clarification, Greg.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, Frank.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah. That's really good clarification, because that's 100% correct, but only, not only, but you got to have the process. There has to be a process there, otherwise, and this is what Zillow loves, and this is why these companies love it, is they go, buy the zip code, spend $400 per lead, and then they know that it's a six month contract for a reason, because that agent's going to get frustrated after one month, two, they lock them into six months, and then by six months, that person usually falls off unless they have this system built.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Let's open up some Q&A. Brandon, I would love for you to email me that buyer pre-qualification form of all those personal questions. It'd be wonderful.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yes, absolutely.

 

Frank Klesitz:

But if you were to go back and watch the replay, which will be right here, you might be watching the replay, but we did this live. It's right here on this YouTube page, so the replay is literally this link. It'll be on-demand forever right now. All right? I think you'll learn a lot. There are some screen shares of some of the processes we showed, the links are here, as well as what Brandon does immediately when a lead comes in to make initial contacts, good stuff. In the chat, open some questions. Let me just give you some feedback you've gotten, Brandon.

 

Frank Klesitz:

This is awesome. Smooth. Thank you so much for being so detailed. Thanks a million for sharing this. Thank you, the flowcharts are great. Brandon, this is amazing. This is amazing real estate coach. Thank you for sharing this info. This is gold. Thank you, gentlemen. Yada, yada yada, wonderful stuff. Dean asks a great question, what if they give you a phony cell number?

 

Brandon Bartic:

What if they give me a phony ... oh, for illustration.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Phone number doesn't work. Fake phone number on the lead.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, we get eatme.com email addresses, and that's being nice. But yeah, whatever it is. Again, looking at that, well, to answer the question about the cell phone, if I can track them, and think of a real email address, then the nice thing about Real Geeks is it usually links it to their social media, and I can go connect with them on social media. So, I'll message them on Facebook. I will message them on LinkedIn if I can find their LinkedIn.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Again, if that email matches. Then using truepeoplesearch.com or anything else again, unless their name is John Smith, or Susan Smith, I'll try and go and source that phone number. We spend a lot of time, and I want to make this a clear point, we spend a lot of time on data searching, data harvesting. I think that's where a lot of people get frustrated too, is they just see a phony email address and they go, well, that's a dead lead. That's not a dead lead to me. That's, I got to do more work. Yeah, we try to filter them and run them through a process of ... Then, even still, if it's a seller lead and I still have a phony phone number and maybe even a bad email address, I'll either door knock or send a handwritten note card.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Vera asks, any advice for when you get pushback from leads about getting approved, but they want to look at houses?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Oh, every single day of our lives. We wouldn't be in real estate if that wasn't the case. Yeah. On that pushback again, I always tell agents two things, too. It depends on your level of time versus your level of how much effort you're going to put into this. If somebody wants to go look at a house and they haven't been pre-qualed yet, and I'm a brand new agent and I have nothing else going on, hot dog, I'm going to go show that house. That's just how it is. If I'm a more seasoned agent, I'm going to make sure I never get into a car, or never go out in the car unless I have something. So, it's level of time.

 

Brandon Bartic:

They always say, "Well, never go show anybody without a pre-qual letter." I've sold tons of houses with having people pre-qual first. I know that's not the golden rule, but I'm saying there's not a black and white here. You're going to get burned sometimes, you're going to make money sometimes. I would rather make an in-person meeting and have the opportunity to meet this person than not. If that's the issue, then that's the issue. So, timing sometimes that. Then the other problem is, is a lot of times on the pre-qual is if we're having an issue, getting them to through the prequalification process, then I'm not asking the right questions.

 

Brandon Bartic:

I'm going, "Okay. Can I just ask, is there a reason why? What's what's the reason, or is there a credit situation?" I'll just really, Frank, try to ask deeper questions to find out. The technique that I want everybody to understand too, is always, when you're talking about money, just whisper. When I'm on the phone, I'm like, "So, what's the deal with this? Is it a cash issue or what's the deal?" Not like-

 

Frank Klesitz:

That's how you get truth. That's how you don't get the smoke screen.

 

Brandon Bartic:

That's how I get the smoke screen if I'm like, "So, what's the problem without being able to get pre-qual? Do you jerk off? Well, yeah, of course. I'm not going to get the same response. There is finesse here, but that's how I would handle it.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. Frank, there's one more thing here. If we can go back and listen to, and remember his scripting, what Brandon's ... What he did when he took the call, is he went for the appointment. Actually, I won't call it, he went for the appointment. What he really did is he provided what he assumed that the consumer wanted, which was to go look at properties. See, that's different than I'm going to go close for an appointment really quick. He's like, we understand that people are calling us right now to go see property.

 

Greg Harrelson:

So, he started with, hey, I'm available to show you properties. It's usually, the afternoons or the evenings better? Because if you start with the pre-qual before you set the appointment, you're going to have more pushback. If you actually go and start with the appointment and give them what they really wanted, then the law of reciprocation will kick in and you'll have less pushback on the pre-qual. Most agents are thinking, I don't want to waste my time unless they're qualified, so then they go qualifying before setting the appointment, and he went set in the appointment before qualifying. That's a very important distinction there.

 

Brandon Bartic:

It's huge. It's absolutely huge.

 

Frank Klesitz:

That is good. I'm just going to keep asking questions to keep things moving. Brandon, fantastic. Incredible information. I think we delivered what we wanted. This is a good one from Kelly. We're working with so many out of town buyers, probably more of a resort market, or people moving there. What is your approach when they may not be in market to show property?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Well, then it's just a waiting game. It's still the courting game. I'm going to make sure I understand the question. If I'm going to show them property via FaceTime, we definitely do that all the time. I've had people buy properties that have never stepped [crosstalk 00:59:55].

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah. That's kind of the question. How can I show property when they're not here?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Oh yeah. We do FaceTime showings all the time. We have buyers from California, Texas, wherever it is. We just bring the iPad, take them through. It's almost like they're there with me, and I'm like, all right, Susie and John, we're going to go take a look at this property. Of course, after the pre-qual's already been done, showing it to them, they've already seen the photos. Sometimes it's just that little extra detail where they were like, I really need to see the back view, or whatever it is. Yeah, we FaceTime show clients all the time.

 

Frank Klesitz:

I'm not sure about this, but if you go to Zillow, it's at the top of my head, anecdotally, there's an option for a video tour with an agent. It's like a thing.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Oh yeah, absolutely.

 

Frank Klesitz:

This is a real thing that's been changing, and COVID has sped that up considerably.

 

Brandon Bartic:

100%.

 

Frank Klesitz:

But I've also, and maybe you can say this differently, but we obviously put as realtors, very nice pictures and very nice video for brokering the listing, but buyers still want someone to go out there with an iPhone, because I really want to see how it looks more like in reality because I'm really close to buying, you know what I mean? There's real value in that, to doing that for people.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah, absolutely.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Okay. Great. Any other questions on, guys? What was the company you use for your phone numbers again, when you look at mailing addresses?

 

Brandon Bartic:

Truepeoplesearch.com. There's Nexis Lexis if you want to pay the more expensive and really ... Yeah, I mean, you can get anything, birth certificate, social security numbers.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, just go Google skip tracing, it depends upon where the databases are coming in from. Keep it compliant. But skip tracing goes down that path.

 

Brandon Bartic:

That's what I said.

 

Frank Klesitz:

More of the public data is probably more like Spokeo, Intelius, BeenVerified are some other ones you can use.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah. [crosstalk 01:01:41] forumone.com. There's plenty of service providers out there.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Wonderful.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Then also, a lot of times on these servers, Frank, is, is just pay the dollar for the information. You're like, oh, I got to pay a dollar to get this person's contact info. Really, you're going to hesitate on spending a buck? Spend a buck.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, good stuff. Well, there we go guys. What we'd like to do is a little bit different for Keeping It Real, because many of you have said, maybe you want to talk to Frank and Greg afterwards. We're going to let Brandon go. Brandon, one last time, where can someone go to get their book of scripts for language of what they should use in their following up.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Yeah, please, so brandonbartic.com, all the scripts are there for free. Check out the other programs that we offer. We have coaching, we have a lead progression series. We have one-on-one, we have all those things. If you need help putting these things into full motion and you want to join the community. The other thing, Frank too, is the scripts are great. We do live role-play every Thursday at 12 o'clock Mountain Standard Time. I'll send you the link of that as well. Everybody, welcome to join. We have people across the country where you can practice these things and really just make sure that, hey, does this make sense? It's a lot of fun.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Like we always say, it's better to sweat in practice than bleed in war. Get the practice in, get the sweat in, and yeah, check out brandonbartic.com, and we're more than happy to help you.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Brandon, thanks for coming on here and bringing so much detail for all of us. Thank you on behalf of the audience and Greg and I, appreciate you, man. You can hop off here, and Greg and I are going to have a little overtime.

 

Brandon Bartic:

All right, and thanks, and Greg, again, an honor. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you, man. Appreciate you.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Thanks. I appreciate you saying that. I look forward to getting to know you even more.

 

Brandon Bartic:

Thank you, sir.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Bye, Brandon. Wow. Greg, what'd you learn?

 

Greg Harrelson:

First of all, let me just repeat what you just said, wow. That was very well put together.

 

Frank Klesitz:

It was, wasn't it?

 

Greg Harrelson:

Very well detailed. I believe the authentic authenticity level with him is extremely high. If we went and visited his office, it's exactly like he just presented it today.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, a guy like him is going to attract other people like him.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. I love it. I love it. He reminded me of something that I kind of commented on, and that is, the challenge with profitability in when we step into internet leads and purchasing leads, whether it's Zillow, or however you may do it, the challenge that the real estate industry has is a bandwidth challenge. A lot of times we can put a couple of dollars into play and we can generate more and generate quite a few leads and then it gets to become where we cherry pick the leads because we don't have time to nurture them properly.

 

Greg Harrelson:

What he's done is he's used the combination of an ISA and automation to increase his bandwidth, and it's a very systematic approach. So, when they get a lead, they let the technology do a lot of the heavy lifting so they can keep following up, follow up one, follow up two, follow up three, while they're doing followup one, two, and three, automation is actually assisting them in doing some of the communication also, and kind of softening the lead up. That's what's getting him from a 3% answer rate to a 70% connection rate over a six day period of time.

 

Frank Klesitz:

That's incredible.

 

Greg Harrelson:

I knew the answer to that, because I know we discovered that years ago, that the ratio that people are tracking in our industry is contact to contract. The ratio they should be tracking in our industry is capture to contact. See, his capture to contact ratio is 70%, where the industry is probably less than 10%. So, he's 700% more than everybody right there. That one, the capture to contact ratio is a ratio that's influenced by systems like you just shared, things you can control. The contact to contract ratio is influenced by an agent skillsets.

 

Greg Harrelson:

It's easier to actually put in the systems and improve your capture to contact ratio than it is to improve your skillset. Skillsets takes one to two years to really influence the capture to contract or the contact or contract ratio. But this process, you can put this in place in the next 30 days and go from a 10% capture to contact ratio to a 70% capture to contact ratio, which means, if your skillsets stay the same, you should have a 700% increase in your business.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Wow. That's good. That's real good. Dude, it's ... One of the things I want to add-

 

Greg Harrelson:

That's what he's doing. That's what he's doing. That's exactly what he's doing.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, and he has the leverage too, he has a team. I want to talk to some of the people here who maybe had teams or agents. One of the things we didn't get to that we talked about in the pre-interview before this was he has a virtual assistant, someone overseas, not too demanding on payroll, but basically said, look, here's exactly what I expect to happen for a buyer lead, here's exactly what I expect to happen for a seller lead, and when my agents upload their database, here's exactly what I expect to happen.

 

Frank Klesitz:

That supervisor, that quality assurance specialist, if you will ...

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, quality assurance.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Knows what to expect, and now they're just sitting there staring at the CRM all day long, inspecting what you expect, because when you're spending the money he is doing, it's probably in the several thousands of dollars, you're probably laying in bed having a panic attack at night, being like, someone do what they're supposed to be doing, right? That quality assurance person, by writing down your bulletproof lead follow-up procedures, that you're going to follow with every single new lead, now you can give it to somebody to enforce and to supervise if you are running a team to, not just increase it 700% for yourself, but among all your agents.

 

Frank Klesitz:

We had a couple of questions here for us. I think this is good for you, Greg. Maria asks, she wish we'd have asked this question. What do we do if we have not talked to our COI for years? How do we get reconnected with them without being awkward? Just give me a couple of minutes on that, Greg.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. Number one, a lot of that is just a mental block. I think there's a two-step process. There's, what do we do? But then there's, okay, how can we shift our mindset right now? Because we all have been there. We've all had this whole group of centers of influence that we've neglected, and now it's like, uh, is it going to be weird if I call them now? But if they're your centers of influence, what I would just say is you go out and reach out to them. Say, "Hey, Frank just wanted to touch base with you. I was doing some work in the office. I haven't crossed paths with your name in quite a while. I just wanted to touch base with you. It flashed over my desk, and I just want to check and see how things are going."

 

Greg Harrelson:

If you're feeling like you haven't talked to COI, then I would just randomly call them, or call them, and I would not talk real estate. I would just say, "Hey, just wanted to check in to see how things are going." I will promise you 90% of them are going to say, "Hey, how's the market." They're all going to say it. You let them pull you into the real estate conversation instead of trying to pull them into the real estate conversation. That'll make it less awkward. Then from there, once you go through, and you just have to do this one initial time with your database, and then once you get back on track, then it's a quarterly call.

 

Frank Klesitz:

I would add to that, invite people to a workshop. It's really hard to reach out to people that you know, being like, "Hey, you want to give me money? Or usually, to buy or sell a home. It's weird. It's hard. That's not that it can't be done, but it's still difficult. It's easier to have a different offer. In marketing, we call it a secondary offer. An offer a little higher up the funnel, if you will. I was just talking to a lady the other day. She has a fantastic business. She has a team, she does one thing to get all of her leads, and she runs Facebook ads to first-time home buyer workshops who teaches on webinars. That's it.

 

Frank Klesitz:

She also uses it to reach out to the database to invite them to a webinar. She used to them in person, but now they're online because of COVID, but that's a really good excuse and a reason to reach out to someone, obviously, personally, Greg, primary reason, but also know I got you on the line. I'm teaching some stuff now to ... Now I'd love to invite you to one of my webinars or workshops on teaching. Yeah, everyone just really ... Guys, it's really cool to be back doing these. For those of you that have watched Frank, I have a little bit less hair now. I'm married. I have kids.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Mine's gray.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, mine's gray. I have a few more pounds on me with the years of COVID, if you go back and watch young Frank Klesitz from 2014, so thanks for being here. Let's just ask couple more questions. Are there any other things that stood out from you, Greg, that maybe you're going to go take back and maybe bring up at your team meeting of saying, we going to really look at this little tweak, this little piece in your organization, from what you learned today, what are you going to take away from this, Greg?

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. One of the things, because I do retargeting, he does retargeting, but I have a feeling he's doing a lot more retargeting. Because of that, he's probably driving his lead costs down. That's something that's important. When we talk about retargeting, I guess we should say, what is retargeting, right? What is retargeting? Would be, let's just take the existing database that he's created already. He's very likely, he has probably export it as database out of his Real Geeks account and he's probably uploaded it to Facebook as a custom audience and then ran some additional Facebook ads to re-engage them, retarget them, constantly be top of mind, and then push them back to the website and get them active again.

 

Greg Harrelson:

He's probably done a lot of stuff like that. He could be doing pixelated retargeting, where there's some pixels dropped on certain pages on his website. Even though he never captured as leads, he can actually run some Facebook ads, retarget the people that landed on that certain page, maybe the homepage, or maybe a different page, and retargeted those people and then got them into his ... Capture them on his website because of the ads that he ran on Facebook. These are ways that you can actually drive your lead costs down and keep your lead quality like good, if not a little bit better. That's what I look at it. I just think we need to make that note of what is retargeting, why would you do it? How can I get my lead costs down? These are [crosstalk 01:12:32].

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah, he didn't say that, but I was able to ... If you guys caught that little tip, I'm going to give you a little marketing guru insight, is the Facebook ad library.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Dude, that was ... I wrote that one down. I was like, uh-oh, I don't think you know about that one.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Greg, I don't have to come up with any ad copy anymore. Any industry, any vertical, any niche, I figure out, who's doing well? Great, go see their Facebook ads. Memory jogger right there for messaging. Back in the day, I would hire a VA to listen to the radio, to record the ads people were running on the radio on talk shows, because that would help me know what the message of the market is, or the message of the moment was to influence other ad copy for clients.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Now I don't have to that. I just go into Facebook ad library. You could type in anyone's page, anyone's, and you can see all the ads that they're running. It's so funny, dude, too. I'll hear people's crushing on Facebook. I'm like, bro, I can't find any ads [crosstalk 01:13:28].

 

Greg Harrelson:

There you go. But you know, for people that are listening, for real estate agents, I don't know how many times I see in some of the private Facebook pages, or just the Facebook mastermind, or the agent pages mastermind groups, and people are constantly, what's the best ad? Does anybody run any ads at work? My ads are not converting. I'm hearing that all the time. Yes, with that little tip that you gave him, Frank, I think everyone, if you hear somebody touting how well they're doing on Facebook, now you know. Facebook ads matter, or Facebook ads library, ad library, go ahead and type in their Facebook page. You're going to see their ads. Do AB testing against your own ads and see how they perform.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Let me tell you what I did, Greg, is I went to the REAL Trends top 1,000. Here's all the top agents in the entire country, and I looked up all their Facebook pages and to find out what type of ads are working to find common themes.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. Wow, that's great.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Which is cool. Yeah. That's a little cool tip, because you're probably wondering like, what's the messaging I can run for the ads [inaudible 01:14:32] leads in the first place? That's actually pretty available. Facebook has made that to you. Let's see if there's one more thing you can take away Greg, with the overtime with us. I hope you guys are enjoying this. What's another takeaway? What are you going to go implement, Greg, today from this?

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. The other thing that I would say that I took ... Because I did take some notes here. The other thing that I took away is that I'm in to see what his buyer trust qualifier form looks like, and [crosstalk 01:14:58].

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah. I'm going to ask him to send that to us.

 

Greg Harrelson:

But the takeaway, whether or not I ever see it, or I don't see it, the takeaway is, it's just so important to build that rapport early on in the relationship. He's building that rapport on the first call. What it tells me is he's probably thinking more about serving the consumer than actually capturing a commission check. We know the people who serve the consumer at the highest level tend to capture the highest amount of commission checks. He's just going to be able to forget about that side and just say, build trust, build trust, build trust. So, okay, what is my takeaway? I want to be more intentional about building trust. Be more intentional about building trust.

 

Frank Klesitz:

This is going to go old school.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Oh, I like old school.

 

Frank Klesitz:

I mean, super old school. I remember being in high school and going to the library, like I want to be successful. So, I go sit down at Borders.

 

Greg Harrelson:

You were kind of a nerd, weren't you?

 

Frank Klesitz:

Oh yeah, did. Yeah. I was a nerd, and I would go sit-

 

Greg Harrelson:

Everybody loves the nerd.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Yeah. I would go sit at Borders on a Friday night when everyone's out drinking and reading business books because I wanted to do something with my life. I remember reading a book by Harvey Mackay, and he built an envelope company. He reminds me of like Dunder Mifflin on the office, where it's like, I sell paper. It's a commodity. It's paper, and it competes on price. He's like, I built this amazing envelope company, Harvey Mackay, and how did I sell envelopes? Because it was a commodity. He created what's called The Mackay 66. I just Googled it, literally viewed this, is like 15 years ago in my head, and I still found it, here it is. It's called The Mackay 66. It's basically probably a version of Brandon's questions, is here's all the questions that he went through on all of his buyers of envelopes at businesses to know everything about them personally.

 

Frank Klesitz:

There were 66 questions on here that he wanted to know the answers to on every single account, and he taught all of the salespeople to know the answers to all these things on the accounts so the buyers would buy the envelopes from him. I just Googled it, The Mackay 66, and you'll probably learned more about it, but I think that's the direction. I don't have a specific question [inaudible 01:17:22] to real estate. I don't think it has to do with real estate. A good memory jogger. If we don't get to post it, I'll follow up and see if I can get it here in the comments, is to go check out The Mackay 66, to come up with your own personal questions that you can scale and train to build that personal rapport with somebody.

 

Greg Harrelson:

I'm glad that we're talking about this, because in the last five years, and I'm not sure I'm choosing five years randomly as a number, we've leaned so heavily on technology automation. I'm a big believer in technology and automation. Okay? I think we may have went a little too far where we're trying to automate our intimate connection, and I don't think anyone's really automated it. I think it still requires some sort of personal touch.

 

Frank Klesitz:

I felt it, man. When I was doing the role-play with him and he asked about my kids, [crosstalk 01:18:17].

 

Greg Harrelson:

You went from role-play to, wait, I'm lying, I need to tell the truth.

 

Frank Klesitz:

No, I did lie. I made up names of my kids, then I'm like, wait a minute, that's the not the names of my kids. I start thinking about my kids.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, so then you were like, you were in. It was fantastic how that his delivery, and that's what was going on. But what I think we need to understand as an industry, and just maybe as human beings is we got to bring some of that personal touch, that intimate connection back into our lives. I'm going to say our lives. I know this is real estate and this is business, but I think as we bring that back in, we actually stand out. Years ago, we would stand out. Years ago, we were connecting and there was so much personal touch that you didn't stand out. That was just what everyone did. Now, then it became, you stood out amongst the real estate industry is like, wow, this guy is great with technology, and now everybody's doing it.

 

Greg Harrelson:

To the consumer, it's like, we're just like a bunch of robots. If we want to stand out for the next couple of years, especially with what we've been dealing with around our country lately. We want to stand out, let's bring personal touch back into it, let's bring humanity back into it, let's bring it's about the customer again, let's bring that back into it. I think that is going to be a very, very good way to attract a lot of business.

 

Frank Klesitz:

Cool. Well, I would say for those of you who want the questions of how you convert to asking personal questions, go check out that Harvey Mackay character in The Mackay 66, I wrote that. I wrote that down for myself, and just the handwritten notes, man. We're talking about Facebook retargeting, dynamic retargeting, but I also have the handwritten notes. That's all I got guys. That's a little overtime with Frank and Greg. I hope you enjoyed. I'll be doing these shows every two weeks. Make sure you go to realgeeks.com. I'm sorry. Incorrect. Go to keepingitreal.com. All right? Keepingitreal.com, put your email address in to subscribe, to get the show. You can watch the replay right here. Greg, great show today. Welcome [crosstalk 01:20:25].

 

Greg Harrelson:

That was awesome. Fantastic, man. I'm happy to be doing this. Can't wait till two weeks to
Published on Feb 8, 2021 under

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