Top 5 Strategies to Score More Real Estate Listings in 2024 | Tom Ferry Podcast Experience

Cool.

It's great.

Are you ready?

Yeah, we're ready.

Oh, we've already been going for three minutes.

Yeah.

Welcome to the show. We all have our uniforms on today, ladies and gentlemen.

Go get the blue jacket, Jimmy.

Yes.

Yes.

Come on. He's got his tea. How pretentious.

No, it's called. It's cold.

I know.

New England.

Oh, yeah.

He lives. That's right.

Dude, it's like 80 today. It's 80 today in Dallas.

It is hot. I was literally. I was hot. I need my shorts.

Yeah. Listen, listen, Tom. It's been a while for you, but this is called having kids in daycare. This is what it means, right? Having kids in daycare. That's it.

I don't have kids in daycare. What I have is kids that sometimes cause me to be hungover.

It might be the same thing, just.

Different at that point.

Yes. Yes.

That's a different kind of contagion.

Yeah.

Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Where we're going dinner night? Dad, I don't know. Can I buy all your friends dinner, drinks?

Sure.

Sounds fun.

So here's the thing. Entrepreneurs, leaders, salespeople, we all want to create consistent, repeatable, and scalable ways to grow our business and our income. And we want to do it better, faster, and more seamlessly. Why? So we can actually enjoy our lives, take vacations, and spend the quality time we want with the people that we love. How do we do all this without spending a fortune or running ourselves raggedy? That's the big question. And this show is dedicated to the answer.

Hey, welcome back to the show.

If you're looking for a way to.

Generate exponentially more listings in 2024 than you did in 2023, you are going to love today's show. I've got with me Jimmy Mackin, CEO of Curator. I've got Jason Pantana, my partner in crime. We want to talk today, Jim, Jimmy. About five different ways my listener today can say, I'm going to add 1, 3, and 5 to generate even more listings. So for the people, though, that, Jimmy, that don't have context for who you are, which would be shocking, but there's going to be somebody out there that's new. So. So, Jimmy. Who is Jimmy? What is Curator? So they understand context for what we're about to deliver.

Yeah. So, Tom. Thank you, Tom. Great to be here again. The last time we did a podcast like this, I feel like we broke the Internet. So it's good to be back again here. So my name is Jimmy Mac, and I'm The CEO of Curator. We help listing agents get more listings. Been doing this now for over a decade in real estate. Been in the industry for now over 15 years. And the thing that we have learned in my experience working with so many agents is that there are so many ways, whether you've got a big budget or small budget, whether you're a big team or small team, whether you're just getting started, you got 20 years experience. There's so many things that you could be doing right now, Tom, to have more conversations, book more appointments and get more listings. And at the time in which we're recording this podcast, you know, we're, we're entering into what many would regard, Tom, as one of the most challenging quarters in, in the last, you know, 15 plus years in real estate. And, and I think what we're, what we're excited about today is the fact that we're seeing so many people just win. So many people out there who are just separating themselves from the competition. So, yeah, I'm just excited to dive into some real tactical stuff with the audience today and give them some takeaways they can use to get some more listings. I love it.

Jason, I think everybody knows who you are. King of this week in marketing Edge AI Social. Are you going to give us some insights today and all that as Jimmy unpacks his five?

Yeah, I can't wait to add some additional perspective. I'm excited to hear the list of five listing attraction strategies and then talk about the impact of social AI and other marketing channels that can maybe give some extra secret sauce to the five pieces of information Jimmy shares.

All right, so, Jimmy, I'm going to turn it over to you, my friend. So if I want to generate more listings in 2020, talk to me about the first play I should be running from a marketing standpoint.

This would be. I would broaden to sort of marketing and sales. Tom, the first one I think of is, I think of this as sweat equity. Yes. And this, this strategy is something that we know works. We see agents within the ecosystem executing it. But I have a little bit of a twist on it, which is we, we all know in this, in this call, you know, when you sell a property, it's the best time to get a listing. I mean, if you think about the, the listings have the unique ability, unlike buyers, in many instances, listings have the unique ability to compound. I always used to say buyers are a paycheck, a listing is an asset. And so when I think about, if I, if I was listening to this podcast and I Just sold the property before I even began the process of putting together postcards and, and doing a post on social media and, you know, sending out an email campaign. The first thing that I'm going to do is, is I'm going to get all the information about that listing that's not available online. I'm going to kind of build up kind of my unique pitch, if you will. Tom. So this would be, you know, how many offers did I get on the property? You know, what were the sort of makeup of those offers that were the cash offers, were they financed? Obviously. How quickly did the home sell? Were there any contingencies? Right. Was the negotiation a difficult. All the information you couldn't find on one of the portals or one of the, the large websites out there. And now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go and start calling my database. Hey, Tom, this is Jimmy calling with ABC Realty. The reason I'm reaching out right now is because 1-2-my property, 123 Main street just sold. I'm going to be calling around the neighborhood to see if anyone else is thinking about putting their home on the market. Because anytime a home sells, we know two or three people start thinking about selling. Now think about this for a second. I'm reversing the order and I want everyone to pay very close attention to what I'm saying. Yes, I'm calling my database first because now when I talk to five or ten buyers said, yeah, actually I am interested. I can then call Jason the homeowner and say, hey Jason, this is Jimmy calling, you know, with ABC Realty. I'm not sure if you saw we just sold, you know, the home down the block from you. The reason I'm reaching out right now is cause I spoke to about three buyers this morning who were thinking about making and making a move. And they love the home that we just sold. And because your home is similar to that home, I was just calling to see if he had any thoughts of potentially putting your house on the market. And so what I'm doing there is I'm taking the listing, the sold event, that sort of marketable moment we call. I'm taking that and I'm using it to drive business on the buy side, which of course we know can translate into business on the list side. And then I'm also now using the ammunition I'm gathering from those conversations. And this is the word of the month for us, Tom. And you know this. I'm delivering a personalized sales pitch. This is not generic this is not pre canned. Hey, I was just talking to Tom. He actually loves, you know, your neighborhood. That's the reason I'm giving you a call. I'm just how. And now all of a sudden, I just took what is one event, a listing, and turned it into two or three buy side conversations and hopefully two or three list size. So to me, Tom, sweat equity is how you win in this market. But you've got to approach it from the. From the perspective of how do I squeeze as much out of this thing as I possibly can.

Well, what I love about that before Jason adds some 2 cents is first of all, the insight is what is the information that no one has access to?

Right.

People want information, but they want information that they have, like the insider scoop on insider trading details. So when they're sitting at the soccer team or watching their kids do taekwondo, they're like, dude, did you hear that house had like five offers on it? Yeah, but like three of them were this way, two of them were this way, and people are like, whoa, man, where'd you get that? Like, like it just, it gives you. When you give people the inside scoop, it empowers them to go share the story and talk about it because they have the information. They got the insight that nobody does. The other thing is, I don't know if I've shared this with you guys, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna make sure we link it up. Meredith Fogel, right? One of our great clients, she just did a talk for me at. At Roadmap where she talked about her viral listing strategy. So every listing that she takes, not only does she generate three or four buyers from it, Right. But she generates, on average, one to two listings from it. And then she broke down everything inside the campaign, and of course, one of them was notifying your past clients in Sphere.

Right?

Hey, we just had this successful activity, right? And then going back to the neighborhood to find more opportunities. So shout out to Meredith, who's going to be on my show sometime coming up.

So what.

What did you hear inside that, Jason, besides, like, people got to make phone calls?

Well, so I appreciated going to your database first to see if there's any buyer opportunities, because then instead of simply bringing news to the homeowners in the area, you're bringing an opportunity their way.

Right.

And I think bringing an opportunity their way is a super smart move. I really appreciated the forethought to go talk to your database database first. I would also add that I believe the pre marketing or the marketing having the Open houses, having the branded directional side signs, the postcards. All the marketing you do is going to be realized when you send out that announcement or when you make that call about how we did it, so to speak, with those data points. So I think the more marketing you do and the more visibly you're promoting the property to the neighbors, then you're tying them back to the, oh, yeah, I've been seeing them out there hustling and working hard and getting the job done. And that adds a level of credibility and cements their belief that, wow. I think the difference was this agent's involvement in the opportunity. The other piece I would encourage everyone to consider because actually, yesterday we put out, this week in marketing, we did 20 ways to leverage a listing. So.

So the timing.

So the timing's really good. We've been talking about how do you maximize leverage because of the point you made? We know there's a chain reaction that when one list, when one home sells, it creates this marketable moment that says, well, if they can do it, I can do it. And that can be within your database, that can be amongst the neighbors around the sale. But I would encourage everyone to consider that it may not happen right away. There could be a period of weeks to months before that really comes to fruition. And so I would encourage everyone watching to say, what's going to be your strategy? To not just be in and out, to not lose contact with those neighbors. And I believe coming with an offer or something that's more marketable, I think that's going to create a longer conversation because you'll realize the gains over time. So with my own coaching clients, we talk about, how can you commit for the season whenever you sell a home? What does it look like to leverage that listing and be visible for the season so that you can capitalize on opportunities.

Yeah.

Before we dive into tactic number two, what Jason's talking about here is something in marketing we refer to as the halo effect, which is if you're interacting, you know, the same reason why all of us are comfortable buying headphones from Apple, from buying a watch from Apple, from buying a computer from Apple, is because if we have a good experience with one interaction, we now have a positive perceived perception of that brand. So, and this is something I think a lot of people miss. And this is. This is probably, I think, one of the differences between top producing agents and agents who maybe try something but never really commit fully. Tom, you have a great line like, are you. What's the line? Are you committed or are you.

Yeah, Interested or committed?

Interested or committed. Thank you. If you are committed to executing across all these channels, every single time, you build that halo effect, which is again, incredibly important for your brand to get that brand lift.

So before we go to number two, I want to just. You guys were. You guys were saying stuff and it was sparking in my mind, like, I think one of the biggest mistakes is a just sold card. I think it is one of the worst marketing pieces on the planet. You give no details. You say, hey, you know that one that I told you I held? Open it. Yeah, it sold.

Right?

And the worst thing you could say. And again, every market's going to be different, but I think the worst thing you could say is listed and sold in four days and. And got over ask. Because what it tells the consumers, you did absolutely nothing. Right. So. So I really love, as a part of this strategy, the telling the story in digital, in print, on video, on the phone, of, hey, would you be shocked to hear that I actually met this customer nine months ago. And over the nine months, we helped them do ABC 1, 2, 3. And then when it was time to finally unveil the property before I did, for the first, the last 30 days, we did ABC 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. All these things. And the result of that was, would you be surprised to hear that inside of the three open houses, we had this many people. We had this number of first showings, we had this number of second showings, we ended up with this number of offers, this number of counters, and ultimately one happy new neighborhood. Right? Who acquired this property at X amount or what depend upon the state you're in, you can disclose it or not. But I think the, the miss Is we're so fast to just say I did it instead of saying, wait a minute, this is a moment where I can put my brand on steroids. And the more I can express to someone how hard I worked and the level of detail that I understand about my business, it's just, it's going to make that person say, yeah, this is just a little bit better than, you know, Phil or Sally who sold the house. Right? So I think, I think that's got to be a part of our strategy for 2024. But let's be mindful. What's number two?

So I'm actually curious if you guys know this. We're going to need way more than 45 minutes. I know we're probably going to run out of time here, so hopefully the audience is taking lots of notes. But let Me. Come back here. Okay. We're recording this podcast in 2023. November 2023. This is a question for you, Jason. What was the number one most streamed show on Netflix this past year?

Oh, a question for me. Stream show on Netflix.

Yeah. What would be your guess?

Friends.

Okay, so Friends is not even on Netflix. Jason, I feel like you're failing this.

Okay, you're right.

It's not. It's not.

Jason has two young kids, and he watches a lot of, like, Star wars shows.

Or something. Jason.

So.

So the number one most. I'll help you out here. The number one most stream was. Was Suits. The show Suits. Right. And now Suits stopped filming in 2019.

And.

And despite the fact that it's been four years off the air, it was actually streamed over, like, 3 billion minutes per week for 15 straight weeks. The only other show that's ever beaten that on Netflix is Stranger Things, which was an original production. And the lesson there is that sometimes strategies that we've done before in the past, we sort of have just sort of moved on to what's next. And we didn't go back and say, let's look at what we actually did and let's re. Let's revisit it. Sam Walton says this in his biography, talks about this idea, like, we figured out what works and we didn't stop doing it. And so number two on the list, and we have. We have a little bit of a twist here. So the first part you probably. You probably have heard before, but the second part, I promise you, you haven't, is the unsolicited cma. Now, we've got a ton of data on how effective this is. We got our buddy Ken Pozak, who's part of the ecosystem down there in Orlando, Florida, doing some great work on YouTube. He sent out an unsolicited CMA to over 30 people. He booked 12 appointments. He took on five listings. This was back at the beginning of 23. He did it again a few weeks ago, took on another four listings. The basic idea is that you go in your database, you do the work required to put together a cma. You reach out and say, hey, Tom, this is Jimmy. Just checking with you. I want to do an equity update for you. Based on the finishing and amenities, I think your home is probably worth between 625 and 675. I don't know if you've had any thoughts of selling. I'd love to hear where you're at. Very simple text followed by actually emailing out the full cma now, that is a tactic, right? That suits. That's like, just go back to what works. Just do that again and again and again. That's going to actually drive revenue for your business, listings for your business. But here's where the magic happens. If you can take that event and you say that's a marketable moment. If Tom, let's say, bought his house in 2019, and let's say Tom gained $150,000 in equity, right. In the last few years, I want to take that marketable moment and I want to go to my other distribution channels. This could be Instagram, it could be Facebook, be TikTok, you name it. And then I want to post a story that says, just did an equity update for my. For one of my clients. They gained $155,000 in equity in the last three years or four years. Would you like one of these reports for your home? And you throw up a poll. So this will be on Instagram. You throw up a poll, you know, yes, absolutely. Second question is, what's an equity report? And all of a sudden what you did is you take in that. That unsolicited CMA that you delivered value to your customer, and then you say, let me take that event, that marketable moment, let me share that socially so I can reach a much larger, broader audience. And let me create an engaging question that gets people to opt in. Now, in Tom, let's say post on Instagram and people opt in now, I'm going to slide into their DMs. I'm not going to wait for them to DM me. I'm going to slide into their DM, say, great, what's your address? And so Tom and Jason, where my head goes is like, let's run plays at work, but then let's push ourselves a little bit further to take those. Those marketable moments and let's get them in front of more people and grow our audience beyond just our soi.

This is like football yards after catching, right? Like, it's one thing that you caught the ball. It's another thing that you broke a tackle and you kept going another seven yards. This is one of my most favorite tactics right now. I talk about it at every event. I do every digital event, every face to face, because I say, this is another one of those examples of why you should be communicating with your customers. Yeah, I'm going to back up, though, and I want. I want the listener to just to hear me out on this. I get asked so many times because of the position that I Have hits on how's the market. Hey Tom, what's going to happen next? And, and I started testing like 45 days ago. I had this hypothesis that people didn't want me to give them a Bloomberg esque answer. They didn't want to know transaction count is down by this much and the, you know, buyer demand is X because of the builders can't do it above the federal government. The, you know, the Treasury 10 year, they were like, yeah, I just want to know like, is my equity safe?

Right.

And I don't care if I'm talking to like billionaires or millionaires or first time buyers. Like, I've got a very diverse friend group. They all basically want to do the same thing. Is my equity safe? And then there was this sort of sub because I would ask like, well, like why do you care? They're like, well, because I've got these plans for that house, right? Like that house I was going to give to my kids, that house I was going to do this with, that was the one that we were going to sell and parlay that money into pay for X. Right. So so many of them, it was like, is my equity safe? And we know the subset of that. Is our home prices going up, are they going down? And then most people have a plan for their home. So when you get asked that question, I'd love for everybody to start to think about like, it's not just how's the market? It's like, is my equity safe? Are we going back to 2007? Is the whole world going to fall apart? Wars, this, that people are concerned. So you're, by doing the same as. Yeah, you're answering their question. The, the gal we were just talking about sort of off camera, who got four listening appointments from like a small number of text messages. It's the same thing. But then if you go back and you, you go the extra mile, the yards after catch.

Yeah.

And say, hey, I just had the success, now I'm going to go show it. And I wouldn't, here's the mistake. You're going to do this on Instagram stories and you're going to get 11 people that respond and you're going to get a listing from it. And then you're going to stop and I'm going to say to you, no, this now needs to be an activity that I do every single week, at the minimum, every single month. And maybe it's not always on Instagram, maybe it's on Facebook. Then I'm going to do it on Twitter. Then I'm going to do it on Twitter X, then I'm going to do it on YouTube and ask if they got a question about it. Would you like this done? This play works because people are concerned about their equity right now.

So it's, it's interesting. We were at edge last week in Atlanta and we were talking about, you know, marketing and sales. And one of the talking points was the importance of recognizing what are your CTAs, what are your calls to action, one of which is what you just described, Jimmy. The home valuation or the CMA unsolicited or the equity update, whatever language you want to use. It's all centered around what's your home worth, what's your equity position? And that is a core cta. But the second part is realizing first what is the cta, but then from there, what are all the different placements where you can utilize that cta. And I believe using your stories on Instagram is an incredibly smart move. One of our rockstar coaching clients, Shannon Mangin, she's been crushing it in her Instagram stories with behind the scenes content. Now a lot of her content's been showing people out buying homes and hey, which home would you buy? This one, this one or this one? What do you think? We negotiated off the list price and she shows. She sends me screenshots of how many DMS she's getting and how many people who are following her who see those stories are jumping in on the conversation. Because it's kind of like when you go to a restaurant and you smell food and all of a sudden your mouth starts watering because you can like all of a sudden your appetite becomes activated because you see it and smell it and you're in the right space. And I think using stories behind the scenes to do that is an effective way to activate people who are maybe considering it and have some questions they need answered. But I love the way you're doing it with the listing attraction piece because it's a lot easier, I think, for agents to document their buyer activities. They're out in the field showing properties and it's great to do that. But I love the idea of using that cma, documenting that through stories, asking questions, using polls and interactive stickers to spark dialogue with other people. And then what you said, being cognizant of really what's their maslow's hierarchy of needs. Baseline, primarily question, primordial question. They want to know, am I safe?

Yeah.

And then once they know if they're safe or not, you might say, hey, what? What Were you exploring or wondering what you might should do next? And it could be renovating or selling or you go next, you're hitting on.

What I was going to say.

I go for it.

I think, Jimmy, what we need to add to this campaign, you know, I've shared this one a ton, right. Since you showed this to me in Boston, I like told everybody and people are like, oh my God, that's great. Right? But I think the next one after you say would, you know, would you like one of these?

Right, right.

And you get the yes, yes, basically. Then the next one I would say would just be a question, a poll. And I would literally say on my Next story in 2024, do you think home prices are going to go up or down? And you can go up, flat or down and write and poll up, flat or down, see how people respond. And then I would literally come back to it again and say, are you sure you don't want an equity review on your property?

Right.

And like, you know, like, I would literally, I'd go at it again. And I think you're going to find like, I. Because I do so many polls and like anybody that follows me on Instagram knows once a week, sometimes twice, I'm like, who's got a question? Hey, I've got three questions I want to ask you just to give you some feedback. Every time I do that, the amount of engagement is just bananas. It goes off the charts. It doesn't matter how many people follow me, you'll have the same exact experience.

So I would, I would say, and this is somewhat tangential, but I would say that if you're on social media and you're building an audience through Instagram and your audience, your followers, consist primarily of past clients, current clients, sphere of influence, contacts. Those are your people. And you're not creating a conditioned understanding that you're going to use polls and stories to gain information. Then you're not using your thought leadership platform, that is Instagram. I think that has to be a piece of your marketing mix. Is every day something that's driving the stories? There's so much, I talk a lot in my content about what content you should publish in terms of getting people's eyeballs and attention. But if you really want to activate conversations, it happens in the stories. And so a good practice for a lot of folks watching may be, hey, every day get in the pattern of first story of the day is a thought provoking question that drives DMs so that you start priming your audience to be more interactive with you so that when these ideas come along, you've already conditioned your audience to be receptive to polls, so you can really cash in on that.

Interrupting my own show with a quick little announcement. If you're like me and you recognize this is the time of the year when we've got to make decisions, we got to look back at what's worked in the past and decide what we want to have happen in 2024, then, yes, it is time for you to get your plan together. Now, if you're one of my coaching clients, you know, you just go inside a loom, you download the 2024 plan, you and your coach work on that together. If you are not one of my clients, go to tomferry.com there's be a link below. Download a copy of the plan, get to work on it. Use ChatGPT and other resources to answer the tough questions about the strategies you need to implement to ensure your success in 2024. So, tomferry.com get your business plan and let's get to work. Now let's go back to the show.

Yeah. The way I would phrase everything you said there, Jason, because you're spot on, is build the audience before you need it. And I think this is, this is the way to think about it, is everything we do for a marketing perspective is to build our recognition and our awareness and our affinity so people know who we are before we actually have something to sell to them. Because if we go, if we skip that part, we're just cold outreach and cold sales. So, Tom, I know we got to get into number three, four, and five here, but fire away.

No, I'm not going to share the last one that I'm going to. I, I'm going to do it. I'm going to share it. Ready? So I'm going to do the, you know. Yes. Do you want an equity review? And I'm going to say, do you believe the home prices are going up, flat or down?

Yes.

And then I'm going to do a Q and A and I'm going to say, so tell me why specifically you believe home prices will go up, be flat or go down? Because then I'm going to take that and I'm then going to do a Instagram reel about. I recently surveyed 47 of my clients asking them this question, do you think home prices will go up, flat or down? Would it shock you here that 32% of the people said they thought home price would stay flat? And here's the reasons why. And 29% said they're going to go down and here's the reasons why. And the balance said home price is going to go up, and here's the reasons why. What do you think? And create even more engagement.

Yeah. And then comments and then dms and then repeat.

Right. And just, and just keep the conversation alive. And then the next time I say, do you want an equity review? I think far more people are gonna be like, yeah, I want that.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Marketing should be fun. What you're describing is fun. Like you're, you're, like you're actively listening to customers. You're having conversations. Like, this is marketing. So number three here, let's dive. And we got, by the way, number five is, I think is a cheat code. I really do. And I'll share some data on this. Number five. Tom, I even shared this with you. This is one that just came across my table recently. I think it's just such a cheat code. So before we get into, before we end this podcast, we're gonna. Something that everybody can actually execute to get listings.

Yes.

Let me come back to number three here, which is, Tom, if. For, for the audience right now, for all of our listeners, you've got in your presentation, you talk about the. I believe it is the three, maybe five. I'm sorry, I'm blanking here. The things that all businesses need. Great brands. Great. Mark, could you break that down for us, please?

So, so in my study of all things business, all great businesses have four things in common. They all have an amazing brand. An amazing brand, they have an amazing product. Then for agents, that's going to be the listings that they take. And it's also the services they provide. So it's bifurcated between those two. The third one is they all have great sales and marketing. And you could put sales under distribution. I, I put it here on the third one, which is great sales and marketing. And then the last one is they have great distribution. Right.

Okay.

Every great business on the planet. Tesla, Apple, you. I mean, Disney, what are they? They have amazing brands. Brands make you feel something.

You.

It evokes an emotion. Right. Great products. Oh, my God, I gotta have that. Right? I gotta have that listing that Jimmy keeps taking. Right. Or Jimmy's buyer agency services are so much greater than everybody else's. He's the only person you should work with. Sales and marketing, it's what we're talking about now. And distribution is how you get the word out. Like it's those.

So let's talk about. Yeah, let's Talk about the fourth one here that Tom just touched on, because this one I think that many people don't really understand. This is going to fall into our, our fourth tactic, our third tactic, which is distribution. There is a. There are many ways. As real estate agents, we can distribute our marketing to consumers. We can call them, we can text them, we can email them, we can post on social, we can send them mail. These are all distribution channels. And Jason coaches this very, very effectively when he talks about, like, lean into where you have the most reach and most influence. There's one distribution channel that I would wager to bet that 99% of the people who are listening right now have not used. And in my opinion, it is the breakthrough innovation in 2023 as it relates to distribution. We all know the stats, guys behind text messaging, how, what percentage of text messaging is get. Get opened and responded to, and it's just astronomically higher than phone calls. And Jason knows where I'm going with this. On Instagram, Jason's probably done five videos on this and I want people to go back and rewatch them. Instagram rolled out broadcast channels. Yeah. Which is effectively the ability for you to invite your followers on IG to subscribe to your channel so that when you send a message, when you actually send a message, it ends up in their message inbox. On Instagram, it is the equivalent. It is the equivalent of effectively texting hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. So today I've got one point. I got one and a half thousand people on my, on my Instagram broadcast channel. Jason's got, you know, 1,800. And when I send a message out, Jason, you got the data on this? Like, I'm seeing 80% of people see that. It's crazy that. So the first thing, the first part of step three here is what I would be doing if I was a real estate agent is I would create a hyper specific broadcast channel that would be about the deal of the week. Because I want it to be something that's simple, that's easy to digest, that's sort of snackable, that I can share with my community. And I would not be just dropping links to an IDX landing page or to Zillow. I would actually drive in front of the damn house and I would take a picture of myself selfie style with a house behind me and say, hey, this home is not on the market yet. Based on my experience, this home is going to sell within a few days. If you want to get more information, you know, drop a comment right or send me a DM as an example, or text me. And so the, there's three steps here. The first is to set up a broadcast channel. The second is to regularly feed, regularly feed that broadcast channel with off market deals, pre foreclosure deals, expired deals. Things are not necessarily easy to find on, on Zillow or, or homes dot com. Now here's where this, this is how you turn into listings, Tom, for the audience. Can you please explain the Yikes letter strategy for everybody? Because I think this is, this is important that we have this context.

Okay, so the Yikes letter strategy is a legendary direct mail piece marketing tactic. Been used for as long as I can remember, three plus decades. And you've all done it before. It goes something like this, I have a buyer and this property, or there's no properties available. Like, you know, it's the magic buyer letter. I've got a property, there's nothing available. You know, this buyer's ready to buy right now. They, they're married, kids, blah, blah, blah. I can't do some of that stuff with fair housing anymore. But that's essentially what the Yikes campaign was. On the reverse, you could do it as a, as the listing agent and say, I recently sold this property. 1-234-BANANA STREET There was 27 people that came through the open house. There was 55 people that blah, blah, blah. Nine people wrote offers, one new happy client, eight people crying in their soup. Have you had any thoughts of selling? Right, like, so it goes either side, buy side or sell side.

So, so let's, let's build on this, Tom, because this, this goes back to what Sam Walton said. Right? We just found out what worked and just kept doing it.

Yeah.

So the Yikes letter is 30 years of experience. That thing works. But we've never used it in this broadcast channel. So if you create a broadcast channel on IG dedicated to finding the best real estate deals in your area, make that super niche, and you're regularly posting updates. Hey, check out this listing. It's very kind of like, you know, behind the scenes, kind of like showing that working in public. Then every few weeks you can go into that broadcast channel because you've earned the right to do so. And you can send a message like this today, I'm looking for a deal. I have an off offer ready buyer. And if your home suits her need, she's ready to write an offer today. Here's what they're looking for. Now I'm reading one verbatim from what a client used. Yeah, this Is the area. This is the price point. This is the bedroom about if you know someone who's look, thinking about making a move or trying to sell their property, give me a call now. And so you can take what works. Yikes. And you can use what is probably, Jason, you can echo this sentiment, probably the best kept secret in real estate, which is IG broadcast channels. And you can use that to generate not of course buyer leads, but then you can use that to use a yikes campaign to get listing appointments. And the cost of doing this is zero. Zero.

So what's, what's fascinating about those broadcast channels is one. You can have more than one. They're structured somewhat like Facebook groups where you can actually have multiple people who collaborate and lead a broadcast channel together. So if you're on a team, for instance, you could bring in other people to participate and be collabs on that, so to speak, if you want to populate it. I love the idea of topic specific broadcast channels and the deal of the week. I think that's a super smart move. I also think it goes back to your comment earlier. This is why you build the audience first. This is a, this is an activity to invest in, is in building a broadcast channel so that when you have the moment of I'm in search of this kind of a property for this kind of a buyer, you have an asset that is a broadcast channel there at the ready. And it's typically a cross section of your most active followers and so you can promote it in your stories. There's a link for people to be able to join. It can be one of your story highlights. But I've been seeing you push your broadcast channel. I'm leveraging my broadcast channel.

I highly recommend setting up Tom's. As soon as this podcast, go to.

Tom's profile and get on his broadcast channel. It's an amazing tool and it's effectively a group message where they can't comment back. They can simply react to what you publish in the, in the messages. They can like.

Oh, Jason, before I forget, we just talked about polls. You didn't mention this, but you taught me this. Break this down for the audience.

Break what down for the audience? Excuse me?

For the poll.

For the polls within broadcast.

Excuse me. Yes. So you also have the ability. That's a, that's a great point. Thank you for reminding me. You also have the ability to administer polls, the same kind of polls as what you would put in your stories and your broadcast channel. So it's a pseudo more private space for people to interact. And so you can be getting all kinds of intelligence. Once again, this is the power of building an audience.

Right.

When you build an audience and you look at it through the lens of marketing, should be fun. I just want to be the thought leader in this space and help people move forward. And it's not about trying to sell them something. It's about trying to help them achieve something and understanding their needs and wants. That's marketing. And it's not just about building followers. A broadcast channel is so much more of an effective tool for being in connection with people. And I mean, we could talk a lot about this, but more and more we're seeing the shift of Instagram, and the main feed is becoming more and more like TikTok, which is less and less personal, less and less social. And so you see these hungers for social interaction, and they're in comment threads, but more than anywhere else, they're in stories and DMS stories and DMs. Bingo. That's where you can get personal behind the scenes.

Tom, before we get to number four, there it is. The effectiveness of text. Of, like, mass text messaging. Yes. Without the. Without the potential being fine to oblivion.

You don't have to say stop because you don't want these anymore. Exactly.

You just unsubscribe. Okay, so. So, Jimmy, we got to do number four.

Yes.

And I'm already thinking right now, I feel bad for the listener. I really do. I appreciate you hanging in there, but I feel bad because you're probably feeling the same way I'm feeling like I don't have a broadcast channel. I have to set that up right away.

You don't have a Tom.

Jason. Damn. Damn you. Damn you. Okay, number four. Number four on the 2024. What do we have to do to get more listings?

So we, we. We know that the most effective strategy that we coach in 100k in 100 days, which has been, you know, I know we got some stats we can share on this, but the most effective strategy that we've seen has been the ZMA strategy. And at a high level, the ZMA strategy is you go to Zillow, you take a screenshot of one of your clients listings and then you simply text them. Hey, I was on Zillow earlier today looking at your home, and they estimate your home is worth $1.8 million. You include a screenshot of that in the text and then you follow up with, I have my opinion, but I'd love to hear yours. This strategy is converting at such a ridiculously High rate that it is something that if you're not doing right now, this is one of the quickest, fastest, easiest ways to find, like ready to sell listings in your database. The challenge, of course, is that the agents who are getting great results from it. Go on.

No, no, finish. Because I've got so many insights here.

Go. Okay. The agents who are the number one, I wouldn't call it like complaint. The number one issue is that we're a victim of our own success. It works so well that people effectively work through their entire soi and they go, okay, what's next? Here's what's next. Now that you've done the ZMA for your soi, we want you to do the ZMA for your farm. And what that entails is taking a picture of the home on Zillow and actually printing that out. You can do one of the screen grab software is printed out and then we want you to take a sticky note and put a sticky note on that. And you can have a dozen different angles you use. You could say, I think this number is wrong. Call me for the right number. You could say, would you sell at this price? Would you sell at 10% more than this price? And you print this thing out, you put a sticky note on it and you drop it in the mailbox. Now all of a sudden, Maybe you've got 300 people you've done a ZMA for. You can now open that up to 3,000 people. You can do a direct mail ZMA for. And so what I would be encouraging our audience to do and shout out to my guy, Sharon, president of Real, who share the strategy with me. One of the things that I love about this strategy is that it allows agents who don't have a big soi or have worked through their soi to now have a whole group of people to go after. So I want to say, take the zma, Tom. That's worked really well for us. And let's extend that to another channel. Let's work our farm with that angle. But remember, it's printed out so it's personalized. That's the word of the month right now. Right. There's a sticky note to Jason's point. There's a direct call to action. You guys can. We can rift on different CTAs, but there's a direct call to action. Just doing that on the regular. I mean, you're going to get calls, you're going to get appointments, you're going to get listings on what's your.

You first.

I got I got, I got first shout out to Eileen Rivera. So Eileen would go on listing appointments and she would bring the Zestimate, right, and say this is what Zillow's saying. Then she would sell the house 30 days later, two seconds later, whatever it was. And then after this, the, the listing had sold and closed and now re. Re recorded a new price. She would then take that flyer and use that as her just sold campaign. Here's what Zillow said, here's what I sold it for. And I could imagine taking this, this same exact concept of the ZMA and driving it right through just salts.

I. I agree.

Right. So.

So it's not just your past clients in Sphere. It's not just the farms, it's now just solds. It's now there's so many different applications. But I want to give a shout out to all of our coaching clients right now that are tracking and measuring their numbers. Not all of them are, but the ones that are tracking and measuring their Numbers, we are at 229,538of these text messages. So 229,538. They booked 11,845 appointments. So that's basically every 19 text messages generates an appointment. And right now they've listed 4,657 properties. And before you go, oh my God, that's horrible conversion. It's November. Some people are saying, come over, Jason, and I'd love to talk to you and your wife and let's have a conversation. We want to put our home in the market in the spring so we know the listing, the listing taken number is going to be a lagging indicator, but it's still 49 text messages to a signed listing agreement. My friends, you could do this sitting in your car, sitting on a truck, on a plane, eating a banana, having a bowl of ice cream, watching a football game. Like you can do this anywhere, anytime. It is so basic. Now I got a quick shout out. My friends in Canada, just use Realtor ca. My friends around the world, you just use any one of the portals. But the real secret sauce this for my friends in the US don't use rpr. The price is too accurate. You're actually playing into the zeitgeist that Zillow's prices are wrong and they get more traffic than anybody else. So it being wrong is a part of the conversation. And all this does is it just creates a conversation. It just creates a conversation. I'm looking for an elegant way to not call and go, hey, I work My referral or, you know, hey, I just want to let you know, like, no, instead of like, hey, I saw this. I was like, I was looking on Zillow. I saw your house. What do you guys think about this price? I've got my opinion. Let's talk. Right? Like, that's a value. That's like my broker calling me and saying, hey, did you see Company X just did their earnings? And this is what they reported. And, you know, these three companies are doing their earnings coming up soon. Should we take a look at them? It's the same exact thing for my broker who text me every time during, like, earnings season of stocks he wants me to buy. It's the same concept, and it's a value add. All right, we got to be very mindful of time. One last thought, and we got to do number five.

I'll go super rapid. I was going super rapid on these 1. That means if you have 500 people based upon your 49 for every 49 text messages, if you have 500 people in your sphere of influence contacts, there are 10 listings right now for you to go get signed. That's the first piece, too. We've come across a lot of agents who are, whether they knew it or not, they were playing the secret agent role. They weren't being necessarily direct enough or putting themselves in the position to actually reap the harvest of opportunity of listings from their database. And by sending out the ZMA text, that was a little bit more to the point, they're just getting inundated with listing opportunities because they hadn't been talking to their database in that particular way. And sometimes you have to cut through the noise with an offer that's compelling and strong. And this is a strong, compelling offer. I also love your piece about the Geo Farm. Mike McMurray, who's in our ecosystem down.

In Naples, to Mike.

He sends out postcards with what you described, Jimmy, which is the screenshot of the Zillow Zestimate. The sticky note it's on. It's in a clear envelope, so you can see through the envelope when he mails it out. And the sticky note just says wrong with an exclamation point. And then it says, call me. And it works.

It.

People want to know the value of their home. They want to know if they're safe. They want to know what the right next steps are. And you have to get to the root of that question to get things rolling and to start those dialogues.

Yeah. Love it. Okay, we promise to give a cheat code.

Wrong is my Favorite one so far wrong.

That's great.

And by the way, Zillow doesn't even care. They're like, yes, please just keep coming to our sites. Right, exactly. Okay, number five, the cheat code.

So Number five, the cheat code. So, you know, I think platforms like Tick Tock and platforms like Threads have kind of sucked the oxygen out of the room. Mean that's everyone's like, what should I be on Threads right now? Should I be be more active on TikTok? Sort of the 800 pound gorilla in the room right now is, is still Facebook. Facebook is still widely used by the people who happen to own houses and have a lot of equity. I mean they are not traditionally the ones who are quick to adapt new technology. They tend to be more of the, the middle majority or the laggards, if you will. And so there's, there's a technique that, that we coached many years ago that one of our mutual friends, Zach Faust, shout out to Zach who executed this. And in what he did, he sent out 357 DMS, he got 113 replies, he got 17 leads, and he booked five appointments. He did this within one hour. And what he did is that he went to Facebook on his desktop. So there we go on Facebook on desktop. And when you log on Facebook on the desktop on the right hand side, you're going to see contacts. And under contacts, if somebody is actively online right now, what happens? Their name is highlighted with the green dot, right? They got the green dot. That means they're actively online. Part of marketing and sales, part of the biggest challenge, or maybe the thing is most inefficient is that when you reach out, we text, we email, we call, we follow up, they're not available, they're busy. We know they're not busy because they're on Facebook right now. And so the ability to go into your Facebook account on the right hand side, you will have hundreds of people who are actively live online right now. And what he's been doing is he's been doing the simple one to one market update. Now I want to, I want, I don't want to emphasize the script here, we'll talk about the script. But like it's just about having conversations with people who are online. So a one to one market update might be like, hey, did you see 1, 2, 3 Main street just sold in our neighborhood? Simple open ended question, right? You could use the exactly what to say opening fact question. Hey, did you see that this property just hit the market? Or do you see this property actually Just sold. So you can give them kind of updates on what's happening in the market. The larger point here is that if you're looking to have more conversations, and we know that if you have more conversations that results in more appointments. One of the lowest hanging fruits that costs you nothing is to work that contact list. Tom, if I was a real estate agent right now selling homes, I would work my Facebook CRM before I work my actual real estate CRM. You with me on this?

Well, the funny thing about that too, Jimmy, is we know, like, from all the studies that most of their friends and followers on Facebook aren't even in their database.

Yeah, right.

So. So they just kind of know you socially because you both like the Texas Rangers. Whoop, shout out to the Texas Rangers. But. But I love that idea. I absolutely love it. And you know, too, there's no, like. Well, I guess for some very scared people, there's no, like, fear of rejection. No one's going to hang up on you. Right? You're just. You're just DMing them. Hey, did you hear about this? Oh, yeah, I heard about that. I'm blown away by how many people respond to me on LinkedIn. Same thing. Like, and not the cheese ball. Like, you know, like, I very thoughtful introductions, and then, boom, they respond in real time instantaneously. And I'm like, man, that's another opportunity that most people like. But what do most people do? Marketers ruin everything. They spam everybody on Facebook. They spam everybody on Instagram inside of their, you know, DMs. Certainly with LinkedIn. And then I'm just like, delete, Right? So personalization is the trend.

I also think when you look at Facebook as a tool we talk about in marketing, there are personal versus impersonal marketing channels. And so it can feel sometimes a little bit more intimate to send a text message than it does to send a DM or a private message through Facebook. And so I would also make the argument, and this is what Zach's doing, and it's super smart, is you have an ability on Facebook through your messenger, to connect with people who are maybe like outer middle circle, not inner circle. And it can be that way to start bridging the divide, to bring people more into the fold of your close core group of database contacts. Because, again, like, two things that I keep hearing throughout this conversation is you need to build an audience so that when you have offers for the audience, they are ready to receive the audience those offers. And it's always the marketing and the sales put together. And if you leave one out, you miss the. You miss the whole payout.

Bingo.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so just to recap real quickly, Tom, sweat equity. This is basically using your buyer database to create listings. Working in public, doing unsolicited CMAs, and then getting people and posting on social to create engagement, Using polls to slide in people's DMs, leveraging the IG broadcast channel, that's mass texting without the fines. The zma drop off 2.0, which is, you know, going to the mailbox, not just to their inbox, and then finally talking to people who are actively online right now. You put all those things together and what you end up with, Tom. And we've learned this. We've helped people in the last 100 days generate over $2 billion in listings and one of the worst markets in U.S. history. Right. What we know to be true is that if you engage people with value, you have conversations. And if you have conversations, you book appointments, you have appointments, you get listings. I mean, it is that simple. Tom.

Yes, 1000%. I'm not sure what else I could say. That's just like a mic drop finish. Jimmy. Jason, every time we do this, it. It always just feels electric. So for my friend that's listening right now, I just want to say to you, 2024 is going to be very similar to 2023. And, and it's cliche of me to say it, but I'm going to say it. Hey, what got you where you got in 2023? If your plan is to do more in 2024, it will not get you there. Right. You're going to have to prioritize testing some new hacks, some new strategies, some new campaigns. But what I love about everything we discussed here, we really didn't go that far outside of just our database. People that already know us, like us and trust us. And to your point, if I've got 500 people, there's 10 new listings sitting inside there right now. People's circumstances are changing every single day around the world. And if you don't communicate, if you don't connect, send smoke signals, send dms, send direct mail, do emails, make phone calls, do texts, do it all. If you don't do it, it's okay. Someone else is going to find them.

Right?

We still see the numbers. I just, I was doing a show earlier and I was acknowledging, you know, connections and follow up. And like right now, every sale that a real estate agent makes, they lose four. Because they don't follow up, they lose Four on average, because they don't follow up. And right now, it's 115 days from the time that you meet that client to the time that they go under contract. So let's think about this every day. You don't send text messages, do DMs, send the email, do your marketing. You're pushing off the beginning of a paycheck for 115 days. Now here we are in the fourth quarter. I would argue if you want paychecks, if you want closings in January and February, you need to race as soon as this podcast is over and pick one or two of these things and just start doing it every day. Every day, every day, every day. Send 10 ZMA texts every single day. And then make sure on the back end, you're following up so you're not losing four on everyone that you're getting. That's like, like my closing thoughts. All right, we gotta run. You rock. This was awesome. Thank you. Don't send this show to anyone. Keep it a secret. See what happens. You take all the ideas, you get all the listings. I want to help you do that. I'm kidding. Send it to all your friends. See you guys on the next show. Take care.

If you want more information about this episode, including my show, notes, mentions, links, and everything else, make sure you visit tomferry.com podcast. That's tomferry.com podcast. Thanks again and talk to you soon.