Lead Generation: What's NOT Working Right Now!

So in my world, I called. This was the early days where someone's like, of course you have to call expired if you want to list to last. And I called expired for like I think 15 minutes. And I got a guy on the phone who said he was so mean to me and I don't know if it makes you think less of me, but I did not like it. I was like, there's no way I'm going to do this soul sucking cold calling initiative. It just wasn't something I was willing to do. Are there guys and girls that crush it with cold calling expireds and fizbos and you know, circle prospecting 100% there are. Is it something that's going to work? It's the one or two out of a hundred agents that are going to actually do the work and not be deterred and actually enjoy doing that work, that they're wired differently, their brains are wired and I give them kudos for it. But it is definitely it's not going to work for everybody.

The real estate industry has failed to create a clear path to time and money freedom. Having helped over 5,000 families in my real estate career and coached thousands of agents to scale their businesses, I know what works and what doesn't. And my goal on this podcast is to share all with you the good, bad and ugly of building a highly lucrative lifestyle business so you can focus on what truly matters in life. You won't find any hype or fluff on this show, just real, real world tactics and strategies that get results.

You just gotta do the work. What is going on? Real estate Business Builders. This is part one of a two part series. So I'm gonna do lead generation what's not working right now as part one, Because I know if I did what's working right now, the chance that you would watch part two is really, really low. And I'm gonna start off by giving a framework. If you've been following along my journey at all, I've said it a million times. I don't say it in any kind of boastful kind of way, but just to give you a little bit of context, my journey in real estate was one of building a business. Hence the name of this community here is Real Estate Business Builders. And the framework I'm going to lay out that these four pillars are for you if you want to sell anywhere between two homes per month and 20 homes per month. The same four pillars and you know, my first full year in real estate, I sold 44 homes using one legion lever and I'll get into what that means here in a second and figuring out each of these four pillars so that I can go, you know, add a second pillar and go to, you know, two years later I did 118 transactions. Two years after that I did 248. Two years after that I did 453. And I worked 40 days that entire year. So this is going to lay the foundation for how you view your real estate business and your ability to not only grow your business, but to scale your business. Two entirely different things. So when it comes to what's not working right now, it's so many things that not working right now. Let me give you the four pillars first so you have a little bit of context. So the, the four pillars, and we call this our Million Dollar Agent method. At any time in your journey here on the podcast in the community, if you want to learn more about us, just go to million dollaragentmethod.com there's no obligation whatsoever to jump on a strategy session to learn more about your business to see if this is a fit for where you are now, where you want to go. If we can help you get there, we'll talk about what that might look like. Uh, so Million Dollar Agent Method. Com. So the four pillars, number one, and this is worth writing down because this is the entire journey, building systems around each of these four pillars. Uh, leveraged lead generation. That's number one. Key is leverage. And I'll get into that here in a second. Number two is the appointment setting process, which includes scripts and lead nurture management, all that stuff. Number three are the consultation framework. So how you present to a buyer, how you present to a seller to earn their business at the commission, transaction fees that you want to. And number four is leveraged, I think I could do. But number four is leveraged client care. And most agents, you know, generate a lead, they set an appointment, they sort of earn that business. Or they start showing a buyer homes without an agreement in place, which is a kiss of death, as you guys know, with the NAR settlement, all that. We've, we've always done it in a way where we have systems in place to earn business on the buyer side before we go show homes. But most agents don't. And I'll do more trainings on that. I actually did an episode on that a couple episodes ago, if you missed it. Most agents spend all their time in client care and they're not, you know, generating more leads or they haven't built systems in their business. To generate more leads and to set more appointments. And they're not actually doing the job of a salesperson or a business builder. And so the focus is on leveraged lead generation. And that's the thing that allowed me to, you know, we only had six lead gen levers in the business when we did 453 transactions, 10 producing agents, they were all massively productive. But it wasn't really a complicated business. And so like I said, if you want to go from two to 20 sides or anywhere per month, anywhere in between, there, this is the conversation for you. So that's a little bit of a backdrop here. Until you crack the code on leverage lead generation, you're never going to have like a legit business that gives you any freedom of time, any freedom financially, let alone location freedom, your ability to take a vacation or to take 30 days away from your business. Right. 99.999% of agents, if they leave their business for a week, they can't leave their business for a week completely unplugged. Right. So we don't want that for you. It's not sustainable, it's not a life worth living. So let's get into what's not working right now. And the context around this is that I actually just spent a season in real estate B school with this million dollar agent method where I was sitting in the seat of the business. I've got my right hand person now that does these consultations. He's amazing. But for a period of time, I would say 100 strategy sessions, sessions I did over a four month period, we were retooling some things in the business and I knew that I had to get face to face with agents that were struggling and hear in their words what they were trying that wasn't working. So trust me when I tell you what's not working in lead generation right now is based on real time information from most markets and there's some similarities across the board. This is what not to do. And I would say there's a few, few categories here and I'll go into some, some specifics but mostly to if you'll allow me to guide you here, to guide you away from the things that aren't working. The first thing that's not working and this was in these 150 strategy sessions, I would say half, probably 2/3 of agents have been down the path of paying for leads. So paid leads, these are the Zillows, the realtor.coms. there's a different category now, you know, handing your money over to someone who's going to create a funnel for you and drive Facebook traffic and you know, all these, this sort of funnel culture that has sort of sprouted up in the real estate space, it's not working. So anytime I find that across the board and there are folks that are getting agents that are getting realtor.com to work, they're getting Zillow to work, but for the most part paying someone else money to be a better marketer than you, meaning that they're getting in between you and the, the buyer or seller that's it's not going to be viable or sustainable. Zillow, you know, to pick on Zillow for a second, they, they want as high a percent of your commission check as they could possibly get. You know, right now Zillow flex is at 40%. If they could take 60%, 70%, they would. Right. So it's not a sustainable model. Relying on someone else to be a better marketer than you is not sustainable. And the returns you'll get from those paid lead sources are generally low. That's like the, the, the broad first category is, and these are forced registration home search leads. So a buyer goes to a landing page and within a couple, you know, clicking on a few properties, it a popup comes up and they're forced to register that category. Zillow is a version of that. Realtor.com is a version of that. And if you talk to those companies, they would argue that they're not right, they're higher quality and they could be, but they're charging you for it. And it's out of the economic model that you need. You're paying too much for that lead to close where it's not viable. From an economic model standpoint, that's a whole separate training me even going, going down the path of what the economic model should look like. Well, I'll do it here. Economic model around what it should cost you to generate a closing is 10%. So if you're average commission check is $10,000, it should cost you about $1,000. And not all of you know, lead sources are lead gen levers. They're not all paid or very few of them are. Actually none of them are paid like the ones I just described. But there's a little bit of effort involved, a little bit of technology, maybe some direct mail. So there is some cost involved, database, social media, those sorts of things. And I'll get into some of that in our next episode. Part two of what is working right now when it comes to lead Generation. So that's number one. So 10%. So if you look at paying, you know, a referral fee or that's another category I'll get into, or if you're paying 40% to a Zillow in a Zillow flex type environment, you're paying four times what you should for that closing to occur. And like I said in part two, I'll go over all of the lead gen levers that we're helping our clients implement in the Million Dollar Agent method program. And it'll make more sense once you listen to too. So that's the first category, paid home search force registration type leads. The second category, what's not working is the referral sites. So the home lights, the ideal agent, you know, they're generally, and I think ideal agent even requires that you take like a 1% commission on the sell side or something crazy like Dave Ramsey is a good example of that. You know, he'll take 35% referral fees. So whenever you're paying a large percentage of your commission check to someone to be a better marketer than you. It's a different version of a forced registration home search lead. Typically these referral sites are on the sell side of the business. And we have agents come in like on these strategy sessions that I did, they're looking for these lead sources. They want to pay 40% at closing because it doesn't cost them anything, quote unquote. And I'm like, I, I did, I ran the numbers on one specific example I can think of he did. In a three year period, he did about 20 million of volume from these referral sites. I think on average he was paying 30. Let's just do simple math. Let's do 30%. So and I think it was like a 500,000 average price point. He did 40 closings from this one lead source over three years. And, and I did the math and he's like, yeah, but I don't pay for it. I'm like okay, let's, let's run the numbers 20 million times. Let's just say 3% for, for easy math is what, 600,000 GCI at 30% is 180,000. I think I have the math right on that. You could check my math. So 180,000 over three years. So let's say it was, is evenly broken up over the three years. That's 60,000 a year he's paying to this lead source. That's $5,000 a month. And you could say yeah, but he's not paying it because it's at closing, you're still paying for it. Right. So that's the reason. You know, I know that I could come in obviously through Million Dollar Agent method. Our first pillars leverage lead generation. We have 12 non paid legion levers that we help you install in your business. I know that we could come in and generate that business at 10% so still get the 20 million or the 600,000 GCI. But it would cost you only $60,000, let's say on average over the three years or 20,000, it will be a third of what it's costing him. Yeah, there may be a period of time where you have to outlay, you know, a little bit of effort on you know, some mail pieces or some, some of our little tech, simple tech, but powerful tech tools that we use to generate, you know, business or leads consistently. And so it's just a different way of looking at it. So that's the second bucket of what's not working. The third, and I'm going to get some haters on this one is social media and then I'll say the fourth is YouTube. So I'll unpack each of them separately. Most agents have no clue how to actually generate business from social media and they spend a lot of time and a lot of effort. But I would say a third of the folks, not maybe a third, maybe a quarter of the folks that I spoke to on these strategy sessions and this is real time information. I go through a series of questions, same questions. So I'm getting answers around these questions of like what are you doing now to generate leads? And the answer would be, you know, social media. I've, I have someone posting for me or I use this service or you know, they basically abdicated social media. And, and I'll ask, so how many closings in the last 12 months have you generated from social media? And they may be doing some stuff on their own or outsourcing or whatever combination of it. And it's generally really, it's, it's typically none or maybe a few deals where you could like actually attribute it to. And in our million dollar agent method we've got four specific tactics that will introduce you to that. Absolutely work. The goal is to get one to two closings per month on social media with no, no, I'm not talking about Facebook ads or Instagram ads or any of that, or funnels or any of that. I'm just talking about organic, you know, building an extension of your database and adding value on online. And so that's not working the way most agents do social media. YouTube. It's not working. Does YouTube work for some agents? 100%. Most agents, there's this rush to do YouTube and it's across the board. It's. Well, generally it's not working. And there's just not a lot of. Because there's not a. A lot of agents are going out and they're either hiring someone, paying a lot of money. I've talked to a guy that spent $36,000 to a professional. There's two big YouTube companies right now for real estate agents that say, hey, just give us the money. We'll help you produce these videos, edit them, get them up on your YouTube channel, and you'll just have to deal with all the millions of dollars of commission that are coming in. And talked to a guy, he was two years in, 36,000 a year for YouTube and had not generated a single closing yet from it. And so generally it's not working. YouTube does work, right? So the truth is, and I've actually come to grips with this, is that your stuff is not that good and it's not that engaging and you're not going to grab eyeballs away from all the other stuff that's out there. And I'm talking to you, but I'm talking to me. I've just come to grips with it, that I'm not going to compete with Mr. Beast and whoever else, you know, is on YouTube that's garnering a bunch of eyeballs. There's just too much competition out there. And I've. I've gotten pretty good on, you know, YouTube and, and direct to camera and. But generally it's just, it's not that great. And I have not cracked the YouTube algorithm, you know, with the thumbnail game and all that. So that's a category that's generally not working. Should you use video in your business? 100%. We do it with no tech, no editing, and we just do it live on the platform that your clients are on. So we actually had a member of ours take 30 listings in 90 days just by doing Facebook lives. So no tech, not even a microphone. And just, you know, we have a specific way that we lay out these videos so that you can gain traction on social media and you're using video, but it's, it's a combination of, you know, using it on the platform and to make it easy to consume what else is not working. There's a lot of folks that are selling funnels, you know, like, hey, I'll build this new construction funnel for You. I'll run Facebook ads to this funnel. I'll set it up for you. It's in, it's in my CRM. You don't need to manage any of it. We'll just book appointments onto your calendar. And then if you really dig, and I'm not a hater necessarily, I don't love it when people are out there advertising something that doesn't work for 95% of people that try it. If you watch, there's one in particular that I'm thinking about where the best example, their case study, the person they're going to put on the pedestal for the world to see as the example of how this funnel system works. The best of the best is converting one out of a hundred into a closing, which it's not awful. These leads are not really expensive. They're maybe under $10 leads. So if you generated a hundred of them at $10, it's $1,000 to get a closing. But the, the amount of effort to follow up. This person has VAs that are calling and texting. And it's a monumental, massive effort that they don't quite explain how hard it is to convert a forced registration. So if you want this list of new construction homes can put in your information here and you know, just turning that registration into a closing is a really heavy lift. The same thing is true for like home home evaluations. So I'll run a funnel around a home evaluation. I'll run Facebook ads for you and you know, it'll be a bunch of listing appointments. It's like that game is like one out of a thousand. That's why a lot of these funnel builders that are out there, they're not advertising the home eval as the one that's working because it's a low low. Anyone that's gotten remotely that homey val, which is a Facebook ad to an online like a home eval force registration. Anyone that's running that to any success level has a bunch of VAs that are outbound calling and they're generating leads on the cheap. Like three to five dollar Facebook leads, home eval leads. But one out of two to 500 are converting into a closing. So it's just a monumental fail across the board. So that gives you a little bit of an idea. You know, a bonus here is another thing that's not working but it works is cold calling. And so in my world I called this was the early days where someone's like, of course you have to call expired if you want to, you know, list to last, right? And I called expired for like I think 15 minutes and I got a guy on the phone who said he was so mean to me. And I don't know if it makes you think less of me, but I did not like it. I was like, there's no way I'm going to do this soul sucking, you know, cold calling initiative. It just wasn't something I was willing to do. Are there guys and girls that crush it with cold calling expireds and fizbos and you know, circle prospecting 100% there are. Is it something that's going to work? You know, it's the one or two out of 100 agents that are going to actually do the work and not be deterred and actually enjoy doing that work, that they're wired differently, their brains are wired and I give them kudos for it. But it is definitely it's not going to work for everybody. And a lot of people get sold into programs where they're like, this is the way, you know. And I just took an approach of attraction based marketing, you know, where I was going to become a really good marketer. And part two is going to go into the way we approach leverage lead generation and the lead gen levers that we teach and preach and we help agents that want to grow in scale installing their business. I just knew I didn't want to do it via cold calling. I was going to get good at direct response marketing. So I can send a handwritten letter to a FSBO or a handwritten letter to a motivated seller based on a little bit of tech that we have or we have a letter campaign that we send to motivated sellers. I knew that I could help. I could get them to respond to a properly designed marketing piece with a very elegant call to action. And I could run that system. That system would run without me with the headset on, smiling and dialing. So that's probably going to produce some haters on, on this, on, on this episode here and the YouTube doesn't work, is probably going to create some haters. And that's just, just me. How I grew my business. I wanted to grow it in a way where I had massive, massive freedom. So stay tuned for part two. And if you are at the point in your journey where you know you want to have a conversation where you just want the path laid out, all the templates around all those four pillars swipe and deploy in your business, someone comes alongside you and helps you implement all of it. Go to milliondollaragentmethod.com and we'll see you on the next training.