Listing Marketing Maximizer | How to Win The Lead Game

Welcome to Real Estate Business Builders. I'm your host, Lars Hedenborg, the founder of Real Estate B School. Bottom line, the real estate industry has failed to create a clear path to financial freedom. Traditional brokerages and coaching are designed to keep you running on the transaction treadmill with no exit strategy. While I didn't have any sales, marketing or business building experience when I got into real estate, I was willing to bet on myself and figure it out because my family was depending. Having served over 5,000 families with their real estate needs, I've made every mistake you could possibly make in this business. Through Real Estate B School, I've helped hundreds of agents and team leaders realize their goal of true time and money, freedom, and living a life without regrets. If you know there's another level of growth inside of you and you want to learn how to build a highly lucrative lifestyle business, then you're in the right place. You won't find any fluff or hype here on this show. Just real world tools, systems and strategies that work. Let's grow together.

All right, let's go. Real Estate Business Builders. This is Lars Hedinborg, the founder of Real Estate B School, and I'm going to dig into a training that I did recently that I think is really going to help you. If you want to see me actually give this training and there's a bunch of downloads and trackers and a PDF that goes along with it, jump over to our free Facebook group. It's called the same as the podcast, Real Estate Business Builders. Just opt into that group and you can get all of the attachments and all the good stuff. So go over there and check it out for sure. But the training I want to give today is called, you know, in a time where there are so many lead aggregators, which is anyone that's trying to get in the way of you as the real estate agent and your client in top of funnel, meaning, you know, in their early stages of deciding who to use as their agent, there are so many, you know, the Zillows and the, the op cities and the ideal agent, and there's like dozens of them at this point. Essentially, they're just, they're really just proving to us that they can be better marketers than us. And so I've obviously made it my mission at Real Estate B School to prove that not to be the case, but for the most part, they're making a really good living. Zillow has gazillions of dollars and sometimes, and somehow it's easier for agents just to hand their to Zillow at the tune of 30, 35% at closing with Zillow, Flex and these other sort of referral based companies. And that's just out of the economic model that we teach at real estate B school. So it's not sustainable. So I want to teach you today how to turn your next listing taken into five commission checks. Take turn your next listing, the next listing you take into five commission checks. And the frameworks that I'm going to go through on this episode are going to allow you to not have to play the game that these big bullies want you to play. And so I totally get that there's a feeling of frustration, especially as I'm recording this episode. The market is shifting. We're probably headed into a prolonged 12, 18, 24 plus months potentially for us to work out some of the stuff that we've gone through. The can has been kicked. Politics aside, we've just kicked the can on some things in our country. And I think it's just gonna take some time to work its way through.

Right.

Interest rates have more than doubled in less than a year. First time it's ever happened. And so the market is shifting. I call it the shift storm. Even pre this actual shift, there was a consumer shift where consumers are just getting more savvy and they have higher expectations. There's a structural shift in the industry with the IB and the bigger players coming in and marginalizing real estate agents. So there's a lot of things going on. Lead costs have been going through the roof. We got out of the paid home search lead game years ago. I'm a number tracker. When I saw things going where they were going, I think our Zillow leads, we only ever got up to 5,000amonth on Zillow. But this is a team selling hundreds of homes per year with really solid systems in place. So we were able to get a really good return. But I saw Zillow leads go from like 30 to $40 per lead where I could convert, you know, what was it at the time? One out of every 12 to a closing. I saw it go to 120 to 150 where the lead quality went down. So we were paying three to four times more and we were getting less closings. So we just went the wrong way. And in a time where there are more real estate agents than ever, we're going through the typical, like there are a ton of agents and the income is lowering. So the agents that hang in the market for a period of time, your income is going to Be squeezed until we get to the bottom when a lot of agents get out and income turns back up and then there's more income for less agents. But there's so many agents in real estate, right. The barrier to entry to get into real estate is really low and it's hard to stand out essentially. I'm not saying you're a commodity, but the industry is. Is commoditized at this point, at least as far as it goes from. From the public perception.

Right.

This is I think my major competitive advantage. When I got into real estate, I was able to sell by the end of my first full year. So I got in March 2007. And so by the end of 2008, I sold 71 homes in what was it, like 12? And so about 22 months or so over 500,000 gross commission income.

Right.

So I was hustling, I was working really, really hard. But I had this sense that I was just a commodity and I worked in that. With that in mind, I worked harder to present my services to buyers and sellers where I did stand out. And our buyer consultation framework and our listing consultation framework, it's been iterated over the years, but it was developed with that in mind. Like how do you sit down with a buyer and sign them up as client before you show them a home and show them the value proposition even if there wasn't a co broke. So I always had that mindset. And same thing on the listing side. How do you show your present your services in such a way where there is no other option but to use you?

Right.

So if you're not thinking that right, you've got to start thinking that today's training is not about that. May do a separate. May do a separate episode on that. So what do you do about all that?

Right.

The shift storms here, lead costs are going up. It's super hard to stand out because there's way too many agents. What do we do about it? And this concept of turning one listing into five commission checks, I didn't come up with it. I spent time in a program with Dan Sullivan called Strategic Coach. He coaches entrepreneurs, so he's probably the leadingest coach. And I was in his direct group and this thing when I heard it, I was like, holy cow, that's so simple. There's. What's his name, Dwight from the office has this quote, it goes, great advice. Hurts my feelings every time. So this is one of those kiss, you know, keep it simple, stupid. Where I ran into Dean Jackson at a Strategic Coach meeting in Chicago and I was like, man, Dean, I know you. I know you know, he serves the real estate space a little differently than I do. So we're not competing per se. But he's like a marketing legend. Probably top 10 in our time. Top 10 smartest marketing guys. I'm like, dude, it's an honor. And I got a picture with him, and I was just a little bit like, bromance, right? He said, you know, man, one thing I've been working on lately with my group, he has a group coaching program. I posed a question to the agents in my Facebook group. I asked him the question, like, hey, guys, go back and for the last 10 houses that you listed, do it. Do an analysis and figure out how many homes you sold from every one of those listings. So, you know, yard sign calls or referrals from the seller or listings you got in the neighborhood and come back with that, put a little effort into it. I'm just curious. What he found out was that it wasn't good. It was at the time, the market was different. This is probably back in, you know, 2012 or 13, and it wasn't good. I went back and did the same analysis, and we didn't have it coordinated in a way where the way we do now. And everything changed for me when he said this. So it was inspired by him. But I went down this path to, like, how do I build systems around, you know, focus on taking listings, then activate these repeatable marketing systems so that I can turn one listing into five commission checks or more. We've actually done it where we've gotten more than five checks off a single listing. So let me break this down for you in terms of how do we get there? Number one is to identify all the. All the income streams you could earn from one listing. And generally, there are five buckets. Number one, obviously, we've been through a period of time where everyone thinks you can take and sell the listing. They that's changing. But you want to get that one commission check. So take and sell the listings. You want to be focused on taking listings. Number two is that you want to make sure that wherever those sellers are moving, you're going to get paid on it. Whether they're moving out of the market, you can send them a referral agent or if they're staying in the market. There has been times where I found out after the fact that the seller stayed local and they didn't use me as their agent. So that's number two. Number three is to generate referrals. At least one referral that closes because you did such an amazing job. And there are systems behind that, right? We have client care in real estate B school, we have client care as a lead gen lever.

Right.

We actually have client care scripts and checklists and touch points and wow gifts that make referrals a natural byproduct of working with our client care team. So generate referrals is number three. Number four is to find a buyer, use that listing to be a marketer. Like you market that listing with an intention, whether it's the yard marketing program. We have a yard marketing program, three yard signs generates three times the yard sign calls versus one sign. And so that is a no brainer. Open houses are a no brainer in terms of find buyers, you're looking for additional closings, leveraging that listing, right? It's been hard because, you know, in the market we just came out of, it's been a little, a little squirrely in terms of houses stay on the market for like a day. It's not going to be like that anymore. You can find plenty of buyers. And then number five, the category is to find a seller in the neighborhood, hold an open house where they get to pick their neighbor, you know, circle prospect, door knock, door hangers, all of those things.

Right.

You know, but you're leveraging that listing to get the next listing. So those are the five categories. So that's the first thing is to identify these multiple streams and then the second part is to track your numbers. So again, if you jump into real estate, business builders, Facebook group, I actually have a listing marketing scorecard that I can give you. That's a tool. It's in Google sheets. It's a spreadsheet where you essentially put in the listing that you take. And it has all the steps, all the systems that are activated. And then you track if you get up to a five, a five out of five is where you want to get to. And on average, you can track everything. Cool thing is when you do number one, you take a listing, you find a listing in the neighborhood. That find a listing in the neighborhood counts towards getting that one, that first listing to a 5 out of 5, it also becomes another listing that you're gonna try to find five commission checks from. So it's sort of a simple, you know, I said the keep it simple, stupid. The kiss principle. It's like this surprisingly simple thing, but once you have the system set up and you have some very simple leverage through technology, marketing systems and maybe a virtual assistant, all of this thing just run. It just runs like Clockwork. So that's number two. The second point is you have to track numbers. You have to know if you're moving the needle and you're getting closer to two, three out of five.

Right.

And then the last thing I want to talk to talk about is the implications of this are unlike anything you can imagine in terms of squeezing the lemon on every opportunity. Let's say that your plan is to get to 150 closings. You would have to essentially take 50 listings, build out these marketing systems, get leverage, you know, through tech and simple people leverage to it to activate these marketing systems and move your ratio from like maybe it's one one and a half today because there's no systems in place and it's very haphazard. Move it to three to one over the course of 18 to 24 months. So this is the only way that I would allow anyone in my world to ever pay 30% for a listing because now you would have the systems in place to leverage that cost over multiple commission checks that don't cost a fraction of that may cost you 1 or 2% to activate all of these other marketing systems. So the implications are unbelievable in terms of scaling your business. I want to tell a quick story about Dan Jones in terms of squeezing the lemon. This guy did it. We started working together the year he was actually on my real estate team. He got licensed to join my real estate team. I knew he had a business. He was a business builder. I could not keep him on my team for more than a couple years. Him and his brother and a part time administrator did about 60, 65 transactions for a couple years. I launched real Estate B School. I said, dan, let me help you out. He let me. I dug into his business. I Learned the year, first year he was with me, he got up to 105. The challenge was he had four paid lead sources. None of it was coordinated even remotely in the way that I just described. I said, dan, we've got to cut out three of the four paid lead sources. I don't care which one it is. Pick the best one, the one you're the best at converting. We're going to go deep on that one. And we did. He went from 105 to 175. The only thing we changed to go from 175. The next year we went to 225 and then 275 was we added back one of those four. So we had two paid lead sources. We organized it around all of these marketing systems and he got to, you know, he'll run 250 to 300 transactions. He was working a crazy amount of hours, super stressed. He did not miss a drop off or pickup for the first full year of kindergarten for his daughter Charlotte. Just an amazing he sent me a YouTube reel of every time he picked her up. He would have his phone on video and his daughter would just like, you know, tackle him with a hug. And I cried, you know, because he just did the work. He put the systems in place. So let me recap the three things and then I've got a very simple next step if you want to take it. And I'm always here to help you guys in any way. Definitely get into real estate Business Builders Facebook Group. There's always all sorts of live trainings and giveaways we do in there, but it's simple. Identify these, these, these income streams, right? There's multiple streams. Put the marketing systems in place and they activate once you take the listing. Track your numbers right jump into the Facebook group. I'll give you that listing marketing scorecard and then think through the implications. Business planning becomes very fun when you're able to just focus on taking listings and then you know your ratios on in terms of listing marketing maximizer. So if you want to take a next step and go further faster, I have nothing to sell you. I have a business growth assessment. It's a 10, maybe 15 minute conversation about where you are in your business. You know, it's even if it's not a fit, we're still going to make it a good use of our time. Either me, I'm doing these calls currently or one of our business coaches will get on and help you come up.

With a clear plan.

And it's all about scaling your business. There's no gimmicks or any of hype or anything like that. Go to rebsgrowthassessment.com that's rebsgrowthassessment.com and we'll talk to you on the next podcast or we'll see you in Real estate Business Builders Facebook Group. Much love, much respect.

Thanks for listening. Would you please take a minute to share the show with other agents who may be struggling? And if you love the podcast, please please leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. And make sure you visit ScaleOrDiveBook.com to get a free copy of my book. It's a nuts and bolts guide to building a real estate business that gives you true time and money freedom so that you can live your life without regrets. Thanks again and see you on the next episode.