Marketing, Sales and Client Services in Real Estate
A real estate agent scaled from 27 to 400 sides by building repeatable systems for marketing, sales, and client service. John and Jen run their Lake Norman team remotely from Bozeman using task delegation and lead generation levers. The core idea: treat your business as a system of systems to grow without burning out.
What are the most critical systems that you need to run your real estate business? And I get it, that is not the sexiest intro. And some of you may drop away from watching this video and I urge you to not fall off here.
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The thing that makes a business a business are the systems that run the business. A business is simply a system of systems. So let's dig into this conversation about systems. The thing that allowed me to transform the way that I was able to show up in my business and the things that I was able to do in my business were the systems I implemented. So let me give you an example. When I was new to the business, I didn't know how to take listings. I wasn't, you know, an experienced agent. I just assumed that I needed to start on the buy side. So I got really good at generating leads. So that's a marketing system. Back in the day it was Craigslist. I could post these simple ads about distressed sales and I can generate leads. I could call those leads, had a lead follow up or in lead management system. I had text sequences, I had email sequences, I had scripts. Those are conversion systems. And I basically put these little systems into place. I sold 27 homes in my first 10 months in the business. And so really simple approach to just a three or four simple systems to become a top 1% agent in my market. And depending on where you are in your journey, it's likely if you're good at doing the jobs of a real estate agent and you're not scaling your business, it's likely that you just haven't figured out the systems required to do the things that you need to do manually. But they happen automatically. So I went on from 27 sides to 44 sides four years later, 400 sides, working one day a week. And it's not right. I didn't put more hours in, I didn't put more effort in. I just focused my time on different things. And when I think about one of our members who has created a business and a lifestyle because of the same approach, it's John Mikish. He lives in Bozeman, Montana. His actual real estate team is about 30 miles north of my market. So he's in Lake Norman, North Carolina. So his business is operating in Lake Norman, North Carolina and he lives in Bozeman, Montana. I don't know the difference of distance between the two, but it's probably over a thousand miles, maybe 2,000 miles. So how does somebody go from. He started out with real estate, B school, grinding it out and just Doing the work of a real estate agent. He had some leverage with a couple agents, an assistant, right. His wife Jen is in the business. And so they were kind of just doing the job of a husband, wife, team and making it happen. Yet when they were exposed to this concept of running your business like a business and a system of systems, everything changed. They went from, you know, 20, 25 million GCI or volume to now they run about 75, 80 million consistently. So it's a 2.2, $2.4 million business that is so dialed in from a systems perspective that they can run this business from Bozeman, Montana. And they actually opened up another business business, a Clean Juice in Bozeman, Montana. And so I want to break down three areas that they focused on in terms of system systems build out so that it'll give you a little bit of an idea of maybe where you're lacking in systems in your business, where you're putting too much effort in on a daily basis on these repetitive tasks and you're not able to, you know, bring in more leads or convert more consultations or deliver, you know, your services to more buyers and more sellers. So number one is the area of marketing. Think about your marketing, your lead generation. This is not buying leads from Zillow, right? I'm not talking about just stroking a check. I'm talking about setting up systems in your business. We call them lead gen levers. In real estate B school we've got eight lead gen levers that we use. Client care is a lead gen lever. Social proof is a lead gen lever. Expireds is a lead gen lever. FSBOS is a lead gen lever. Open houses. You know, my point is that these systems are pre built so you can employ them in your business and install them in your business versus recreating the wheel. And so if you don't have a steady stream of high quality leads coming in that you're not paying like extortion type money for it, you're not going to be able to scale your business. So that was the first thing. We had to get two or three lead gen levers installed in their business so that they could have plenty of opportunity to work on, you know, that part of the business. Convert leads into consultations, right? To have a lead turn into a set, turn into a met, turn into a loyal client and then get them to the closing table successfully have them say great things and sort of repeat the process. So that's number one is marketing systems. So where do you stand in terms of your marketing systems? Are you having a drip, sort of, you know, just dripping leads in, barely surviving, or is it an overflow and abundance of leads? The second area are sales systems. So imagine a world where you're not doing any buyer consultations and you're not doing any seller consultations or listing appointments. What would it look like to set up sales systems?
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A buyer presentation, buyer packets, the whole buyer process, from appointment set to met to signed, same thing on the listing side. The listing packet, the listing presentation, right. The equity evaluation, how you value that property and how you pre sell them. The pre listing packet that you send out, all of that is systemized. Now we even have a virtual consultation process on the buyer side and the listing side. So imagine how you acquire clients right now. You get them to say yes, to meet with you, they meet with you, do they sign more often than not. And the process around it where you could plug somebody in, either an actual person or do it via technology.
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If, if I had to do buyer consultations and listing consultations, I can do them from anywhere because we now have a virtual consultation process that converts as well as we were converting in person. So that's number two is sales systems, number three is client service systems. So we've attracted the lead, we've got them to commit to meet with us, they met with us, we signed them as a client and now what happens? Are you now in the trenches showing homes and you know, getting listings on mls, taking pictures, designing brochures, Those are not systems. And so if you think about the systems nature of the way you deliver on the promises you make in sales, how leveraged are those systems? Are you showing homes on evenings and weekends? When I was sort of new to real estate, I thought, well, of course I need to show homes. Who else is going to show homes?
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Their agent is going to show homes. Until I figured out that buyers want to see homes on evenings and weekends almost exclusively, right? They'll take off two hours in the middle of a Friday to get their hair done, but they will not take off to look at homes.
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So it's this, you know, weird sort of self fulfilling prophecy, real estate where we just sort of do things on everyone else's terms. And I was not going to have it. I was willing to sort of concede to the fact that they wanted to look at homes on evenings and weekends, but I wasn't willing to do it. So I hired a showing agent. This is somebody that loves to show homes that has flexibility in their schedule. Maybe they don't have small kids and they can be out on evenings and weekends, and they can make a good wage doing it in real estate. We sort of think that everybody that has a license is sort of making great money and they're super busy all the time. There's a lot of real estate agents that aren't hunters and they're more farmers, meaning that they're better suited to open doors and sort of do the niceties, if that's a word, with buyer clients. And that wasn't me. And so that was just an example of another system, a client service system, where I wasn't going to be the one doing that when I took a listing.
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And same thing with John and Jennifer. When they took a listing, they had to take a listing in a way where somebody else, you know, set up the photography, somebody else designed the brochure, someone else wrote the MLS remarks, somebody else got it live on the market. Somebody else was calling that seller weekly for market updates and updates into, you know, schedule listing or price improvement conversations, Right? And then when he went under contract, same thing. You cannot spend your time in a file from contract to closing. First of all, you're probably not the best suited to do it. And are you really adding a ton of value? There are licensed agents out there that are better suited to bring a contract, you know, to closing and have a happy client, and you don't have to pay a lot of money. These are 20 to $25 an hour in my market jobs. And when I got into real estate, I wanted to make $250 an hour. And so that was the third system that Jen and John focused on was like, how do we serve our clients without literally us serving our clients? So think about your business in those three areas. Marketing systems, sales systems, and client service systems. And how do you stack up? Are you thinking about your business in terms of a systems perspective? Start to develop this mindset of a systems approach.
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A business is a system of systems. I want you to say that 10 times. It's hard to say. Say, a business is a system of systems. A business is a system of systems. If you like these videos, give me the thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel. Make sure you turn your notifications on and leave comments. We'll see you in the next video.
