The 4 Key Pillars to Skyrocket Real Estate Leads & Sales

Whatever lead gen lever you pick, you have to commit to it and go deep on it. Okay? And this stuff is simple. It's just not easy, is it rocket science to hold an open house? I mean, did you see politics aside, did you see Elon Musk land that rocket? And I know it's not him. It's a whole bunch of really smart people that made it happen. But if that can happen, you could sell 30, 40, 50 homes. I promise you, even in a crappy market.

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 world tactics and strategies that get results. Just gotta do the work.

All right, so let's get into it. Real estate business builders. I have a little bit of a cold and I'm traveling, but the show must go on our weekly live stream. We're going to dig into the four pillars that every agent must install in their business to be able to grow, not only just generate more leads, but to grow and scale your business ultimately. My name is Lars Hedinburg, the creator of the Million Dollar agent Method Founder, Real estate B school. Been at this for just a minute since 2013. Built my business up in the great recession year. So this is the question I have for everyone here is as you contemplate, not only a tough market. I'm actually at an event for exp my brokerage where I heard two numbers. I heard 20 years and 40 years. The worst market in terms of unit sales that we've seen in a long time. Like a ridiculously long time. Meaning that they're just are on a trailing twelve month basis. There's only like 3.4 or 3.5 million homes that have sold and a normal market is like 5 to 6 million. We've seen over 6 million in a trailing 12 month period. So there's just not enough real estate selling and that's a big, big problem. So unless you're going to exit the industry, which is happening, a lot of agents are leaving the industry. Unless you're exiting the industry, you've got to have a clear roadmap in place to grow your business and your wealth. And if you haven't heard my story. This is me back in November 2007. My son is now a giant. He's six, four, and a beast in volleyball. But at the time, I had left a cozy corporate job to get into real estate. And on the one hand, it was working, right? So I was selling a lot of homes, 27 in my first 10 months. So it was working in terms of, like, me selling a lot of real estate, but I was not available. You can see me just glued to my. It was a BlackBerry at the time. I don't think it was any permanent damage that Anders suffered as a result of me not being present in those early years, but I had to get to work. This is me ruining one of our vacations probably a year or two later. His first vacation we took after I got into real estate. Anders was probably, like, 3 years old or so. And I told my wife, I'm like, trust me. I have this vision, this plan to build a business that doesn't rely on me. She's like, I don't see it. I don't see it. And I didn't. This is my dad, who was an entrepreneur, business owner, but suffered from addiction. And so I didn't have a stable childhood in the traditional sense. And again, on the one hand, it taught me, you know, how to, you know, sort of tend for myself, and I chose a path of achievement. But on the other hand, you know, he was an active alcoholic, Drank until I was 15 years old. Then he was sober. But at that point, I really didn't have, you know, that sort of stability that I wanted to provide for my family. So my question to you, I was clear in those early days, when the market was crumbling and we went from 15,000 agents on the market down to 5,000 agents. What my. My. What my was, and the reason I got after it every day. And I committed to building a real business that served not only my clients, but ultimately provided a lifestyle for my family that we honestly, at the time, didn't think was possible. That was my why. But you need to have a why. I want you to take a second here and maybe just write a note. Top three reasons that I want to make more money, take more time off, and ultimately have more impact. And this is. I just want you to sit with that question, like, why do I actually want to do this? Are there practical reasons like, I want to pay off debt, or do I want to. You know, I have this. For me, it was a feeling that I knew I could do something that hadn't been done in the industry and that was just build a business that didn't rely on me. And that's not all we teach at this point. But that was my why at the time. So a little bit about me, you know, my journey. 44 transactions, my first full year in real estate, 10x that it took me about five years to 10x in terms of the units that we sold, 5,000 plus families served in. On the real estate sales side, 2,000 plus agents have been through real estate B school. I've achieved the financial side of it, the time side of it, the vacation side of it and I've made every mistake that you could possibly make. So in terms of what's going on in the market now here is what I'm focused on and I'm going to get into the four pillars. So this is just a little bit of a backdrop here that we are going through a shift. If you've read the book Shift by Gary Keller, on the COVID of the book there's this diagram of like the income available for real estate agents versus agent headcount. Agent headcount is still way higher than it needs to be based on the number of units that are selling. It's like up until July of this year, 70% of agents, licensed agents hadn't sold a single home. So just think about that. Two million agents, you know, 1.4 million agents hadn't sold a home in 2024 because there's just nothing selling for the most part. And there are home sales. I mean top agents are still doing well, our clients are doing well because we have a framework and a process to generate leads and con birth and all that. But shifts are normal. Akhil Patel, the writer of this book, he talks about a very predictable 18.6 year cycle and we are in this 18.6 year cycle. So there is some pain potentially. We're in this winner's curse where values are going to shoot straight through the roof. This is the real estate cycle. This dictates the global economic cycle. It's the largest asset class is real estate. And so we're in this winner's curse phase where there is some turbulent times ahead of us. Right. So getting clear on how to build a business. I think it's like the time to get excited when everyone's nervous and has fear is like that's when I dig in and I do my best work. Be careful of the news that you're getting involved in. Follow a few good sources of news. I get a daily. What is it called? I can't remember. Anyway, I get a daily email with like three headlines. The pour over. Yeah, the pour over. Pour the pour over. Highly recommend something like that. But don't get all into the fud. Think of the NAR settlement. You know how many agents freaked out about that when really ultimately nothing really changed. Right now you just have to actually have legit clients before you go show homes it's better for the industry but a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt. That's fudge happened. So know what's going on in terms of the economy and the election process and whatever, but stay out of the fud. Monitor your personal economy for sure. This is really, really important. So how do we get there in terms of these four pillars? And I'm going to get into them here in a second really good book by James Clear called Atomic Habits. Becoming the type of person you want to become, someone who lives by a stronger standard, someone who believes in themselves, someone who can be counted on by the people that matter to them is about the daily process you follow and, and not the ultimate product you achieve. I was asked a question yesterday by an agent at this event. He said, you know, if you had to sell 50 homes in the next year, how would you go about doing it? And you only had $1,000 to spend before you like you made commissions to fund your business. And I without hesitation I said three things I would do and I actually didn't do any of these things. When I built my business originally in the current market, I would hold two open houses a week. I would door knock 100 houses around each of those open houses and I would call into those neighborhoods and basically ask people if they wanted to come and meet me and help pick their neighbor. So I would generate sellers off of those open houses and I would just be friend agents in my brokerage to be able to have enough listing inventory to hold open houses. Would I like any part of that? Would it be a lot of work? It would be a lot of work. I would sell probably way north of 50 homes doing just those things and it would probably be 60 hour work weeks, maybe a little bit more. But I would get some closings. I would hire a full time licensed admin, I would hire a showing agent, I would only list homes and I would quickly scale my business with the and build my database along the side of it. So and that's just I would have to enter into a daily process of doing like every day. I would just be working toward having these two open houses and so whatever lead gen lever and we've got 12 lead gen levers in real estate school. But whatever lead gen lever you pick, you have to commit to it and go deep on it. Okay? And this stuff is simple. It's just not easy, right? Is it rocket science to hold an open house? I mean, did you see politics aside, did you see Elon Musk land that rocket? And I know it's not him. It's a whole bunch of really smart people that made it happen. But if that can happen, you could sell 30, 40, 50 homes, I promise you, even in a crappy market. Okay? So this stuff is really, really simple. It's just not easy. And this is worth a screenshot, but this is the game that you have to play. You have to think about the business holistically. We're going to talk about all the pillars today, but we got to think about lead gen. What are the three or four Legion levers that I can install in my business so that I can have meaningful conversations? I can set appointments, I can meet with would be buyer and seller clients and I can sign them and, and then be happy to work with me because the value proposition is so overwhelmingly, you know, going to be in their favor and then I can get them through the process and get them happily closed. And if I do that right, it's going to work out for itself because I can generate one to two clients from every closing. And that's the other pillars that I would set up a process once I got a licensed admin, if I had to go back into production where the world class experience would throw off referrals as a result of just the systems that we had in place for client care. So it is all about systems. So you have to think in terms of systems in the same book, Atomic habits. You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. Everything in your real estate business is a system. You have to focus on building a business. These are the four pillars. I'm going to pull up a PDF that goes a little bit deeper, but leverage Legion. Yes. I'm going to tell you about leads, but the appointment setting process is critical. I'll get into that, the consultation frameworks and then ultimately leverage client care. The same systems I used to sell 44 homes my first full year are the same systems, the same four pillars that I use to work 40 days in a whole year and I had 10 producing agents sell over 450 homes. The same stuff. Right? We just got to commit to doing the work and obviously this is our million dollar agent method. So there's no. I'm unashamed to present it in that way. But this is going to be really helpful for you to think about your business. And the way that I thought about lead generation was wildly different than other agents think about lead generation every. The industry would have us believe that we have to pay someone to generate leads for us. While I paid for leads over the years, probably I sold my real estate team in 2020, but we were out of any paid legion for probably four years before that. So we got out of paid Legion and probably 2017, you know, we had a little bit of Zillow spend, never went big on any of the referral sources. No referral sources like the 30 to 40% Zillow Flex or the seller leads, you know, the home lights and the ideal agents and all of those. And so I viewed lead generation as I was going to set up these oil wells. Essentially. You can envision a field, you know, where they put these big oil things where they have the big tilting thing on top and imagine the amount of effort to install all that infrastructure and get the oil tapped and then it's just about keeping that rig maintained and running. And then the oil, the liquid gold just comes up out of it, right? So lead generation is the same thing. I had a mindset where I wasn't going to install a lead gen lever in my business unless it was good for 50 transaction per year. And you're like, Lars, I don't even sell 10 or 20 homes per year. I can't even mentally think about this. But the mindset of knowing that my database could produce hundreds of transactions per year, I treated the work I did to build it in that way. So the first thing we work on with our clients, you will forever be out of any cold calling any paid lead gen any referral sources. But the first thing we work on is leverage lead generation with some clients. They don't have any lead gen built out in their business. And Most of the 13 weeks is spent just on the first two here, which is leverage lead gen and the appointment setting process. But it's all custom to you. So database 60 touch blueprint. You build the database, you feed it and you communicate with it. I don't care what your database looks like. Now you can spend time to add to the database people that know like and trust you. And if you have a 60 touch system in place, very specifically designed and we help you with that 10% of your database, your inner circle know like and trust you, database will turn into transactions agent, brand authority, Builder essentially is your digital footprint. That's an extension of the database and it's just an expansion of the database. And then there's 10 other legion levers, expireds, FSBOs, motivated sellers, yard marketing, social proof. There's a bunch of other stuff, new construction, luxury, a bunch of other pillars that you could install in your business. And specifically we work on just two in this program. Unless you're selling more than 100 homes, you don't need more than four legion levers. Each legion lever here is good for one to two plus transactions per month. And at the end of 90 days I call it a 100% results guarantee that you will be in a position where you'll have the lead gen systems installed to be able to close two to three additional transactions per month. And you'll be setting yourself up to sell a lot more than that. We've got members just with the database doing multiple seven figures of gci. So the appointment setting process, the most important part here is that most folks aren't ready to meet with you. So your nurture sequences, 90% your nurture sequences, how you're gonna your lead management protocol. Some of the not so sexy side of the lead conversion is like how are you going to warm people up over time and then the scripts and how are you going to qualify those appointments. We're talking about doing this in a way where it could be done at scale, meaning you could sell 4, 5, 6, 7 homes a month using these systems. You may never decide to build a team. So it's not about building a team, but it's about putting you in position to make a ridiculous amount of money in a not so ridiculous amount of time. That's the key. So you want to set more consultations with prospects pre sold on working with you. Then the consultation frameworks. If you don't have a pre appointment packet for sellers and buyers, we have a pre appointment packet. So we set a consultation with a buyer and seller and we send them physically a package before they meet with us. We want to stand out against any agent that they've ever worked with, right. So we have buyer presentations, all the tools and packets, the templates, all of our buyer guide, seller guide, our leave behinds, if you don't secure the business. I've spent easily $10,000 on templates here in Canva that you can just go in and you can just change certain things and send them to print or send out digital versions, which we don't really recommend digital versions, but there are instances where you'll need that at scale, I want to put you in a position to sign 80 plus percent of prospects that you meet with buyer and seller prospects and, and get admin fees, transaction fees as well, and then leverage client care. You'll create such good problems up here. You'll generate way too many leads, you'll be setting way too many appointments. You'll be the most valuable thing you could do is just sign clients and you'll have to put yourself in a position where you have to buy back your time in the client care process. So signing a buyer and getting them to closing, most agents think that that's where the work is, that's important work, but it's not going to pay you the most amount of money. Signing the buyer client and getting a listing signed, that's where the actual value is. So whether it's a virtual assistant or a local license admin or a junior agent that's going to show homes for you so you can get your evenings and weekends back at some point when you do these things in the right order, you will create really good problems for yourself. And you could scale to 250, 500,000. A million GCI with these four pillars. And it's the same four pillars. These are the same four pillars that I used when my first agent joined me. Yeah, he sold two homes in 18 months before he joined my world and he sold 27 homes his first 12 months with me because he didn't have to worry about leverage lead generation and he didn't have to worry about leverage client care and he just had to worry about the appointment setting process and doing consultations. So this stuff works if you work it. If you know you're at the point in your journey where you want to have a conversation with us, just go to milliondollaragentmethod.com that's milliondollaragentmethod.com I don't care where you are in the journey. I want you to think about your business as a system of systems. If I'm going to spend the time to build a database, I have to be confident that it's going to lead to at least multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars of GCI gross commission income per year. For me to sit in those time blocks and put my contacts from my phone or my Gmail or just to brainstorm about who I know and to build that database and then add new contacts every day and then build out the sequences around the touch. You're not going to do all that stuff if you don't think it's worth seven figures a year. But if you follow a process that works, it will work and you will get success. So much love, much respect. We'll see you guys next week.