KW President said 50% of your database is in jeopardy...why and what you can do to make sure they go with you when they buy or sell..

Today, we've got something that I was reading this week, and the Keller Williams president came out and said, "50% of your database is in jeopardy, freak out everybody."

Thank you Inman News for allowing us to borrow this because it is, it's insightful information. It's going to segue into some good points and some good actionable steps that I think that everybody should pay attention to. It is a little sensationalized, not going to lie, 50% of your database is in jeopardy.

I think it goes a lot further than what they just touched on and I would venture to say that a much higher percentage of most people's databases are in jeopardy because they don't communicate with them on a very regular basis or maintain a relationship so it's always in jeopardy.

One of the stats that he pointed out is he said, "There's 15 million consumer leads out there looking for virtual or three-dimensional tours." He said, "There's also a 400% increase around searches that include the search terms virtual home tours, virtual open house, and 3D tours."

OpenHouses.Live

Now, during COVID we built an open house tool called openhouses.live, and it was a lot of fun to build, but we never really promoted it. We built it because I had several conversations with customers on the west coast that were like, "Mike, I'm shutting off my cellphone, I'm shutting off my internet, I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to eat again, it's illegal to go outside." I was like oh my god. He's like, "I don't know how I'm going to sell houses." I had a couple of those conversations, said we've got to do something for these people.

So listen, if you don't have a virtual open house tool click here and we'll give you access to ours for free, it's pretty amazing. It's a virtual open house.

For free.

So going back to the article, so 50% of your database is in jeopardy.

Their main point was right now it's more important than ever to capture market share via your database because they said that there's never been a more even playing field. And I think that the stat that Google shared with them of the number of consumers open to trying a new brand aside, that is 100% true, not because of necessarily the climate or COVID or the things that they were trying to use to really drive that point home, just because of technology and how technology has advanced right now. And like we said last week, it used to be you would farm a neighborhood, now you can farm the entire dang city and you can do it through your database by literally pushing a button and reaching out and touching 50,000 people for pennies. It's just an incredible time to be able to do that.

So I always go back to this one story, I was talking to this agent from San Antonio, sells like 75 houses a year, and he's like a chicken with his head cut off, got like not really a team developed, he's never really thought about it, he just likes the chaos.I was talking to him one time and he was like, "I need help." He was just like, "I need help." It was all predicated on one specific past client of his that was five years ago type thing.

It was a key indicator of how he treated his database, much like the past client should be your most prized part of your database in terms of communication, right? Those are the people you have the most authority and trust with. But he said, "I didn't know how bad my problem got until I had this story of this person who was trying to send me a referral and couldn't find any information about me. Like, I wasn't keeping up with him so there wasn't something that I mailed him, something that I left as a gift. There was nothing I did on a regular basis after the transaction, and they were actively trying to find me and they couldn't even remember what my last name was."

He was just, he was angry because it was kind of a big deal that he lost out on because of it or whatever, but he just ran into the person randomly in a local function or whatever. The part that is so hard, especially when you start having some traction and you're getting used to being able to turn cold traffic and online leads into deals, is you kind of lose sight of the massive database that you're building and what that is actually worth to you.

Real Estate Campaigning

If you think about it more from the terms of campaigning, because in real estate we do kind of run our businesses as far as marketing like politicians that are campaigning. I mean, we've got yard signs, right?

Now, if you look at how campaigning has shifted, just even from the past two elections, the 2012 election versus 2016 versus 2020, the majority of it is online. I used to not see all of these advertisements in my newsfeed, in 2008/2012, it was just not there.

In 2020, though, it is all over the internet. A lot of TV, a lot of social media. Even whether you hate him or love him, Trump, he has got his finger on that trigger all the time with Twitter. Because that's what it takes today to communicate with people. So as you're thinking through your database, that's the way you want to be thinking about it as well, because even if they're not going to buy from you now or they bought from you previously, you still want to keep that top of mind consciousness so that when they think real estate, they think you and your market, and that's how you do that today is through these different forms of media. Now, the messaging hasn't really changed much, it's the form of delivery and it's also the frequency in which you can do it, and do it in a way that isn't just irrelevant.

One of the things that I always still joke about is like the cake recipe postcard. You know that agent has never made that cake in their life, but they're sending it out. It might be the world's worst cake. If someone ever actually takes the time to make one of those they're going to be like why in the hell did you send me this recipe? What kind of taste do you have, right? But you can do it in a way that's contextual, you know what I mean? So it's specific to really where they're at in their stage. Especially, this is more important if they're in their buying or selling process, but even outside of it because what that does is that gives them the reticular activator that goes off.

So for example, a reticular activator is when you buy a car and all of a sudden you see that car all over the street. If you just send out a video blog about what to do if your house didn't sell and then their brother-in-law is over having drinks with them, he's like, "Dang, I don't know what to do, my house didn't sell, it just expired, we've really got to get moved because we're having the baby," or what have you, they're going to be able to regurgitate that information, "Oh man, you should call Mike Oddo, he just sent me an article just on that specific topic. I really didn't watch it, it was a video, but that guy's amazing, he sends me stuff on the regular at least monthly basis. Even though I bought from him three years ago. He's just a beast." So that's the way that you want to handle this.

Get Permission

The main thing is you've got to get their permission to do it. So the first step is when they fill out the form they're giving us permission to contact them. When we set the appointment for you, they're giving you permission to call them. So make sure you do that and then when you talk to them and you establish their motivation and timing, make sure you get their permission from when you're going to follow up with them, and here's the key, make sure you do it.

One of our clients, probably about a year ago or something I was talking to him and he was so pissed off because he was taking one of his clients and showing a property, and the address was super familiar. He was like, "Man, why do I know this address?" Looked it up in his database, that was a lead that he had gotten to come in, a seller lead that came in six months before it listed, he didn't follow up, and someone else got that listing.

Have a System

Like the guy who loves chaos, I had a vision in my mind of that time in my career when I just had pandemonium and chaos. I sold a house for the owner of a title company, who was somebody that was well respected in our community, and I felt really honored and privileged that he gave me this listing, because he deals with real estate agents all the time.

So I do a bang-up job, I sell it quickly, close to the full asking price, if not full asking price, but while we're in the closing, I had to find a piece of paper in the file that I had. So I'm looking through this file, which is completely disorganized, I mean it's horrific. And I catch, out of the corner of my eye, him look up at the closer, who was also a friend of mine, like with an oh my god this man is a mess look on his face.

And I'm like oh man, he's right. And it was that moment that I decided that I am not going to deal with pandemonium, I'm going to double down the work on my business to make sure that my files never look like this again, that I have systems in place, and I went and hired a transaction coordinator shortly after that moment.

So I remember that pandemonium, and let me tell you something, you might think that you're getting a lot done and you might think that it's exciting to not have a strict schedule but you really do, and you really do have a system, it just sucks. And if you were to have somebody watch you and follow you, like the baker with the pinch of salt that they throw in and capture it and measure it, you would find that you are repeating the same things that you're doing over and over and over again, and you're just not even aware of it. You have a system, it's just not a good one. And that was the awareness for me.

Be Known as the Expert

You don't want to stay top in mind being the guy with his pants down. But you do want to stay top of mind as the expert, right? Everybody wants to be the expert. You listen to the expert, you respect the expert, you pay attention to the expert, you pay more for the expert. That is the branding and the positioning that you want to stay top of mind with.

Because as the expert, right, Kinder one time got a listing and he ended up having to give it up for 25%, because he meets with this guy, came through his office, they scheduled it somehow, right? So he goes out, gets the listing, gets a call three hours later and the guy's like, "Hey, I've got to cancel that listing agreement with you." And he was like, "What happened? I'm excited, this is going to go quick." He was like, "Yeah, my wife's really mad because my son's a real estate agent and I decided to go with you versus my son, and my wife's just not letting that happen."

So Jay was like, "Okay, just let me know all your son's information, I'll figure it out with him." And so he did a deal, it was like hey, you've got to pay me 25% on this deal. So he got paid 25% on a deal that was a guy selling his dad's house for him, which is pretty funny.

What he should have done was said, "Hey, give me your son's number so I can bring him into my office and recruit him and help him to be a better real estate agent so next time he's the natural choice for you, I'll teach him what I know."

With automation everything should be systemized in a way that it works whether it's rain or sunshine, day or not, you know what I mean, like 24/7, 365, without you touching it. And really your only point to get involved is to maintain those promises of followup or actually work with them to show and sell the house or meet with them to list and then even the systems that I had in place that everyone should for followup with the seller, should be offer your plate.

And now you can't do this all at once, Rome wasn't built in a day, so if you have to be the person that's still following up with your seller, like I had someone following up with my sellers once a week, even if there was no activity, just to touch them and say, "Hey, here's what happened, here's what's going on, here's what isn't going on." Because the rule is I have 100 houses for sale, they've got one, you know what I mean? They're only thinking about that one, they only care about that one.

But that was a system that happened without me touching it. Now, the only time I would get involved with a listing, and I forget the specific interval, so I'm going to guess, but maybe it was every 60 days for me to contact them. Which I would still have my listing coordinator tee up and set the time for so I didn't have to play phone tag, to talk about a price reduction. Because that's where I could get involved and make a difference, right?

So the only place in your marketing, after you build it, which that's what we do for you at Market Maker, we build all this stuff so you don't have to, then we run it all so you don't have to. But after you build it, the place for you to get involved is where you can make a difference in the outcome, so you can make a difference in the outcome of setting the appointment with them, you can make a difference in the outcome of saying hey, let's go look at some houses, you can make a difference saying hey, now is when you told me you want to sell, or 60 days from now let's get together so I can look at your house, give you free market analysis, tell you exactly what it's worth, and also make that plan for two months from now.

Brand Loyalty

And you want to stay in front of this thing because the big thing in that article of 54% of people being open to another brand is it's way worse than that in real estate. If you don't meet with the person first, you're just probably not going to get that business. If they go and they stumble into an open house and they resonate with that agent, which most agents are high people people, they're good at that part, you're going to be out, right?

And it was like 80%, I read recently, do business with the first agent they meet, even on the listing side. Which it wasn't always that high on the listing side like I would always have to battle it out with three agents.

The brand, is so convoluted in real estate because you have the brokerage, the franchise, then you have the individual. Those are two separate brands in most cases. Once you select there then you've got to select what agent you're going to have. It is a very weird industry when it comes to brand.

The vast majority of sellers' main consideration in who they listed their home with was a professional reputation of the agent, not the brand. So not the brokerage, not the franchise, the agent, a professional reputation.

That's what we're trying to drive home here. The way to do that today is different than it was in the past. The way to do that today is by having a large database, which is why if you have a large database you should be concerned with what the article itself had said, because 50% of it being in jeopardy, you can imagine if over the years your average is $5 cost per lead and you've got 10,000 leads in there, that's $50,000. You're talking about 25,000 just in hard costs, not in opportunity costs, possibly in jeopardy.

Have Systems in Place

But the way to create that professional reputation is through having systems in place. Having systems that followup in place does make you more professional, it does put you in the mind's eye of your prospect as someone who is more of an expert than someone who doesn't have those systems in place.

My favorite system we have is our home value report. Every single month. Like I'm a trained monkey. I'm not anywhere near selling my house, I'm not thinking about selling my house, but every single month I get that email same time. I open it like clockwork. And to me, to be able to have that go out, should go out to every single homeowner in your database, for sure the people that have bought with you that now you push one button and it happens forever.

All the sales that happen in the neighborhood and all of the homes that are for sale, which gives you a really good finger on the pulse as far as what's happening in your neighborhood. And it gives them a call to action too, like if they click on that and they go to it, there's a call to action like hey, want to find out what your home's worth?

So just doing that would probably help you sell, make an extra couple hundred thousand dollars over the course of your career, just having that one thing in place. But it's just systemizing that and having stuff that actually means something to them in a way that's not hokey or whatever. But again, just that professional expert positioning.

And if you really want to do it right, you tell them that you're going to do that for them so that you can pat yourself on the back and then every time that they get it it's another promise that you make kept, every single month. If they get that promise that you made kept for five years, how do you think that will impact their mental image of you, in their subconscious, even. It's really amazing how easy we are as humans to create relationships, I mean we're programmed to do that. But it's something that's just so overlooked, and we get so much priority confusion in the business, I mean in any business.

It's just easy to overlook, it's easy to overlook these things, but these are the difference between building a business that works harder for you than you do for it, or in some cases works in place of you working.

Recap

The big thing to make sure your database isn't in jeopardy is how much communication you have with it and valuable communication at that. And this is one thing that I wanted to make a big point of, like Rome wasn't built in a day, you can't expect to do something and immediately expect a crazy return. It's incremental progress that compounds over time, like The Compound Effect, if you have not read that book go buy that book immediately and go read it, it is a game-changer for people, especially in business.

But it's incremental improvement has a massive impact, especially over time. And in the beginning, you don't have to capture every single person in your database but if you capture 50% more than what you were doing, that's a huge increase.

Just something as simple as making sure that they have the market update, right? Make sure that button's clicked so they get a monthly update of homes that have sold, homes that are for sale in their neighborhood. Incremental improvement in your communication with your database and like you were saying, the database is after feeding, based on the amount of time that you haven't communicated with it.

The Western way Dan Kenny says it is the difference between salad and garbage is timing. So right now, we're creating laws around these things, like you can't text them if you haven't talked to them in 60 days. Like I don't remember the specifics, but all these weird FCC rules around this because this is what the people want, right? And let me tell you something, there is not such a thing as too much if it's a contextual service, too much in the way of followup, because they'll tell you by hitting that unsubscribe button. They'll tell you by saying, "Hey, please don't call me right now, call me in three months."

If you're not getting those things and you're just assuming and making these decisions for them, you are making a mistake. I was trying to think of the most polite way to say that. You're making a big mistake.

You're messing up. But what I was going to piggyback on is what you just said, like if they hit the unsubscribe button, this is one of those anecdotal story things that can cause you to make a mistake based off of one thing. Like, I've sent emails out before that I've had a handful of people respond back anger, like oh my god I must not have done that.

But then what you didn't get is the 4000 people that clicked on the email and filled stuff out and got value out of it and it's like okay, so I got 4000 people to the value, got five people upset? Was it a good idea? Hell yeah, it was a good idea, it was a great idea, you know what I mean?

Yeah, and let me tell you something, the old saying you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs is true. You're not going to please everybody. Everybody's not always going to be happy. If you're walking around feeling like everybody's always happy it's because you ain't communicating enough. You just can't look at the naysayer, you've got to look at the goal.

That's all I've got for you today. Listen, if you want some help with these things go to marketmakercall.com, that's what we do here for you, we generate leads, which builds your database, we help you nurture those leads by building you cool things that will help you be a welcomed guest as far as the followup is concerned, and then ultimately we deliver them to your calendar as an appointment automatically, pre-position appointment. Go to marketmakercall.com, check it out.

Like we always say at Market Maker, you are always just one pre-position appointment away.

Every day.