facebook for real estate agents

Want to sneak past your colleagues and dominate Facebook? Let’s dive into how YOU can stay ahead of the game, even when unethical thieves are trying to build their business off your back.

How do you stay ahead in real estate when you feel like you have to keep everything you do a secret because the minute you do it, someone steals it?

Does it irk you when your stuff is stolen and people say “you should be flattered” when this happens?

Let’s dive into how YOU can stay ahead of the game, even when unethical thieves are trying to build their business off your back.

Want to sneak past your colleagues and dominate Facebook? Join me inside The Vault (and inside Leads and Leverage) as we kick start the rest of 2018 in the month of August…no more famine in the winter, this winter you’ll have LEADS!!!

How do you stay ahead in real estate when you feel like you have to keep everything you do a secret because the minute you do it, someone steals it?

Does it irk you when your stuff is stolen and people say “you should be flattered” when this happens? It irks me! So let’s dive into, today, right now, into how you can stay ahead of the game, even when unethical thieves, because that’s what they are, unethical thieves steal off of your back!

Today we are going to dive into what to do, and why, why am I talking about this? Well, we are talking about this because this has happened to me, all the time, in multiple businesses, and even more so, with Leads and Leverage.

So what do you do? How do you deal with it, etc?

Do you feel that you have to keep everything you do a secret, because I know that we talk about growth mindset and abundance mindset versus scarcity mindset.

We talked about that, and not worrying so much about what people copy of yours, so we have kind of two things going on here.

On the one hand, yes, we feel like we have to keep everything we are doing a secret, because people do copy us. On the other hand, we don’t want to get into the scarcity mindset, and keep stuff super secret, because that’s a scarcity mindset.

We want to help people who want to be helped. So how do you help other people -pull them up with you- and how do you prevent that theft? How do you prevent those unethical hooligans from doing what they are doing?

Here’s the reality – when people say “oh, you should be flattered when people steal your stuff,” no, you shouldn’t be flattered because it’s not flattering, it’s theft.

First things first, there will always be copycats. Always. There is nothing you can do to stop the copycats. Okay? There is nothing you can do.

Unless, let me give you an example, thirty years ago, when we had our retail stores, I’m telling you, the minute we got something in the store, a similar store got it right away.

They would always be looking at us as competitors to figure out what to get in their stores. So, there was always copying. We were never truly unique in that sense, because of the products that we had. It happened in retail- it happens in our real estate business.

I don’t want to dwell on how that made me feel, but the truth is, this happens in the real estate business. Everytime we rent and lease, in fact, this is hilarious, in 2009, when we opened our own brokerage, we got our logo and our signs made, no other signs looked like ours and no other logos looked like ours.

Now, it’s nine years later, 2018, when I drive around, it blows my mind at how many signs look like ours and how many logos look like ours. It’s just interesting how people copy what other people are doing instead of doing their own stuff.

Everyone looks the same again. In real estate, when that does happen, you want your sign to stand out, you want people to see what’s going on. But again, there will always be copycats.

For Leads and Leverage, this happens all the time, and recently- it just blows me away that people still do this- there are people who not just harvest the idea, but we are going to talk about harvesting an idea and making it your own versus actually stealing it.

I’m talking about people who actually steal it, who follow me on Leads and Leverage, and they are literally taking all the notes that I give you guys, the downloads I give you, they are taking those, they are just repackaging them (and by that I mean putting them on a different colored document and different icons on there.)

They are using the same words, like exact same words, what I call my ads… words I created and invented, they are using those. The fact that they are trying to teach the process, the different processes that I’m teaching you, they are trying to do that too. So there is constantly copying, I have people doing that all the time, constantly, constantly.

Here’s the truth: they are going to fail. They are absolutely going to fail. Now why are they going to fail? They are going to fail because for a number of reasons, which I’m going to highlight down here, but they are going to fail because they are always looking for what someone else is doing, but they have no idea if what that someone else is doing is working.

They see the surface of success, but they don’t see what is getting you there. So they don’t see what is getting you there.

Number one- now you also are so far ahead of them, if they are copying you, then they are copying what you already did, what you already created.

You are so far ahead of them that they aren’t going to catch up. They are seriously not going to catch up. You need to keep moving forward and not look back.

That is the key.

You gotta keep moving forward and not look back. You need to not be reactionary, because what you focus on, expands. If you are focused on your frustration and your anger, and trying to go after them, they’ve won. You know why they have won?

Because you just put your time, and your energy, and possibly your money in chasing them down, instead of keeping on moving forward.

Also, they don’t understand YOU. You, your focus, your goals. So they have no idea how the pieces apply to your business. They might get the surface idea, but they don’t know how that applies to your business.

I’m going to give you examples from my business, in all of this.

Here’s the biggest one – they don’t have your superpower. What do I mean? Well, each one of us has a superpower. Each of us comes with something that is unique to us, that we are really good at.

And I’m not talking about “negotiating,” and “selling ice to an eskimo.” I’m talking about what are you really good at? Are you really good at hearing what people need and helping them with that? Are you really good at energizing people?

That tends to be my superpower, I tend to put energy into people, and I love doing that.

There are people who are great encouragers, there are people who are good at all kinds of different things.

So these copycats don’t have your superpowers- they can say your same message but it’s going to fall flat, which means they are going to fail, because they can’t replicate you.

That is why your unique selling proposition in real estate is not “I work in real estate, I help people do this and do that”- your unique selling proposition is YOU. So you have got to figure out what you bring to the table?

I know I bring energy, I bring encouragement, I bring passion, and I bring people to see the ability that yes, they do it. That’s my superpower. What’s yours? No one else can copy you. You have to wear blinders and you have to focus on your end goal.

Here’s the thing- when I was watching the videos that this person was sharing using my templates, my checklists, etc, I’m watching the videos and I’m going “they don’t even understand what they are teaching!

Like, they are reading through this, but they don’t understand it. They don’t get it, they don’t know.” So yeah, okay, they might get some business from it, and whatever, but they don’t actually understand what’s the writing behind it.

Here’s what I have found in real estate – when I was doing videos for real estate, we were getting a lot of “come list me” calls, and doing a lot of videos on how to list your property, and I’ll be frank, most of y’all don’t know how to price a piece of property. You gotta learn this!

A lot of times, we think it’s all about, you know, the comps, but the comps, once they have closed, are an additional thirty to sixty days older, because in closing price, that’s the price that the offer was made thirty, forty, sixty-five days before, sometimes longer.

And so we have to take that into effect, we have to take into effect how fast is the market is going up, and going down?

How many days is our market expanding? It may be by one or two days. All of these elements are “what’s the competition?” If everything’s going flat, and there is literally nothing in your price range, and it’s a popular price range, it’s a totally different story.

There are all kinds of different elements there for pricing, and that is what I focused on for teaching people, and why we dominated on expires. That’s why we got all of the expires that we ever pursued, because they knew that if they priced it the way we said to price it, then we are getting 99.8% of the list-to-sell price.

They weren’t having to reduce their prices, and they were making more money then the people who priced high, then had to go down.

We were able to show that through data, etc. We had other people try to copy it, but they didn’t understand it, and you could tell based on how they were presenting the ideas.

Everything I teach you, everything, is stuff that I know, use, and believe in intimately.

I do not go and curate information from other people and paired it back out to you. That is what your competitors are doing when they copy you, when they pull from your stuff and they try to pass it off as their own, they don’t know what they are doing.

They don’t understand! They are going to fail.

I have had people join our membership, and try to copy everything we do, and then sell it as their own- they failed.

I’ve had people try to use our stuff as lead magnets- they failed! They don’t have a long game in mind. They don’t have the passion, and the drive for it that I do, they want the money, they don’t understand why I’m doing this, and why I’m willing to push through the dirt, so they can’t copy me.

They don’t understand, they don’t have a passion for you guys. They don’t actually care if you are own your own brokerage business or not.

They don’t care if the pieces that you are using are autonomous and can be moved if something happens in your brokerage. They don’t actually understand how to build as business because they are not actually building one.

They are just trying to copy and make a quick buck!

That is the same thing with real estate agents when they try to copy you, when they see someone who they think is trying to have success, or they know that they are having success (this is why we got copied), but the funny thing was, no one fully copied it.

Direct mail- they would see on the surface that we had all of these transactions, and we were doing direct mail. They would get one, or two, of our pieces of direct mail, and try to duplicate it! Not realizing that those one or two pieces were just a few out of twenty-four that happened that year.

So they don’t get it, they don’t understand the strategy.

Here’s the thing – when people copy you like this, there is a couple of different things, when people copy you, you just need to ignore them. You have to ignore them, literally let them go.

Do what you can to ban and block them, from your page, from your email list, etc, but that’s it.

Let no more thought go into that. In fact, you should use it as fuel to go, “Ah! They are not going to make a business because they aren’t actually building a business.” They are just copying you!

So use that as fuel for you to keep going. Always remember… you are way ahead of them. You are so far ahead of them, that’s why they steal from you and don’t want to put in the work, they don’t want to put in all the years you have put into the business.

I watch people now, I started on July 30th of 2014, is when I started building up the domain of Leads and Leverage, and I didn’t actually start building up content and teaching until September of that year.

It’s been five years now since we bought the domain, four years since we actually launched the business, and it’s been really interesting to watch the people come and go, come and go, and copy my stuff, and then just go. There are other people that they copied, but for whatever reason, they have copied this.

So now, I know why some people copy me, because they like the energy, they like the stuff, they look and see “oh, I want that money!” But, again, they don’t have the passion.

They don’t have the understanding of where I’m coming from. And the “why” as to why I’m teaching what I’m teaching.

It’s the exact same thing with you. People who try to copy you when you have created something that you want to use for your prospects, for your clients, etc, you are doing it because you have had people ask that question and struggle with that problem, and you want to solve it.

So you have an intimate knowledge as to why you are using something.

Now what’s the difference between harvesting ideas and stealing?

Harvesting ideas, when you see someone posting an article or a video on pricing, we will just use pricing, and maybe you spend the time watching it – don’t spend a lot of time watching your competitors stuff.

I do not watch anyone’s stuff who may be possibly perceived as a competitor to me. I do not. I do not want to be influenced by them. I do not want their opinions.

Every once in a while, I will read a headline, or a couple of things, and I’ll either agree with it or disagree with it. If I disagree with it, then I read more so that I can come out with “no, this person is teaching you this and that is wrong.”

But as for everything else, I don’t want to know what they are doing. I don’t. Because I don’t want to be influenced by them.

I have MY reasons for doing Leads and Leverage, it’s MY business focus, and that is to empower YOU. To empower you as a business owner, as a business builder, so that you can have the life that you want AND build a business.

Create more time, make more money and LOVE the journey. That is why I’m doing this.

So when you are in real estate, why are you doing it?

Now my underlying reason, I LOVE this business, I love helping you guys, but my underlying reason is the flexibility, my most important thing is my husband and my kids. That is my most important thing. And then my sister, and her husband and my parents.

My family is most important to me and so every business that I have ever had, I have made sure that my priority is still my family. So that I could build my business around my family.

That’s what I want for you. So, what do you want? You don’t have to love all of the people that you are working with, but you do need to love the journey. So you need to figure out what that is.

For me, in real estate, I didn’t actually love real estate. What I loved about real estate was that I was getting people into what they enjoyed, like getting them into their house, because that’s exciting and people like that.

And I loved the fact that I could be at home and be with my kids, for the most part. I did the listings, Chuck did the buyers. If you have to do both, you can schedule it around your schedule, and have that flexibility.

But this is the key- when you are looking up people who are copying what you are doing, you have to actually wear blinders. You have to wear blinders and you have to keep moving forward.

You have to remind yourself “yes, they are going to fail.” People who are constantly trying to do what other people are doing instead of doing their path- they fail. They do!

They are one of the 86% that fails because they have never identified what is in it for them- except that “I want to copy that,” and “I want to have that” with money. That’s it.

There is no compelling passion behind it.

And it’s not necessarily finding your “why,” but you do need to understand your motivations. It’s really, really important that you put blinders on and ignore those people.

When we had our photos stolen, we actually had an attorney because a lot of agents think that they can just “borrow” somebody’s photos. We set it up with our attorney whenever there was a copyright theft, etc.

Now with me, and this national business and stuff, at this point, I have it set up, but I haven’t enacted it. So we will see what happens with that. It depends on how far it goes, before I’m actually going to put real energy to it, because, again, I want to keep moving forward. They will never be where I’m at, they will never have the passion for what I’m doing, or the why.

It’s the exact same with you. People will try to copy our email campaigns, people will try to copy our expire campaigns, people will try to copy our fiscal campaigns, people will try to copy our investor campaigns.

They will try to copy all this stuff but they will never get it. They don’t understand our goal, they don’t understand our passion, they didn’t have the knowledge.

So as far as working with investors, or 1-4 unit properties, we had a lot of knowledge in that. And we had a team that had a lot of knowledge in that. And so when people were trying to copy it, they couldn’t answer the questions that investors ultimately had, so they would fail.

Just be aware, when people copy you, they are only copying what they see on the surface. They cannot be you! They don’t have your experience, they don’t have your knowledge, they don’t have your reputation, they just don’t.

They don’t have your education, they cannot be you.

So have I said it enough that it doesn’t matter, so long as people are copying you, that you need to just focus on your path, and the people that follow you, and put your energy towards them. You keep your energy on your path.

Keep your energy on what you are doing, and keep doing what you need to do.

So if you want to make sure that you stay ahead, that you are going to sneak past your colleagues, they are not going to know what happens, because, yes, you can sneak past them.

And you are going to end up dominating Facebook! If that’s what you want, then you need to join us in “The Vault.” You need to join us if you want to stay ahead of the game, so that you are always staying ahead.

Facebook is changing constantly- that’s why I am laughing at these people who are trying to teach what I taught six months ago…because Facebook has changed!

Some things are the same, but they don’t understand the overall strategy so they are just looking at the tactics.

If you have questions that you want me to answer, post them in the comments below,

Want to sneak past your colleagues and dominate Facebook? Join me inside The Vault (and inside Leads and Leverage) as we kick start the rest of 2018 in the month of August…no more famine in the winter, this winter you’ll have LEADS!!!

by Christina Ethridge Leave a Comment

Think Facebook Page Likes Don’t Matter? Think Again. The Ultimate Guide To Facebook Page Likes, Exclusively For Real Estate Agents

Featured Download: The Facebook Page Setup Checklist – specifically for real estate agents – get your Facebook page setup to capture real estate leads.

Are you making this major mistake?

As agents, we tend to think that if we like each other’s Facebook business pages, we will close more deals, but this is false.

Personal profiles should be used to cultivate relationships with people you have met and business pages should be used as funnels for unmet prospects

Did you know?

Disengaged or disinterested followers devalue your Facebook business page.

I see this all the time: real estate agents exchanging Facebook business page likes with one another.

Every time I see it, I just want to scream from the rooftops, “You’re killing your Facebook lead generation.”

I just want to scream from the rooftops,

You’re killing your Facebook lead generation

.
But alas, we have this theoretical idea that — somehow, some way, in some form or another — if we go around patting each other’s backs on Facebook, it will bring more closings to the closing table.

When I do say something, I always get responses that seem to make sense — at least on the surface — but if anyone digs just a tiny bit below the surface, they fall apart.

Those responses include:

More exposure is good for my business.

I want to be available for referrals.

But a top agent I asked said to move all agents to my business page.

These are just a few of the plethora of reasons why real estate agents engage in “like” exchanges.

Let’s hit each response, shall we?

I want to be available for referrals

I have never understood why real estate agents spend more time focusing on staying connected with colleagues and hoping to get potential referrals than they do on consistently exposing their services to real prospects.

Why on earth are we spending 80 percent of our energy connecting with sources who will bring in less than 5 percent of our closings in any given year? Why, indeed.

I also question how adding a real estate agent to your real estate business page — a page that you are (hopefully) providing valuable, relevant content on, for your particular target market — is going to make you available for referrals from agents all over.

First of all, the page isn’t relevant to the agent in another market, so they aren’t going to stay involved in your page.

Their disengagement means anything you post won’t be showing up in their Facebook news feed, which ultimately defeats your intended purpose — referrals from said agent.

There are much better ways to stay connected with colleagues around the country — ways that will give you more referrals.

Here’s another thing: The more disengaged your page “likes” are, the more Facebook penalizes you and makes it even harder for you to get your content into the news feeds of your page fans who are real prospects. It’s all part of the algorithm.

FACT

The more disengaged your page likes are, the more Facebook penalizes you.

Last, but not least, when it comes time to “pay to play” — otherwise known as running ads — you are going to be wasting a whole lot of money putting ads in front of people who will never use your services.

Would you add colleagues from around the country to your snail-mail campaigns focused toward homebuyers or sellers in your local market?

If you would, you’re wasting copious amounts of money on something that will never give you a return (and if it does it’s a crazy, ridiculously small return) and need some serious targeting and marketing help.

More exposure is good for my business

Really? How so? Can you track this statement? Can you back it with statistical data?

In my over 20 years in real estate, I have yet to get actual, statistical data from a single agent on this. They’ll spout its truth, but they don’t have any evidence to prove it.

You see, it’s just the old way of thinking that’s always been theoretical because it sounds right on the surface.

But the problem is, the statement is ambiguous. What constitutes exposure? What is the content? Who is the audience? What does “good” mean?

We know it takes seven to 13 touches before our message sinks in, and we’ve translated to mean that more exposure equals more business.

We know it takes seven to 13 touches before our message sinks in — but is all exposure good?

Even if it is true — does that mean all exposure is good?

Here’s where most agents fall by the wayside and tend to be more stubborn than realistic. To get the exposure theory to work for you, you must be exposing the right content to the right audience.

If exposure is good, it must be the right exposure — and the right exposure is a prospect who want to buy or sell. A real estate agent in another market is not that prospect.

Let’s look at this from another perspective — that of Facebook. We’ve all heard that Facebook is now a pay-to-play platform. That means if you are a business and you want to make sales, you are going to have to invest in the platform — both in time and money.

You aren’t going to get a whole lot of focused, free exposure anymore. In other words, all this time you are spending getting your colleagues around the country to like your business page is not helping you at all in any way, shape or form. Period.

You’ve got to have your Facebook business page set up for real estate lead generation — not for exposure — and you’ve got to be engaging in lead generation-focused activities.

In fact, if you’ve been collecting likes that aren’t interested in your content, you’ve devalued your Facebook business page — drastically.

And you’ve locked yourself into a box — a box that you’ll be constantly working to get out of (which is futile), once you realize you could be getting actual leads if you understood how Facebook works.

But a top agent I asked said to move all agents to my business page

This one kills me. Agents go to conferences and conventions and revere the agents who are on these panels. They revere them because they are making the big bucks doing a trillion and one transactions each year.

Although I firmly believe in doing what is working and not reinventing the wheel, you’ve got to make sure that what is being touted as working is truly working.

Without getting into specifics, my team has closed more transactions than 99 percent of the agents on these top agent panels.

One thing I excel at is lead generation and conversion, and I’m a tyrant when it comes to digging deep and doing what actually works. We look at statistical, empirical data — not anecdotal gut feelings.

These agents have no idea how to use Facebook. They don’t know how to generate real estate leads from their Facebook business pages, nor do they understand how to cultivate more referrals from colleagues around the country using Facebook.

If they did, they would know that their business pages are funnels for unmet prospects, and their personal profiles are cultivators for “met” relationships.

Business pages are funnels for unmet prospects; personal profiles are for met relationships.

In other words, connect with colleagues on your personal profile and use lists to keep them organized. Use your Facebook business page to drive leads into your capture points.

So what should you stop doing?

You must (I can’t emphasize must enough) stop exchanging Facebook business page likes with your colleagues.

If you want to grow your business, and you wish to take advantage of the No. 1 lead generation resource available to you today, then you’ve got to take the time to understand how Facebook works for real estate lead generation.

There is more to Facebook lead generation than just stopping this practice, but this is the biggest mistake I see agents making. And I thought it’s about time I started addressing it. I even go as far as to say that asking people to like your page is a big fat no-no.

As I was writing this article, I realized I was making one big assumption about you — that the reason you are using Facebook is because you want to close more transactions.

If that is your goal — then you need to think about and analyze what you are doing on Facebook. Don’t just follow the crowd because, quite frankly, the crowd doesn’t know what it is doing.

Don’t just follow the crowd because, quite frankly, the crowd doesn’t know what it is doing.

My question for you is: Have you been out there exchanging page likes with other agents? Are you going to change that and do something that works to bring more closings to the table? Do you disagree?

If so, please share with me why — and as you now know, I like real data behind statements, not feel-good anecdotal sharing of gut beliefs.

Featured Download:

The Facebook Page Setup Checklist – specifically for real estate agents – get your Facebook page setup to capture real estate leads.

by Christina Ethridge Leave a Comment

Stop making phone calls! Do these 4 things today that will double your real estate business this year (and quadruple it next year)

Featured Download: The Facebook Page Setup Checklist – specifically for real estate agents – get your Facebook page setup to capture real estate leads.

I wrote this training article for you because I read something in a Facebook group that triggered this soapbox.

I’ve given you very solid, tangible, takeaways that you can implement immediately, but I also know that you need to know why I’ve done this. So hold on to something — ’cause here I go.

In one of the plethora of Facebook groups that are popular with real estate agents, someone recently said (and I quote)

It takes about 300 calls per day to get a listing, but if you don’t do that you get no listings. In any case, the personal contact always is the best way to go.

I’ll have to admit, no matter how many times I hear agents talk like this, no matter how many times I see this kind of arrogance, no matter how many times I listen to this fixed mindset — I still feel shocked.

Shocked that someone actually believes what is coming out of their mouth.

Shocked that someone is spouting out this nonsense expecting others to adhere to it and yet, doesn’t adhere to it themselves (because let’s face it, this kind of advice always comes from agents who don’t have enough transactions under their belt to substantiate their belief, mindset or advice).

I just have to shake my head when real estate agents start spouting this nonsense. Nonsense they act like this is the only way to build your real estate business — the one way to get listings.

And the crazy part is, they fiercely protect this fixed mindset. Fiercely! They insist there is no other way to do it.

Tip #1

Get out of a fixed mindset and jump into a growth mindset. There are better ways to lead generate, despite what our industry is focused on teaching.

The kicker: They say these things as absolutes. Absolutely stating that it absolutely always works. That it’s absolutely the only way. They’ve created boxed-in ideas about how to get listings and what personal contact is.

Forget cold-calling; build personal relationships

The irony in this is that they think cold-calling is personal contact and that it builds know, like and trust relationships.

Let’s face it. They are delusional.

Cold calling for listings is not a personal contact.

This mindset is dangerous.

It’s dangerous because its singular goal is to make sure that no one else transcends beyond them, that no one else does something better, in a new way, in a more effective way.

It’s so hardcore, and its influence so strong, that our entire real estate industry is affected by it. This mindset shows people that we are the smarmy salespeople with crappy reputations that they already mostly believe.

Come on, a cold call is a personal contact? Cold calling is the only way to get listings?

I’ve never made a cold call in my life, and guess what — I’ve taken my unfair share of listings.

The thing about this mindset is that it’s not scalable (purposefully not scalable), and it’s simply not true.

You only have so much time, and you have to trade time for each phone call.

If you do 300 phone calls a week, that means you would potentially take 52 listings per year.

Unless you can invent more time, you’ll be stuck at taking 52 listings each year. You won’t ever grow beyond that.

Cold calling isn’t scaleable — unless you can invent more time.

And what are you going to do? Just go through the phone book making phone calls? Really? How are you going to reach the households that haven’t had a landline in more than 15 years?

Tip #2

Rethink what personal contact is, and isn’t, and leverage it to build your real estate business.

We haven’t had a landline in 15 years, and most of our circle of friends hasn’t, either. And we are in that group of buyers and sellers that most people want.

The move-up-to-their-largest-home group. The group that has both a sell and a buy — at a price point that is statistically double and triple the area average home price.

Are you willing to build your business on a fixed mindset that not only is a ridiculous one but is also quickly disappearing in its ability to be used?

Build a scalable business

Yes, I know real estate agents that do this. But they never reach leverage. They never build upon previous actions they take.

When they are calling 300 new people every single week, even if they repeat through their lists every quarter, they aren’t actually building any relationships.

Their one sole focus is: Are you ready to sell? That’s it. They have no connection with the prospects for any other reasons.

And, the prospects have zero connection with them, which means zero loyalty — which means they’ve still got to convert the prospect over and over again.

During each phone call, at each appointment, the prospect has zero reasons to trust them.

This means that every single month they start back at zero. They aren’t looking for stages of the homeownership journey; they are looking for the close. That’s it. That’s an awful lot of work that never ends.

Why on earth would you get into real estate with the potential freedom, flexibility and awesome financial future to treat it like a non-renewable resource? This isn’t building a business; it’s being controlled by the business.

Tip #3

Start your business with the end in mind. Think “scale” in the beginning before it becomes nearly impossible to actually scale.

If you aren’t thinking scale now, when you first begin, you’ll struggle with scaling in the future. Seriously — most agents just think “Oh, I’ll hire someone from overseas as a virtual assistant to call all my leads and help me cherry-pick the ones most likely to take action right now.”

If you aren’t thinking scale when you first begin, you’ll struggle with scaling in the future.

Seriously? Don’t get caught up in the idea of using dialer services (or outsourcing to an overseas VA). You’ve still got to trade time for the phone calls, and it’s still focused on closing the immediate deal rather than on helping consumers through the journey and subsequently closing multiple deals.

I’d be willing to bet that the number of people who are turned off by the dialer services and broken English cold calls are infinitely more than the number of people who agree to an in-person appointment.

Again, a smarmy salesperson shines brightly in this case. Really? You care so little about the people you want to work with that you’ll toss aside any opportunity to build a tribe of people who are wild and crazy about you, just so that you can forever cold call. Forever? You will never truly scale this.

Let’s talk about that for a minute. When I say “scale” I don’t mean “just acquire more random leads and hire VAs to help convert them.” That is one type of scaling, not a particularly efficient type, but it’s still one type of scaling.

And really, it’s not scaling because you have to have a VA for every X amount of leads that come in.

Which means the more leads you have, the more VAs you have. And the more VAs you have, the more people you have to manage or pay others to manage. In other words, having more people does not equal scale; it just equals more people (and more money spent).

Don’t focus on vanity metrics

You know, the whole “my team is 24 people” bragaliciousness that we love to spout. If you can do double, triple, quadruple the business with a team one-quarter of the size and not be stressed and still have a lovely life, why would you focus on vanity metrics?

When I’m talking scale, I’m talking about the ability to scale your income producing time and efforts that create and build know, like and trust relationships.

Wouldn’t you rather bring on more buyer agents because every other phone call is a buyer that is ready and determined to work with you or your team?

Wouldn’t you rather bring on a listing coordinator (or three) because every other phone call is a seller who is asking you to come out and list their home? It would save you the time of multiple prospective listing appointments.

Don’t get caught up in the idea of using dialer services or outsourcing VA’s.

I know that I’d much rather outsource paperwork, signs, lockboxes, photography, etc., than outsource building relationships. And I also know that relationships are easily scalable, meaning, it’s just as easy and takes just as much time to create and build one relationship as it does to create and build 1,000 relationships when you know what you are doing.

It’s just as easy and takes just as much time to create and build one relationship as it does to create and build 1,000 relationships.

4 ways to create know, like and trust relationships

Guess what? Personal contact doesn’t just happen in face-to-face or phone-to-phone situations. In fact, personal contact happens in all mediums including:

1. Blog posts

Blog posts work well to create and build know, like and trust relationships. They are beautiful when it comes to creating a relationship in which the prospect simply connects with you and is ready to list their home.

They already know you. They already trust you.

However, putting up ghost-written, canned garbage isn’t going to help you. Not one bit. The consumer knows it’s ghost-written, canned garbage. They aren’t stupid. They know it’s monotone. They know it isn’t your voice. They know you aren’t having a conversation.

This is where we fail when it comes to blogging. We focus on keywords and SEO traffic, and that’s it. Flip that around and focus solely on solving the problems and giving value to your prospects.

You’ll build relationships and convert leads. You’ll also start driving the right, high-value traffic as opposed to every Tom, Dick or Harry doing searches for events in your area.

1. Email

Sending a real email, not the canned garbage we as real estate agents cling to so we don’t actually have to talk to anyone.

Not the canned garbage we use just to get the requisite number of touches in because, after all, a touch is all that’s needed, right? No!

You need to have a conversation. Again I say, stop touching your list and start having conversations with them.

Yes, you can scale this! Use an email marketing software, and have a conversation with your list at least once every week.

Twice a week is even better. And yes, these numbers are based on actual scientific evidence of billions of emails.

Yes, you can schedule these conversations. You don’t have to be sitting down at the computer every single week writing these emails, but you must be the one having the conversation.

You can not outsource relationship building. Don’t mix it up touches with building relationships.

3. Video

Yup, video. With the advent of live streaming on just about every major social media channel and people who are flocking to watch live streams, you have got to be doing video in some fashion. Live streaming makes it insanely easy.

But (there is always a but with me, isn’t there?), the thing is, it’s not about live streaming your open houses (though you can), and it’s not about live streaming marketing stats (though you can).

It’s about being available and authentic — a bit raw, in fact. It’s about getting on and solving problems for people — for your prospects.

When you start showing your expertise, you become the expert. And most importantly, you become trusted, approachable and relied upon.

When you stop pitching you, your services and your listings and start helping, your results will be dramatic. Your tribe will become unstoppable.

<span style=”background-color: yellow; font-size: large;”><b>Live streaming makes creating video content insanely easy.</b></span>

4. Repurpose

And guess what the best part of all of this is? Each of these three things is repurposed. What do I mean?

Start with video. Do a live stream on a topic that is close to your prospects’ heart. Help them. Dive deep with them. Give them the answers and resources they need to overcome the obstacle.

Then, run that live stream replay as a Facebook ad to your page fans (remember, your page likes must be highly targeted, none of this ridiculous ask-everyone-on-planet-earth behavior that we tend to dwell on in our industry).

Then, get that live stream transcribed. Use a source such as SpeechPad.com to transcribe it. And then, edit that transcription and set it up as a written blog post and go deeper on what you might have missed in the live stream.

Then, talk to your list via email and share the topic with them.

Drive them to your blog post (where, of course, you are pixeling that traffic so you can later run Facebook ads to them) where you help them in the blog post and offer a “content upgrade” that allows them to download a checklist, template or something that congruent with what you just helped them with.

Then, run a Facebook ad to everyone who visited your blog post and share the live stream with them so they can get more information, via a different medium, on the topic.

Then, run Facebook ads to cold (but highly targeted) traffic driving them to that valuable blog post, where everything is repeated.

And, for an added boost, upload that Facebook live stream to YouTube and optimize it, so you drive traffic back to the epic blog post you created for them.

So in essence, while you are creating the content, you are simultaneously leveraging the content. When you do the live stream first, you set the ball into motion.

One more crucial note

Your lead generation foundation on Facebook must be built, and built well. This means that your Facebook page likes must be highly targeted page likes — they can not be colleagues from around the country.

They must be people in your area who are most likely to use your services, which means you have to build a solid Facebook page like tribe before you can truly leverage this.

Why? Because your Facebook live streams are pushed out to your page likes and bring them in to connect with you while you are live.

And, you must be continuously building that tribe. In other words, the first, most important Facebook ad you should be running — and never stopping — is your page-like audience ad. However, you don’t want to run Facebook page like ads until your page is set up for leverage.

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