In this episode of “Keeping It Real” host Frank Klesitz discusses how you can transform real estate and CRM goals for 2022 into real-life results with special guests Brendan Bartic and Todd Tramonte.
The world has changed drastically because of COVID-19. Many major changes have taken place in the real estate industry. Learn how you can take concrete steps and decisive actions to adjust to the post-pandemic changes through the New Year’s resolutions and actions of Brendan and Todd.
Brendan shares what he learned in 2021 after he and his real estate team initially built on the wrong fundamental structure by focusing on productivity: “Culture first… The big thing I learned this year is: If you don’t have the culture, you can have the best, most aggressive agents on earth, you’re not gonna get very far.”
As a result, he and his team now resolved to prioritize culture moving forward. He emphasizes their new goals: “We follow our three Ps: People, Progression, and Philanthropy.” He applies these principles by changing which attitudes and behaviors they allow and don’t allow among their team members. He also provides more creative options to both buyers and sellers so they can find a suitable solution for their needs.
Brendan educates himself to become a better leader so he can inspire his team to become better real estate agents.
Todd shares what he learned in 2021: “How absolutely overwhelmed our client is.” He explains that he observed that many people felt confused and exhausted after hearing different messages from different sources during this pandemic in the real estate field and beyond.
That’s why he and his real estate team aim to be the voice of reason and clarity in 2022. He plans to achieve this goal by tailoring their message to give clients reassurance and reliability. He offers simple, straightforward solutions to their real estate needs amid the overwhelming factors in real estate transactions.
Todd also realized the power of onsite work interactions. He fosters mutual trust in the company by working shoulder-to-shoulder with his team every day.
His resolutions align with his overall work inspiration: “The only reason I’m building a business is to have a life of purpose and impact. A life that actually matters, that I’m proud of.”
If you want to transform your New Year’s resolutions as a real estate agent into tangible actions like Brendan and Todd, you can partner with a competent IDX provider like Real Geeks. We offer an all-in-one real estate solution so you can grow your business in the upcoming year. Level up your real estate venture through our custom IDX real estate websites, web design, drip system, and CRM services.
Are you looking to send lead generation emails to everyone on your database, past clients, or unconverted leads in your CRM? A great email marketing strategy is to send emails that contain details regarding how much their home is worth or if they’re interested in getting an offer for their home. In this blog post, we’ll guide you through the steps you need to know to set up your magical seller lead generation email.
When you send emails, make sure that you send to warm leads rather than cold ones, and make sure to make it personal. No one wants spam in their emails and everyone knows what a templated email looks like, so don’t send out one of those. If it looks like junk mail or if it doesn’t look relevant, people are more likely to throw it away or unsubscribe.
Before you can send out an email, you need a list of email addresses. These emails can be found from all of your contacts on Outlook, or your Gmail. Proceed to export all the people on your contacts to your email marketing program. Do the same for everyone on your cell phone and put them in a different spreadsheet. Then do the same for your existing CRM, whether you’re using Real Geeks or something else. Export everything except anyone who has unsubscribed from emails in that system. Another source is a dialer — these will make calls for you and may lead to people you’ve spoken to. Export these into another spreadsheet.
Next, we need to scrub these emails — use NeverBounce.com to ensure that you don’t get bounced emails. This works by providing a ping to the email addresses to see if the actual mailbox works. A $50 subscription will be enough to scrub a couple of thousand emails, and businesses of all sizes use this tool.
While you now have 4 to 5 spreadsheets of scrubbed emails, you will probably have a bunch of duplicates too. Use Myemma.com or Zoho Campaigns will help you send your marketing emails. Other tools include MailChimp and Salesforce for the big players. Upload each spreadsheet into your email marketing program so that the system automatically eliminates duplicates of the same email address. Now, you have a scrubbed, no-duplicate list of all your best contacts ready to get an email from you.
Be sure to do an SPF DKIM Authentication — Google will have a help file on how to set this up. Going through this process will significantly improve the likelihood of sending this email to mailboxes where it would be tagged as spam.
With the steps above, you should be able to get a wealth of leads from emails sent to your contacts. However, this isn’t meant to be done all the time and you can’t send out an email every single week. Keep in mind that this method is best used about once a month or once every two months.
You can download a pdf of all the emails from this episode HERE
Chris Watters, one of the top real estate agents in Austin, is our guest this week on Keeping it Real - LIVE from Inman Connect in Las Vegas!
In 3 years, back when he re-launched his real estate team correctly after burning it down, he went from earning $0 in real estate to $1 million dollars net income (after expenses), all while out of production. It's a pretty incredible story on scaling up a real estate team.
In short, the secret is he started recruiting agents immediately to his online leads. In addition to that, Chris raised money from local businesses who benefit downstream from new movers (not on the settlement statement), all who chipped in financially toward his marketing costs to buy the online buyer and seller leads in the first place.
This is one of the fastest stories of scaling up a real estate team we've heard on Keeping it Real. We're excited to interview Chris so you can model his success. If you're working to build up your real estate team fast from scratch, this is one you should tune in for!
For a complete transcript of this episode go to KeepingItReal.com
Daniel Priestly is an internationally recognized leader in strategy and technology for entrepreneurial businesses based in the UK.
In the next Keeping It Real as host Todd Tramonte and Daniel dive into Daniel’s book “Key Person of Influence”. They will explore some of the simple but powerful steps to help you make your mark.
“Key Person of Influence” details the five skills that will make you more “vital”. Join us to find out how you can utilize these skills to make you the go-to person in your market!
You can get a free pdf version of “Key Person of Influence” on Daniel’s website here.
Craig Schneider has been a driving force in Rochester’s new construction residential real estate sector for more than 15 years.
Craig was a Real Geeks user but left after frustrations with building his brokerage around the website and CRM. He experimented with using many different platforms for his business that eventually didn’t work out either. He'll discuss what he was looking for, why some of the platforms he tried didn’t work for him, and why he eventually came back to Real Geeks. PLUS, how he’s using it now!
Join host Todd Tramonte as he dives into how Craig has been able to maximize the Real Geeks platform for lead generation and distribution for his entire team with a very high return on investment.
Join us for this Keeping it Real where you’ll learn how to reconnect with your neglected past clients, sphere, and lead nurtures so more people call you without spending a lot of money.
You’ll learn a simple process to export all your contacts into one file - properly de-duplicated and scrubbed - so you can email them a re-connect message about the latest local real estate news. You'll get a copy of this message on the show.
Then, you’ll put everyone on a “36 touch” plan so you’re top of mind as their go-to real estate agent. You’ll even be able to track who engaging with you so you can follow up.
The strategies you’ll learn to do this are inexpensive and simple. As a bonus, not only can you reconnect with your database, but you can also work the databases of other agents in your market for a referral fee – a low-risk way of generating high-quality leads for yourself.
Join Frank Klesitz this week to learn everything you wanted to know about how to get the most business from your #1 asset – all those emails, phone numbers, and mailing addresses sitting in your Gmail, Outlook, mobile phone, and CRM(s).
Kevin Kauffman and his business partner Fred Weaver have 25 agents on their real estate sales team in Phoenix. They sold 306 homes last year ($110 Million).
They originally set their agent splits based on what’s taught in the Millionaire RealEstate Agent book. Their bottom line, however, was only 10-20%.
After reflecting on that, they decided to actually increase their agent splits to 60/40 and70/30 (in favor of the agent), while cutting all the fixed, hard costs their agents saw as “low-value,” but in fact were very high cost to them.
Kevin says his agents are happier than ever, keeping more money, and his business is now more profitable than ever. This is a topic we wanted to dive deeply into with you!
Join Frank Klesitz and Greg Harrelson for this insightful Keeping it Real.
We talk about the optimal way to pay your agents if you have a real estate team. Kevin shares how he did it, how his numbers work, and why it was the best move for their agent/team model. This is a hot topic with a lot of opinions - this is an exciting discussion!
To hear even more from Kevin:
Join Kevin's Facebook Group
Listen to Kevin's Podcast
Watch Kevin's Youtube channel for Realtors
Dan Noma is on the show this week to share how he created EasyStreetOffers.com to help homeowners know all their options when selling their home.
It's working - he sold 1,800 homes last year with this simple message in hyper-competitive Phoenix, which is ground zero for all the iBuyer disruption.
Dan uses direct mail, Facebook, TV, and phone calls to let homeowners in Scottsdale know he has multiple buyers ready to go for their home.
When homeowners call to learn more, he asks them to send in photos of their home (or an agent goes on an initial discovery meeting to get the photos), which he submits to his institutional buyer relationships for a real, actual offer right away. The offers are very competitive, not low-ball investor offers.
Now armed with those offers upfront, and an accurate CMA, his agents guide the seller on the next steps best for them (i.e. you can sell it yourself, take the instant offer, or list it with us).
Join Frank Klesitz and learn how to tweak your seller lead-generation message for the best response (get an instant offer), and how to actually help those sellers when they call from your Guaranteed Offer messaging. Dan fills you in on how to partner with institutional buyers who will make very competitive offers too, so you're honest and authentic in your message.
Spring Bengtzen’s real estate team of 27 agents – located about 20 minutes outside of Salt Lake City, Utah – has already sold 259 units as of August 2021. If things continue in this hot housing market, they will likely sell around 450 homes by the end of the year.
Spring got her operational costs down considerably by hiring an international team of virtual assistants, so she can invest more resources into her agents and the customer experience (5-star agent communication, which is the #1 complaint of homeowners working with an agent). She’s also working on the ancillary side of things, like opening a title company, to stay competitive.
It was only five years ago she was ready to leave the business entirely and go back to being a hairdresser – barely making any money with a very small team. Since then, she’s been watching Keeping it Real and implemented the systems(and philosophies) of our guests. Spring shares what she’s learned about seller lead generation, recruiting, hiring agents, selling homes, and streamlining your operations. She also just transitioned her brokerage to ΓEA⅃ this summer. You’ll hear her thoughts on that decision, too, with the recent explosion of brokerage options in the space.
Join Frank Klesitz for this Keeping it Real and learn how you too can model what Spring’s doing to grow your real estate business!
Are you thinking about hiring your first buyer or listing agent? Maybe you've increased your real estate agent recruiting given the demand for real estate this summer?
If that's the case, join us for Keeping it Real this week to learn the optimal way to onboard a new real estate agent to your team or brokerage.
Frank Klesitz will interview Greg Harrelson (our guest this week) on how he gets a brand new real estate agent with minimal resources up to speed so they are selling homes within weeks.
This is a great interview if you're a brand new agent - you'll learn how to get yourself up to speed! This is a step-by-step instructional interview with the exact steps for a new real estate agent to take.