Welcome to The Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcast. My name is Dean Jackson and I'm excited because today we've moving on in a series focusing on your business.
We started off the podcast with a series of three episodes looking at people who are a little further down the road in this listing agent lifestyle. We kicked it off with Tony Kalsi, who's just finished the four year case study to show what happens running the Getting Listings program, and how it created 11 times ROI on the investment over that time. Then we talked with Chuck Charlton, who's 12 years down the road and the impact these things we’re talking about has had on his business. Then last week we talked with Ron Reed, who was a new GoGoAgent user last year. He very quickly, even in the 30 day free trial got his first listing and went on to generate $55,000 from one area, starting with 400 homes.
Now, I want to focus on talking about your business. I've been getting emails from people who have listened to the first few episodes saying, "Wow, this is really interesting. Tell me more, how do I take the next step? Where do I start? How do I go to that level?".
One of those emails from Tony Fabiano in Toronto. I reached out to Tony and said, "Tony, let's do this. Let's come on and let's spend an hour and we'll talk about what's going on in your business. We'll talk about the elements of the listing agent lifestyle. We'll do some analysis on where the opportunities are in your business."
We just wrapped up that conversation. I'll tell you what, Tony couldn't be a nicer guy. We had a great conversation. He's really thoughtful. He's got a really good handle on where his business is coming from. He's primarily, which is a testament to who he is as a person, a repeat and referral business. He's got a nice business doing 30 plus transactions this year.
We dug in, looked at the numbers, decided what the key metrics are that driver those results, and how to maybe move the needle a little bit. The hour went very quick. We had a great conversation. I look forward to hearing great things from Tony over the next year, so stay tuned and enjoy this episode.
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep004
Dean: Tony Fabiano.
Tony: Hi, Dean. How are you?
Dean: Yes, how are you?
Tony: I'm well, how are you?
Dean: I'm fantastic. Did you hear that announcement? It said this call is being recorded. That's us.
Tony: All right.
Dean: Welcome. This is how we do it. We got a whole hour here to brainstorm and talk about your situation and see where we can go.
Tony: Okay.
Dean: Fair enough. Now that it's being recorded, where does it go? This'll be for the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast. I've got the first few episodes that we did. I interviewed Tony Kalsi and Chuck Charlton and Ron Reed. Three guys who've been doing our Getting Listings program. You saw that Chuck Charlton one? Is that how you...
Tony: Yes, that's how I reached out, yes.
Dean: Okay, perfect. Now so this, the intention with the podcast now is I'm getting a lot of the same kind of emails is what you sent. People are looking to change direction for next year and wondering, get the lay of the land, where to go, what the opportunities are. That's where we can start. Just figure out what you've got going on and where the biggest opportunities are for you.
Tony: Okay. Okay. I don't know a whole lot about the Listing Agent program. I thought I'd reach out and try to get an understanding of how you help your clients.
Dean: Yeah, perfect.
Tony: Yeah.
Dean: This is what we do is one of the things that we do is start with a really grounding in the numbers. In what's going on and where business is coming from. What's working. And look for some opportunities to move the needle on some of the numbers that matter and look at some different approaches than what you've been doing. I know in your email you mentioned that you're grown distasteful of cold calling or doing of any of the prospecting things.
Tony: Yeah, it's not that it's distasteful it's just it's not my favorite thing to do.
Dean: Doesn't bring daily joy exactly.
Tony: No, no, no.
Dean: Where does your business come from right now? We're at the end of the year basically so we can get a sense of the looking back now. Get an annual review here. What do the numbers look like in terms of number of total transactions that you'll close out the year with here?
Tony: I'm at 32 transactions and I'll be actually tomorrow my last closing. Actually 33 'cause I just did one the other day and that'll close in December. Let's say 33 transactions.
Dean: Okay, perfect.
Tony: I would say that out of that 33 I haven't honed it down but I'd have to say that 25 of those are just on repeat and referral business.
Dean: Okay, perfect. That's good to know. That's what I want to get a sense of is where is that business coming from. We break things down into 3 units of your business. We look at what we call the before unit where that's all new people looking for new prospects that you've never worked with yet. And then we have a category called your during unit which is where we get to multiply some of the transactions that you're doing. That would be finding more business from the listings that you've got or getting a referral during the transaction period. And then in the after unit, which is what you're talking about here where the majority of your business comes from people who already know you, like you, trust you.
When you look at that, what of the 25 you say repeat and referral, how many would be of each? How much would what I'll call direct business meaning somebody that you knew and you did business with them or a repeat client that you did another transaction with them versus somebody that you know referring you to somebody else?
Tony: Without it being in front of me, it would be a guesstimate. I would say that out of the 25, 15 would be new business referred by somebody that I worked with in the past and would've been from people either buying a new investment or moving up or scaling back.
Dean: Okay, perfect. Do you do anything to make that happen? Or is the Tony Fabiano experience so Fabiano that people just refer and line up at your door?
Tony: No. What I've done is I've built a bit of a system where I'm contacting them monthly via a newsletter. An actual delivered by Canada Post so they're getting 12 individual emails. I also then...
Dean: Is it physical?
Tony: Emails, sorry, newsletters.
Dean: Yeah, physical newsletters, right.
Tony: And then they're always getting a birthday card, a holiday card. That brings me to 14 types I would say. What I do pretty diligently is keep track of the people that I've done business with and daily I will check any new listings that have come out on their street or on they're way. And I will physically email them. It's a canned email. I will send them an email saying, "Jim, just wanted to let you know this property came out for sale down the street." That could be sometimes five times in a month and there could be, I'm doing that. And then I'm following up and I save that in my favorites and I'll email them the sold price should they sale or fall off the market. I'm getting double the relevance that way.
Dean: Relevance, right, exactly. You're staying in touch with them. You're thinking about them. You're doing all of those good things. You got what we would call a very robust after unit. You're doing all the right things and how many people are in that category for you? How many people do you keep in touch with?
Tony: I would say the people that get that newsletter now, 'cause I looked at it the other day 'cause I was printing my Christmas cards is 117.
Dean: Perfect.
Tony: Out of that I would say that 100 get that service. Not all of them even though, there's certain people 'cause I track them with an app Fabusend. When I send the listing I know if they're opening it or not. I can tell if they're interested in the listing or listing service. If I'm wasting my time, I just don't want to, 'cause it is a bit time consuming to do that every day.
Dean: I love it.
Tony: People that don't seem to be interested I just don't send it to them. I'm in around that 100 that I do daily.
Dean: Are these the people, what did they do to qualify to get on that list? These are your clients?
Tony: They either bought or sold with me. Bought or sold with me.
Dean: Okay, all right. If you look at it, one of the things that we look at, a key metric that we track is what we call your return on relationship. The way that we get that is we divide that number of repeat and referral transactions that you did, so 25, and we divide that by 150, which is what we use as a standardized number here. Have you ever heard the word Dunbar's number?
Tony: I think I have.
Dean: It's based on this evolutionary not psychologist but sociologist in Oxford who basically did all this research and determined that as humans we have the capacity for 150 relationships basically. By relationship that means if you saw them at the grocery store, you'd recognize them by name and you would stop and have a conversation with them and immediately know you're standing in their life. It's not an acquaintance where you kind of recognize them or whatever, but people that you actually know. The reason that we look at it from that number is that those are the people who would know you and be likely to refer you or choose you to do business with if they had a need themselves. That's, we want to, you've been around long enough that they're, I'm sure there are an additional 40 people that you know that could get you to that 150 that aren't necessarily past clients but are people that you have that type relationship with.
Even if you just look at those numbers there. 25, divided 150 is 16%. That's what we look at as your return on relationship. I would mention that you're really doing a good job in there but what we look for as the gold standard here is to get a 20% annual yield on your relationship. You're doing a lot of things that are getting you to that point. You're certainly in their world there. I love these, I call those emails that you're sending, market maker emails where you're keeping them up to date on what's going on in the market. There's a couple of things that might just tip you over the top here but I want to get one piece of information from you. When you mention the 15 people who were referred to you, can you think of a couple of those people of just off the top of your head of who those people were? I just want to get a sense, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions about the situation.
Tony: You're asking me about the person that did the referring?
Dean: Both. I want to know the situation. What I want to hear is what's the name, just first name of the one that comes to mind? The most recent one.
Tony: The person that did the referring would have been Steven.
Dean: Okay, so Steven is your client or friend.
Tony: Yes, client.
Dean: Okay, and now how did it happen? What ended up happening?
Tony: Steven purchased an investment property from me and one of his work colleagues found out about this purchase and he connected me with one of his work colleagues who then bought an investment property with me as well.
Dean: Okay, did Steven call you and say, "Hey." What was the name of the person that actually the referral?
Tony: Mike.
Dean: Okay, did Steven call you and say, "Hey I was just talking to my friend Mike, I want to connect to you." Or did Mike call you and say, "I was just talking to Steven."
Tony: No, Steven sent me an email just saying you could expect a phone call or email from Mike and I responded with a thank you and if I could get his phone number, Mike's phone number, so I could reach out just in case things get lost. I always like to try to get that phone number. He was kind enough to give me his phone number and I reached out.
Dean: And you reached out to him.
Tony: Yeah, yeah.
Dean: Okay, perfect. Let's do just two more. Give me the quick story like that of the last two of those.
Tony: Yeah, no problem. There was, let's just see, recently from the referrals. Would have been a friend Evan. Evan had never purchased from me, we haven't done business in real estate but I had introduced him, he knew I was in real estate through connections he asked me for a lawyer referral. In that he ended up having a great experience with the lawyer that I referred him and he thanked me very much for that. In that I just said to Evan, I said, "Evan, if you know anybody that ever needs my services, please just pass on my name." And he said, "Yeah, no problem." I got a call in September from Evan's mother who was dealing with the family estate I ended up listing the family's estate property.
Dean: That's great. So she called you.
Tony: She called me. Typical interview there was a lot of siblings but they signed the listing on the spot and that transaction closed the next week.
Dean: I love it. Perfect. And one more.
Tony: Okay, one more. Trying to think who else recently. I just had a big one.
Dean: It's okay, it's not something that you normally think about.
Tony: I don't have their names in front of me either.
Dean: Right, exactly.
Tony: If I had the names of front of me, would've been easier to connect that. Which one else can I give a nice little story? It would've been, okay, there's was another couple, okay, I can remember.
Dean: Okay.
Tony: It was a young couple. I got introduced to by my past client Nicholas, his now wife, her brother. That was an introduction they are a young couple. The couple that purchased were Tom and Megan were looking to purchase a condo and they reached out to me because of the good experience that Nick had when I helped them purchase their first place.
Dean: They called you up and said, "We're friends of Nick and he said such great things, we'd love you to help us find a condo."
Tony: Absolutely. Booked a consultation and we worked together and there we are.
Dean: There's a perfect example of what's happening. These are, there's the types of referrals that I look for in there are passive referrals and reactive referrals. When your client Steven called you up and said, "Hey I want you to connect with Mike." That's a reactive referral. He called you, tipped you off, you have to now go into action and make the connection here and make something happen. And then Nicholas when Tom and Megan called you, that's what I call a passive referral. They called you up, you didn't know what was coming. They called you up and said, "Hey we're friends of Nicholas and he said you could help us with a condo." And then the interesting one that is represents what I call an orchestrated referral is I'm going to give you credit for an orchestrated referral with Evan in that you asked him to keep his eye out and if anybody needed a service to refer you and sure enough he did. You orchestrated that. You suggested it and then sometime later, that all happened there.
You've got a really nice, well rounded after unit here. One of the things that I might look at to just bump it up to that next level for you is to understand the mechanics of how referrals actually happen. We go through this whole process that referrals in a lot of ways are they are given because they make the person that's doing the referring feel good. It's not done as a favor to you. It's an interesting dynamic that once people understand that the reason people refer is because it makes them feel good that gives you this freedom to not make it feel like that you're asking them to do them a favor.
You seem to have that confidence about you which I great in that you had no problem asking Evan to, you were aware. You had that awareness that he had a great experience and he thanked you and you made of point of saying, if you run into anybody, I'll give people that same level of experience basically. That goes a long way. Most people just don't get those number of referrals that you're getting because they're just not taking an orchestrated approach to it. But when you understand then the psychology behind why people refer, now we get to look at the logistics of what actually happens when a referral is taking place.
We've identified that all referrals happen as a result of conversation. They notice that in order for a referral to take place, three things have to happen. They have to notice that the conversation is about real estate. They have to think about you and they have to introduce you to the person that they were having that conversation with. All three things of those things have to fire for a referral to take place. Now you look at it and all of the referrals we could have gone through all 15 of them and they would've been some mix of that category. I've always found that primarily they're mostly passive. People calling you up saying, "I was talking with my friend and they said you could help us." Which is great and it's always, you know what that's like, it's always pleasing when you get that call out of the blue. It's a nice thing. And they're always great people to work with.
But when you think about the number of times that that actually happens, there's probably five times as many times where people were in a conversation that was about real estate or investing or condos or anything that could've been a referral opportunity but they don't even notice that the conversation's about that. They don't make any special note of the conversation or they may notice it but they don't immediately think about you and they may think about you and they may even tell people about you but they don't tell you that they told somebody about you. And you run into them at the grocery or and they say, "Hey, did my friend John ever give you a call?" And you're like, "No, they didn't give me a call." And it's been months since that happened and you didn't know. Nobody knew.
When we understand that that's how that happens, one of the things that we do is we've added a tool that we use called the World's Most Interesting Postcard. It's like a newsletter postcard. It's just got really interesting facts on the front side and then on the back it's got a little of what looks like a Post-It note graphic with a little notice that would say, when you think about what likely conversations people are going to be in that could be useful for you. I always talk about it like imagine if you could put a chip in your clients ears and when you hear certain trigger words in the conversations that they're having, you get alerted that they're having this conversation and you can whisper to them what to say to turn that into a conversation.
If we look at we're coming into the New Year and we look at what's going on that what are the high probability conversations that are going to be happening around New Year's. It might be that people are thinking about buying their first house. This is the year. It's their New Year's resolution. We might send a note on the back of the postcard that would say, "Just a quick note in case hear someone talking about buying their first home this year." You talk a little bit about why that might happen. "New Year's is the time when everybody's making their New Year's resolutions and one of the biggest things that people make is buying a home. If you hear someone talking about buying a home, give me a call or text me and I'll get you a copy of my book, Six Steps to Home Ownership, to give to your client."
We connect the dots here that to say, pay attention and if you hear of this conversation, here's what to say or here's what to do. We want them to call you because if you knew more of those conversations that were happening, you would have more opportunities to do like you did with when Steven called you about Mike. You were able to have the conversation and say, "Well tell me a little bit about Mike. What's his plans? How can we connect?" Kind of thing. That make sense?
Tony: Yeah, it does make sense.
Dean: We've seen you're doing all the right things. You're doing things that are, I would say, touching all the bases of keeping in touch with your clients. Being in front of them consistently. Being that newsletter being there with them. But if we added just this orchestrated element to it, we've seen people go from, the first year we did this with Julie Matthews here in Winterhaven, she had 13 repeat and referral transactions in the previous year. We started doing that strategy, her actual referral strategy was at the end of the year in December she would send everybody a magnet calendar to put on their fridge and that was her whole communication with everybody. No newsletter, no reaching out, no birthday cards, none of that. But she'd been in business for a long time, people love her, she's a great realtor so people would be repeat and referral business with her. In that year she went from 13 transactions by repeat or referral to 33, just by every month being in front of people and orchestrating that. Really concentrating on what's the thing that's going to make the difference.
Chuck Charlton who you know or recognize, when Chuck and Melissa have an amazing after unit. It's the focus of their business. That's really, they've got lots of they do the newsletter and events and all that stuff. Annual events with their clients and they have been a situation of getting 19, 21, 20 repeat and referral transactions. We added the World's Most Interesting Postcard and they went to 31 the next year. That 20% bumps it up. It's a really interesting strategy but you've really got that firing on all levels.
Tony: Okay.
Dean: That sounds like a pretty interesting thing for you. Another suggestion in your after unit here is these emails that you're sending to people when a new home comes on the market in their area, what we do what we call Market Maker emails. And get this idea of we call it Market Maker Monday where you every Monday think through who am I showing houses to this week? Who am I actually working with right now? And who am I going to see about selling their house this week? What's actually on the books here? And then we look through your client list and just like you know, streets are where people are and send a quick email with that sort of a Market Maker message.
Let's say that you're showing townhouses in River Run, a townhouse complex and you've got a client that lives in River Run. Mark and Connie let's call them. You send an email to them saying, "Hey Mark," or, "Hey Connie, I'm showing houses this week to a couple from Pickering and they're looking for a townhouse and we're looking in River Run, there's only 2 on the market right now. Have you heard anybody talking about selling? We may be able to match them up with this couple from Pickering." A real, very laser specific request.
How does that sound as something like a strategy that you might be able to use?
Tony: Yeah, that's definitely it certainly gives a reason to reach out because you're already within their area.
Dean: Right, and it calls out to where are they likely to be in conversation. You look at they're likely to be in conversation with our neighbors on our neighborhood. We're likely to be in conversations at work. We're in conversations with our family, with our friends, with the people we do recreation things with. Or the parents of our kids' friends. That's typically 80% of all of our conversations happen in that window. You start to just have that awareness. I don't know if you know this, in Google, on Google maps, you can export your client data and create a map layer that drops pins where your clients are. Have you ever seen that?
Tony: No I have not.
Dean: You've got, you clearly have a database with your clients and stuff in it. If you export that data and import it into a Google map, you can, it'll show you on the map, where your clients are. You can easily look at River Run and say, in that area there's Mark and Connie and there's Jody and Jay. It makes that kind of thing easy to do.
Tony: Yeah. I'll definitely look into that.
Dean: Yeah.
Tony: It's a little different.
Dean: That and then bumping up, go from 117 to 150, add the people who are the friends that you might not have done business with yet but the ones that you would hope would consider you to be their realtor, if they have a need, that you've got those relationships. And adopt those people. Start adopting them as those relationships now. Just that could be the difference. That's going in that, what I find often is people reach this area where they're doing 29, 30, 35 transactions in this on repeat that that's where they get to a point that that's what's happening. Just a couple of little things can bump that up a little bit. That could be the thing that could take you to 40 or 45 transactions just with those little changes.
Tony: Right, right. Of those 117, I have to say there's some of those that are couples.
Dean: That's fine.
Tony: You find that one maybe not both of them...
Dean: I count couples as one. We count couples as one.
Tony: Okay good.
Dean: That's one unit. One couple. Not people.
Tony: It'd be nice of each of them would be the referring types. Double it up pretty easy. That's not always the case with both parts.
Dean: But that's the thing you're sending one newsletter and you're sending postcard or one email to them. It's a really interesting science. Because now you've got, I imagine that the way you described this to me that this is a pretty common thing for your historical performance. That last year you got that still ratio of repeat and referral business.
Tony: Yes. Yes. It's pretty much, like I said, I do very, very little prospecting outside of prospecting my sphere.
Dean: Perfect. Let's talk a couple of the other things. We went deep on the referrals because that's where you seem to have the greatest foothold so I always like to build on strengths. That's one of the elements of this Listing Agent Lifestyle that we talk about is getting referrals but the number one this is getting listings. Would you say you're more of a listing agent or a buyer agent?
Tony: I would say I'm more of a buying agent. When I say that, it's getting closer, my numbers are getting closer to 50/50 but to give an example of my last year, I list 18 buyers and 14 listings. And this I'm probably going to be at, it's probably going to be 10 listings and 20 buyers.
Dean: Okay.
Tony: This year I picked up more buyers.
Dean: Of the listings, you've already sold 10 listings this year.
Tony: Yes.
Dean: Okay, so this will be a really interesting thing because another metric that we look at is something that we call your listing multiplier index. Everything that we do talks about, has a philosophical approach, like our focus is on getting referrals or our focus is in this case on multiplying your listings. The metric that we use to see where you are on that is what we call your listing multiplier index. The way that we do that, it's just perfect that you've had 10 listings that you've sold this year. We look back at your last 10 and we look and see how many points out of 50 did you get and here's how we get those 50 points. Is that each one of those listings comes with five opportunities.
You've got an opportunity to get the listing sold. You've got the opportunity to find the buyer for the house. You've got the opportunity to find a buyer who buys another house but you met them through that listing. You've got the opportunity to get the next listing in the neighborhood or to get another listing because of somebody that you met through marketing that listing and you get the chance to get a referral from the seller before the end of the transaction.
If we look at those last 10 and you give each one of them how many points out of five that you got. What would you estimate that your outcome would be on that? Can you remember, did all 10 of them sold, can you remember whether you doubled ended any of them yourself or whether you found a buyer who bought another house. Not the seller buying another house, by the way, a buyer that you met because ... not the seller. That's a separate thing. A buyer that you met because they came to an open house or called you about the property or whatever it was. They weren't interested in that house but you ended up working with them as a buyer and they bought something else. That kind of thing.
Tony: I can think of a listing recently that I had listed the one house, it was sold, it was not me that sold it, it was a buying agent. Then I listed the neighbor's house because of the sign call wanting to find out what that house sold for I was able to convert them into a listing. They did buy but that doesn't count on this list but I was able to get a listing that was pretty recent.
Dean: You were the listing agent?
Tony: Yes.
Dean: And they called.
Tony: I was the listing agent.
Dean: And then the neighbor to the listing that was sold, called you. Yeah, okay. And you ended up listing their house?
Tony: Yes, and selling it.
Dean: That counts. That's what I'm talking about.
Tony: Yeah, yeah. This year because the market in Canada was a lot of multiple offers, it was pretty tough to double end anything. I don't think have too many. Didn't have many that I double ended. I could think of one that recently as well that I had it listed and the property did sell but I did hold onto one of the prospects and was able to sell them a house as well.
Dean: Perfect. There you go.
Tony: That was recently. That was recently as well. I can see the multiplier where I'm lacking from the one listing I should be getting more.
Dean: Yeah, it's really interesting when I do this exercise with people for the first time, what ends up happening is that there typically is a number between 8 and 15, is typically what it is for people who I'm just springing this on. They're not focused on strategically looking to maximize that number, it's what happened historically. We take that and let's say that if we really thought it through that there were a couple of other ones that came for that too, let's say that out of those you got 14 transactions from those 10 listings, that that would give you a listing multiplier index of 1.4. That means we divide that like a golf handicap. On average the last 10 listings that you had have yielded 1.4 transactions per listing. You tracking with me on that?
Tony: Yes I am.
Dean: Perfect.
Tony: And what would you say is the average?
Dean: Where we're going. When we're focused on it, this is the kind of thing. What we're doing in GoGoAgent is focused on that. Focused on that number and the clubhouse leader right now on the listing multiplier index, there's three or four guys that are at the 3.5 level. When you look at it that what a difference that makes when you have 3.5 transactions for every listing that you take, that's a multiplier. That's a game changer. It makes a huge financial difference. What's the average commission in your, not percentage, but commission check that you get per side, basically. What would be the average if you averaged it out?
Tony: 13,000.
Dean: Okay. If it's 13,000 then there's that the 10 listings that you had, you got the 130,000 plus you got the 4 extra, 13 that we added in for the bonus points. But all of those other, there were 46 transactions, 46 possible points there. It's almost half a million dollars that was we look at it and I want you to look at it like this, as lost opportunity. Basically listings that end up selling are like perishable things. You had the opportunity when you had the listing but now that it's gone, that opportunity's gone. That, if we look at it, you got 14 times, let's just call it 10,000 for easy things. You got $140,000 from those 10 listing but we missed out on the $340,000. Or $360,000 that would be the extra 36 transactions if you got all 50 of them.
Tony: Right.
Dean: That's a big opportunity for each of the listings that you take. A lot of that is just a mindset shift. I hear a lot of times, especially in hotter markets where people say, well the market's really hot, I don't have to do just listed cards. Or I don't have to do infobox flyers or I don't have to do any of these things because I just put it in the MLS and it sells within seven days with multiple offers. You get complacent in that. But there's still these opportunities. Have you listened to the Tony Kalsi episode yet?
Tony: I have. I have.
Dean: Okay. Tony's right down the street from you too. Tony's in Scarborough and so he's got a listing multiplier index now over 3. Which makes a big difference. Every time you get a listing, you're multiplying it that way. It's pretty cool.
Tony: I can see how that could bring the numbers up.
Dean: It could absolutely. What about getting listings? What are you doing to get these listings? How confident in your listing getting system are you?
Tony: Once I've obtained the appointment do you mean?
Dean: Getting the actual listings. How do you find, how do you get those opportunities? How do you find listings?
Tony: Most of it goes back to my repeat and referral. Conversations with past clients, whether they're moving up or sizing down or them introducing me to another friend or family member. That's the bulk of how that's coming. Once I have a listing then I try to, I do the just listed postcards and when I have the time I'll do open houses. I'm a one man show so it's hard to be everywhere. I try to.
Dean: Do you have a farm area? Do you do any mailings or anything to try and get listings?
Tony: That's probably my biggest, I would say the thing I'm not doing well enough is that. I pick an area and then I don't see any fruit and I just move onto the next one and that's basically what my regular business and I let it go. Part of why I reached out to you is also wanted to try to find out how to execute, pick an area. I recently moved to a new neighborhood and I don't know a lot of people.
Dean: Where are you now?
Tony: I'm north of the core of Toronto in a town called Nobleton.
Dean: I know where Nobleton is.
Tony: King Township. 20 minutes from my office which Vaughn, Woodbridge. A lot of my business is still where I used to live in Toronto. I would say more than 50% still in Toronto.
Dean: Is Nobleton is the future? Is that what you're looking to establish yourself out there?
Tony: It would definitely be somewhere where I could see. I'm living here and it would be more convenient than driving.
Dean: That's exactly what Chuck Charlton did. Moving from the city out to Milton and then Chuck started with the Getting Listings program and did, he was the guy who go the very first listing before we even finished the very first class. Which is exciting. That's the same system that Tony's been using. Typically what we do is we pick an area of 1,000 or 2,500 or 5,000 homes or whatever, I actually would recommend people start with 1,000 or in Canada it's so cheap to do them, I would say, 2,000 or 2,500 homes and we pick that as the area where you would like get the listings. Where you would love to have that. There can be named communities or planned neighborhoods. Chuck chose an area called Hawthorne Village in Milton, but are they any in Nobleton there, named communities that might have a 1,000 homes that come to mind?
Tony: There is. There's the Gates of Nobleton. That would be one of the subdivisions. I don't know if we're up to 1,000 though. There is, it's not a very big town so what I was thinking was maybe expanding it to the city that or the town that is closest which is Kleinburg and that's growing rapidly. They're building a lot of houses there. I was thinking of picking place in...
Dean: Where do you live? Be nice to just roll out of bed and go get a listing. Rather than having to drive to Kleinburg if that's the next town over. Let's just plant some roots in your backyard here and start with that. If you can pick, even it's a compilation of a couple of different areas that have different names that you can get the cumulative total up to 1,000 or 2,000, that would be the same thing. What it amounts to, you saw the infographic that I sent for what the four year case study that we did with Tony that showed the results over those four years?
Tony: I did see that.
Dean: That, when you look at that, that's where we, that that's consistent commitment to one area where you want to get to reap the reward. We call them setting up oil wells. What you're looking to do is you pick those 1,000 homes and we mail the postcards once a month and we've got the landing pages and the initial follow up information and all the follow up newsletters and everything is already done, you just have to do the, you just mail the postcards and then respond to the, when people ask for your report. And then every month send out the, we have a newsletter called Get Top Dollar and we send that along with the updated market activity and a cover letter that I've already written for you, in an envelope to those people and they just call you when they're ready to list their house. It's the most amazing thing.
That's, I'd love to see because now when you look at it, if you've got this ability to, you get all these people who are responding, you're creating this Google map layer that's a private map that you plug in who's responded so you can look at the Gates of Nobleton and you can see on the map the people who've requested your report so that you know that these people are likely to be thinking of selling their house in the next 12, 24 months. And you've got that as your secret inventory here now. The ideal thing to do is while you're looking, while you're getting listings for those, to go ahead and start finding buyers for homes in Nobleton, the Gates of Nobleton. And that you've got this whole triangulation going on now where you've got buyers over here, you've got sellers over here and you get to be a market maker you get in a position where you have a real advantage in your market. That's how you start getting that listing multiplier index up.
Tony: For example, in the neighborhood that I live in, there's five or six strong agents that have been quite successful, how do I leapfrog to get ahead of those?
Dean: This is exactly the way. How did they become those? Are then sending out personal promotion things? Are they branding themselves in those areas? Is that what you're saying? They've got high name?
Tony: Yes, there's one that stands out that's been working the area for probably 20 plus years. The local newspaper, he's in every publication, postcards.
Dean: I get it.
Tony: He's very involved.
Dean: It's full on assault on that and what ends up happening with things like that is that they're spending a lot of money and a lot of, over a consistently a lot of time to become top of mind. It does work but it takes a lot of money and it's a lot of consistency to get to that point. The only time that people call them is they call them when they're ready. There's all these people, they're thinking about it, now it's time that they're going to think about putting their house on the market and if they don't somebody then they may interview a few agents and one of them for sure will be the guy who's top of mind. They get those calls and because they're top of mind and they've got the track record, if they get in that there's a good chance that they're going to get the listing because they're highly skilled and that does matter.
But what we're doing is we're coming in and instead of just shouting your name and trying to build that top of mind awareness, what we're doing is we're looking for a direct response. We're looking for people who are thinking about selling their house down the road. They're starting the process. When you think about it, the thing that people most want to know when they start the process of thinking about selling their house is, how much is my house worth? What can we get for this place? They start doing all those calculations. Paying attention. Trying to glean what they can from what's going on in the market.
But when we offer them the December report on the Gates of Nobleton house prices, that seems like, that's just what I need. I need that data. I'm not saying that I'm going to sell my house but I want this data and that makes it easy for them to identify themselves. They're not calling you to come and list it, not even calling, they're going to a website or leaving their information on a recorded message to ask for your report. And now what they've done is they've flipped the switch for us and we know that there's a good chance that that person over the next 12 months is going to sell their house.
We immediately go to work on giving them that information, keeping them up to date on what's going on in the market, occasionally reaching out if you're showing houses in there, saying to somebody after three months, saying, "Hey Tony, I'm showing houses in the Gates this weekend, and I remember looking up your house online when I sent you the report on the house prices. I'm not sure what your plans are but I thought I'd reach out and see if maybe I could tell these people about your house." Now you're being a market maker and the first indication that there's a new sheriff in town is that your sold sign is going to go up in that guy's neighborhood who's been dominating it for years.
You're starting to come in and scoop out the market right from underneath them and they're not even going to know what happened. Pretty exciting.
Tony: It is, yeah.
Dean: There's so much. We've been talking for an hour. I could keep you going. You got a really nice solid business and a lot of opportunity there. What I would recommend, the things that are going to make the biggest difference for you, just in the things that we've talked about is that the slight little additions to your after unit and see if we can get that up. Get that number of repeat and referrals up and focusing on your listing multipliers. We've got really great just listeds and infobox flyers, landing pages. We have a whole system. A whole listing multiplying system that is ready to plug and play for you.
I would invite you to go to GoGoAgent.com and we have a 30 day trial. No credit card required or anything. But you can go in, look at all of those things that I just shared with you in the member’s area and see if that's a fit. My only intention with the 30 days is to just give you an opportunity to see that this is something that could make a difference for you.
Tony: I'll definitely have a look at it, why not?
Dean: Why not? I think you'd fit right in to our community we're building. A really great group of people who are doing some cool things.
Tony: Excellent.
Dean: I enjoyed it.
Tony: Certainly. So did I. You gave me a lot of things to think about and I'll certainly go to GoGoAgent and go through it.
Dean: That's cool. What's your take on it? From what we talked about.
Tony: You certainly give me a lot of things to think about. Obviously I'm missing opportunities when I do have the listing. That's important. That's probably standing out the most. And then secondly is trying to farm or working on the farm as opposed to scattering myself wherever I can. That would be nice, like you said, to roll out of bed and have that listing.
Dean: Right in your neighborhood. I sent out a video yesterday with when Chuck and I were talking he had mentioned a video that I sent him years ago that had this guy in a boat going down a canal, he's just shining a light on the water, all these fish.
Tony: I saw that.
Dean: Are jumping in the boat. That's what we were describing this is actually like. That you're just driving the boat and shining the light and when they're ready, people jump in the boat.
Tony: Definitely. Certainly I'm going to have to spend some time on GoGo and hopefully take it to the next level.
Dean: Awesome. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you for participating here. I'll look forward to seeing you in GoGo. I'll connect with you too to make sure that you find your way around. I'll send you some links to the things that are most appropriate for you right now. But I'll watch for you to come through and I'll personally reach out to you.
Tony: Thanks for your time Dean. It was great.
Dean: Thanks Tony, I really enjoyed it. Bye.
Tony: Have a good day.
Dean: Bye bye.
And there we have it. That was a great conversation. I really enjoyed my time with Tony. Here's what we see. Tony's got a really solid business. Especially in his after unit. Really strong in referrals but there's this opportunity to really take it to the next level. What I recommended was to experiment with adding the World's Most Interesting Postcard to that. We talked about getting listings and running the Getting Listings program and focusing on multiplying his listings. Those three things. We didn't even talk about finding buyers and we didn't talk about converting leads. We really focused our primary attention on those three things. On getting listings, multiplying listings and getting referrals. All of those tools that I mentioned to him are all waiting for him right now and he's going to go in and experiment on this to see what he can implement in his business.
If you'd like to join along, go to GoGoAgent.com and you can get a free 30 day trial of GoGoAgent. See all the things that we have available to you. You get to meet in the forum all of these people who we talk about on these podcasts. You'll get see all the tools that we have available for you and the whole intention with the 30 day free trial is to give you a chance to see what we've got. See if this is something that fits for you. And then at $79 a month, it's no brainer. That's my intention that you look at this and say, "You know what? For less than $1,000 for the entire year, even just the things that I shared with you on this podcast, you'll be able to make more than $1,000 on." And so my selfish intention is that you give me 30 days to show you what we've got here. Enough that you might give me 30 weeks. Six months of trying this out and in that time I know that you will be with us for life.
That's what I'm really excited about. I can't wait to meet you. Just go to GoGoAgent.com and join us there. If you'd like to be a guest on the show and we can do the same kind of analysis and blueprinting and brainstorming for you, just go to listingagentlifestyle.com and click on the be a guest link or just send me an email, dean@deanjackson.com. That's it for this week. Tune in next time and I will see you then.