Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast, we're continuing with the second in our six months to six figures series with LJ Lewis, talking about getting all the top 150 people he knows together. The people who know him like him, and trust him, with the aim of encouraging and really program them, so that whenever they hear a conversations about real estate they know exactly what to do.
We'll also talk about gathering up, and identifying the areas where we're going to focus on Getting Listings.
Both of these are core elements in applying the Listing Agent Lifestyle, and the foundations of success.
Links:
GoGoAgent.com
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep046
Dean: Mr. L.J.
LJ: Morning, Dean. How are you?
Dean: I am so good. How are you?
LJ: I'm well.
Dean: So we made some progress since last week. I talked with Diane. She said we got everything. Found a way to get all of the names and all the phone numbers. Or, not the phone numbers, the addresses for everybody.
LJ: Yeah, for most of them.
Dean: Yeah. And so were you able to double check, and does everything look right with that? Or were some of the people in the wrong areas? Or how did this do a quality check kind of thing on that?
LJ: Right, right. Yeah. I went through 'em yesterday and, let's see, how many was it? So there was probably I guess around 10 of them that I knew for sure where they lived, I just didn't know what their address was, you know? If I wanted to drive by their house I could do that. And so I knew that 10 of them weren't correct. On the other ones, I kind of don't know, you know? The address looks fine but I don't know where they live anyway.
Dean: Right, okay. Well, I guess, you know, part of the thing is because you've been out of the area, we'll end up seeing what happens here. Because if they're the wrong addresses, they'll get returned. But the lesson here was that I wanted to see like, what does it take to go from just having the names and the town that somebody lives in on a piece of paper? And can we get the rest of it from there? Because my whole intention with doing this is that people who are going to follow along with us will be able to do the things that we talk about or that we'll be able to help them do the things that we're talking about.
So I think we made a lot of progress in being able to take that level of information, you know? And take that off of your hands and being able to do it. Because it took a little bit of time to get everything together, but in the big scheme of things, the value of having this ability now to send The World's Most Interesting Postcard to all these people is where the big win is, you know?
LJ: Yeah, yeah. No, I think you're right. You know, and like you said, even if we send out the postcards and even if we get some returns, well, that kind of cleans up our list and-
Dean: Exactly.
LJ: If I want to I can always put a little more effort in really getting ahold of 'em to get their information. But at least I'm not calling a hundred people.
Dean: You know you've heard me talk about Robert Cialdini's new book Pre-Suasion, and it was so funny because in the book there's a story about this family that exchanged Christmas cards with a family that they had no idea how they knew them or that they knew them at all. But they sent them a Christmas card so they returned a Christmas card to them. And this went on for 10 years. And when her son was accepted into college in Santa Barbara, there was some delay with the dorm rooms. It was going to be a few nights that he was going to be without a place to stay. And they started thinking, "Well, who do we know in Santa Barbara?" And the immediately thought of this family that they'd been exchanging the Christmas cards with. And called them up and the son was able to stay with them. So it's just like even if we're mailing to the wrong family, it may be enough that we're going to get that sense of, "Well, you must know me." You must know me kind of thing. So-
LJ: Yeah, okay. That would work.
Dean: So, yeah. We'll see how that goes. The thing that we're looking for now is you got this group of people. And I hope that over the next period of time here that as you're recognizing and meeting people. People that you would know by name that are maybe not on the list already. That we're adding to it and we're supplementing it to get it up to at least a hundred people here, because like we've got 80-something or so right now. So to kind of build that up. But we'll get the first postcards out before the end of the month here and start that process. And now we've kind of got your after unit kind of in orbit here. We went through the most difficult part of it, which is getting the names and the addresses of people.
So, you know, if somebody were to be doing this on their own, if they were to block off a day to do that, that's about what I would think would be the investment of time to get that whole thing done. Or knowing that we would be able to do that for people. And just charge them for the time to do it. So that's an asset that we have now as the core of your after unit. Remember, our goal here is to manage that relationship portfolio for a 205 annual yield. So our goal would be that if we have a hundred people, that we're able to generate 20 referral transactions from that group of people.
Now, I mentioned the postcards as the first step in that process, because that's going to be the baseline set it and forget it that's going to presence in people's minds sort of the ongoing command of, "If you hear someone talking about real estate, if you hear someone talking about real estate, give me a call or text me and I'll give you this to give to them." So remember that really ties everything together that is going to trigger how referrals actually happen. So remember the three things that have to happen. They have to notice that the conversations about real estate, they have to think about LJ, and they have to introduce you to the people that they were having that conversation with.
So bringing this in front of them every month is going to really raise the odds that when they hear a conversation about real estate, they'll notice it. And so we want to kind of think through, "What are the highest probability conversations that your people might be hearing? Or the ones that would be the most valuable for you? So when you look at this, we're looking for all the things that would fit with what you're doing.
So right now when we look around and we see what's happening, the thing that we're working on right now is the focus on the golf course communities, right? So when one of the conversations that we want to presence for people is, well, we might do this for the next month's postcard as we sort of work on getting your golf course community guide together. The conversation that we might want people to listen for is somebody talking about moving into a golf course community, a golf community.
And so we would say to people, "Hey, just a quick note in case you hear someone talking about moving into a golf course community. I've been working on putting together a guide to all of the golf course communities that compares the different neighborhoods to each other, what you can get for the money, and the sales history. So if you hear someone talking about moving into a golf course community, give me a call or text me and I'll get you a copy of my guide to St. George Golf Course properties and golf course house prices." And that will be the message that we craft to put on the back. We'll clean up the words of it, but that's the music. That's the general thing. "If you hear someone talking about it, they're, you know, buying a golf course home, give me a call or text me, and I'll give you a copy of the guide."
So that is really meeting the requirements that people have for how they're going to refer. And so when you look at that whole conversational style of this is the kind of things that you would say to people if you saw them in person. And it's really interesting. Do you pay attention now since we've been doing this list there? How often you run into the people who might be on your list there?
LJ: I haven't really paid attention to it. Other than going to church where I'm going to see quite a few of them. I think maybe I've run into one outside of that.
Dean: Okay, perfect. And the reason I ask that is because what you're going to notice now is when people see you, it's going to stimulate some conversation. They'll say, "Oh, I got your postcard." And it's kind of a funny thing that they're, you know, when you send one thing to somebody it makes an impression. "Oh, L.J., he's in real estate now." Right? Because a lot of them might not even know that you're in real estate yet.
LJ: Absolutely.
Dean: Because you've just kind of started back up. So that's the first value of it. That if somebody doesn't know that you're in real estate, it's unlikely that they're going to refer their friends or family to you, right? But if they know that you are in real estate, that's at least a win. They're planting that thought. If the conversations come up, just like the first time we send it, they might not hear somebody thinking about a golf course community. But they may hear somebody talking about something else. A retirement community or buying their first house. So every month we'll presence a different type of conversation that they might listen for. Which will also kind of give people an idea of all the different kinds of people that you can help.
So, you know, we may talk about somebody buying a bigger house. Or we may talk about somebody buying their first house. Or buying a rental property. Or a vacation property. Or selling their house. We're going to presence all of these things, all of these different types of conversations. And by the time somebody gets three of these postcards, they can recognize a pattern. They recognize, "Oh, I get one of these every month." And so you're going to be on their mind. They'll recognize that. And so that's a really valuable thing.
I remember when we started doing this with Julie Matthews, she was sending out the postcards, or we were sending them out for her. But she went in to get her nails done and the nail tech, the lady who owned the nail salon, is on her list. And Julie walks in the door and the woman comes up and gives her a big hug and said, "You just saved me $650." And Julie, of course, hadn't even seen the postcard yet that had gone out, right? So she didn't know what she was talking about. But the lady said, "Well, I got your postcard. And I had an antique table that had a watermark on it and on the postcard it said, 'If you put mayonnaise on this watermark that it would eliminate the watermark.' So I did that and it worked. So I didn't have to get the table resurfaced."
And so she was just thrilled with it and she and Julie kind of laughed about it. But that's the kind of thing that the information on the postcard on its own is very interesting and it's easy to read. And since it's not in an envelope with a bunch of pages like a newsletter would be, it's just easy to consume, you know? You can take a look at it, you can get through it. And you get all the benefit of doing a newsletter with the ease of doing it as a postcard. So I'm excited to see how this plays out here for us. You know, to monitor now where the sources of your business is going to come from.
And so the other thing that I want to think about for your after unit is, to realize that these relationships that you have now. These people, once we know the address and we can kind of get an idea of where they are on a map. We're setting them up in your GoGo Agent account, so we'll have all of the names and addresses there that you'll be able to go in now and supplement those records, right? We started out with just getting the name and the mailing address in there.
But now, the goal will be over time to enhance the information that you have about these people by linking their Facebook. If you've got a lot of these people maybe already on your Facebook as friends. And if you not, then that might be good to reach out and add them as friends. But that's going to be a good number of them. That's probably where you got some of the names is looking at your Facebook friends. Was it?
LJ: Right. That's exactly what I did, is I went through my Facebook and then pulled everybody in my area from that. And then I also would go into friends that I did have and look at all of their friends and think and see.
Dean: If you knew anybody, yeah.
LJ: It wasn't exactly.
Dean: Yeah, that's great. So I'm excited to see how that plays out. But the importance of that is that what this is going to allow us to do now. And look at the postcards as like playing a zone sort of situation. We're sending out something to everybody with the same kind of message. So it's not a personal communication per se, but it's fun and it's specific, which is valuable and it's going to the people who do know you, like you, and trust you already. Now, the thing that this is going to open up for us is that this is going to form part of your sort of silent inventory or silent sort of advocates in an area.
So, for instance, what this is going to allow you to do is to be what I call a market maker. Where you can now every time you are showing homes, you can look in your GoGo Agent database and see, "Who do I know that already lives in one of the neighborhoods that I'm showing house?" So if you're showing houses in, what's the name of the golf course community that we're going to be focused on with the postcards first?
LJ: Coral Canyon.
Dean: What is it again, sorry?
LJ: Coral Canyon.
Dean: Coral Canyon, okay, great. And so if you know any of your people who live in Coral Canyon or any of the golf course communities, you can when you're showing houses to somebody in Coral Canyon say, Send a quick message or an email to those people and say personally to them, "Hey, L.J., I'm showing houses in Coral Canyon this weekend to a couple from Arizona. And there's only a couple of villas on the market" or whatever and say to them, "Have you heard anybody talking about selling their house in Coral Canyon? We may be able to match them up with this couple from Arizona."
And so do you see how just personal and like directly relevant a message like that is? You know, if it's writing your go zone kind of thing, it's completely relevant. You're not asking somebody who lives in a condo in the city if they've heard anybody talking about selling their horse farm, you know. We're talking about the very specific type of thing. So I would envision that each of your clients that you could maybe put a record or a field that we could use. A custom field in your record for each of the clients to fill in kind of some of the tags that would be useful for us to search for those people. Meaning the neighborhood that they live in or the type of home that they have.
And we supplement it with a Google Street View picture of their house. So you can see what people have, you know? This is really something where we're going to sort of polish this asset that you have and make it more and more valuable by layering our efforts into getting more and more information with those from each of those people, right? Because they're definitely having conversations every week, every month. Where it would be relevant to you, where they got an opportunity to introduce you to people. And we just need to get them to kind of pay attention to those, you know?
Do you know if any of the people that you have right now are living in the golf course community so far?
LJ: One of them does live in Coral Canyon. So on the other ones, I'm not completely sure. I don't-
Dean: Okay, perfect. Okay, so that's perfect. And there's the kind of thing where now, yeah, you can look through and you may be surprised. But there may be other people who live in one of the golf course communities. But it's funny that we start out talking about Coral Canyon and then you actually do have somebody there. Part of what we're looking for right now is to turn the people who live in Coral Canyon from strangers into friends. Into people that you know, right? So that you're a known commodity within Coral Canyon. Almost like we're running for mayor.
The more people that know you is going to be good. So I wanted to kind of show the distinction there. Because I say that, we want people in Coral Canyon to know who you are. But I don't want that to get misinterpreted that we want to get your name out there as our marketing strategy. And this is a key distinction because sometimes when people hear that, it sounds so good. It sounds important, right? Like, you gotta get your name out there. And we gotta build top of mind awareness. And that's a pretty typical sort of a logical approach that people would take, you know?
And so that would lead them to doing mailings and billboards and stuff that are designed to build name awareness. So that we're getting people to know who you are. But there's some big downfalls for that. And what I'm more interested in is I want to know more about, how many homes did you say sold in Coral Canyon in the last 12 months? You said there was a thousand houses in there and-
LJ: Right. It was about a hundred. It was almost exactly a 10% yield.
Dean: Yeah. So I look at this. From the mindset of that, and I would do this. We used to do big real estate events every month. And I would have people, you know, when I was explaining this concept I would give people a choice. I would pick somebody right from the front row. I'd say, "Listen, let's imagine that this 800 people here. Let's imagine that this represents one subdivision. And everybody in this room owns one of the 800 homes." Or let's use your Coral Canyon. Let's say there's a thousand people here and that everybody in the room owns one of these 1,000 Coral Canyon homes. And I would give people a choice.
I'd say, "Okay, I'm going to give you the opportunity to come up on stage and I'll hand out one of your business cards to everybody in the room and you can stand up, tell people who you are, and why they should choose you. And I'll give you two minutes to do that. So everybody in the room will know who you are. Or you can sit right where you are, and I'll have somebody bring you an envelope. And in the envelope will be a piece of paper with the name, address, and contact information for the 100 people in this room who are going to sell their home in the next 12 months." Which would be more valuable to you. What do you think?
LJ: I want the envelope.
Dean: Of course you want the envelope! So that's the thing where it's much more important for you to know who the 100 people who are going to sell their house in the next 12 months are than for the rest of the 900 to know who you are. And I say that first because it is valuable. If everybody did know who you are, that is valuable. But the choice that we're making in a startup situation is, "Do you want to become rich or famous?"
LJ: Rich.
Dean: And when I look at that, that's the choice that you make. The rich choice is, "Give me the names of the 100 people and I'll focus all my time and attention on building a relationship with those 100 people for the next 12 months." Right? And that's the way to get rich. Most people focus on being famous because they equate that being famous is a path to getting rich. And so I'd say it's a lot less expensive to get rich than it is to get famous. So I always like to focus on, "Let's get rich first inexpensively. And then if you still want to be famous, we can take some of that extra money and funnel it into being famous."
So that's a big difference there, you know? And so that coupled with this idea of the asset that you're building, and if you're marketing, if what we're doing in Coral Canyon is about identifying the people who are going to sell their house more than it is about letting everybody know who you are, we're building a system and an asset that has value. We're not just getting your name out there. And part of the thing is that that is going to serve you as we move forward and project out here now three years, five years, 10 years. As we're building your business and building a team to where it's not you that's out doing the frontline stuff of working with the buyers and sellers, but it's a team of people that you have built up around you.
And that's where you start to see that you know, I mentioned when we first started talking about the path of going it reminded me of 10 years ago starting working with Chuck Charlton in Canada. And has gone from just starting out in a new neighborhood just like what you're talking about to having a more than million dollar business now with a team that Chuck doesn't do any of the frontline activity. And then thinking about Tony Kalsi who's three years kind of into that path now. And seeing how the trajectory that we're going to, that path that we're going to follow. And I'm excited about being able to kind of document it with you here. To kind of educate as we go along here.
But the importance that I see in building your business around a system as opposed to building it around a personality is that your business has value outside of you. And by that I mean there was a very kind of spooky turn of events that happened when Roy from Siegfried & Roy was mauled by the tiger. Do you remember that?
LJ: Yes.
Dean: Now, I had written a newsletter about this just two months before he was mauled by the tiger. Because I was in a plane flying to L.A. and I was reading in the Forbes or Fortune. Forbes Magazine where they had the top paid entertainers. And they have the top 100 kind of thing. I was looking on the list and I was surprised to see that Siegfried & Roy were on the list and they had just signed a deal with The Mirage. They signed a contract. It was $35 million for their show to remain at The Mirage. And they had to do eight shows a week for 40 weeks a year to fulfill that contract. And immediately I thought to myself, "Wow, that's a lot of shows they have to do." Right? But it's also a lot of money. They're getting paid $35 million for the show.
Then I kept reading down the list and I came across The Blue Man Group. Have you ever been to a Blue Man Group show?
LJ: I have.
Dean: Okay. So you know all about it, right? Well, the interesting thing was, The Blue Man Group were on that list and they had done $69 million that year. And what struck me, what I'd learned for the first time about that was that they actually had 11 concurrent shows going on. Where they had a show in Las Vegas and Chicago and New York and Paris and Toronto. And they had 34 Blue Men. And the guys that invented the show didn't even perform anymore, right? They made up the show, they made up the moves, and taught other people how to do the show. And they can now sit back and watch as other people run the system of their show.
And I thought, "Man, there's such an interesting thing here that Siegfried & Roy did.” This is what I wrote in the newsletter, "That they had really kind of put themselves in a precarious position." Because when your show is called Siegfried & Roy and people come to the show, they're expecting to see Siegfried & Roy, right? They're not coming to see two guys and a tiger. Whereas if they came and it wasn't Siegfried & Roy they would feel disappointed.
But when you go to The Blue Man Group, you're expecting to see this incredible show and you don't know the difference between one Blue Man and another Blue Man. As long as they are competent and can do the moves, do the show in a really entertaining way, you have an incredible experience at the show. And the result is delivered without the originators of it having to be tied into doing it all the time. Does that make sense?
LJ: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
Dean: I mean, yeah. That's kind of where we're going here with that. So when we look at now locking in your after unit, locking in the communication here where every month we're going to send The World's Most Interesting Postcard. We're going to build out your tags. You're going to build out your record and get to know more and more about these hundred people and ultimately build it up to a hundred people as you kind of pay attention as you're going through your days and recognize that, "Hey, I know this person and I know them by name. But they're not on my hundred. I forgot about them." You know? Or the new people that you're meeting that we're going to add on to that list to get a hundred.
And that's going to be an ongoing process here because as I said, if we knew if you could every time you go to show homes, reach out to somebody you know in the neighborhood where you're going to show the homes and see if they have heard anybody talking about selling, you may be able to match them up, right? And the other thing that we're going to kind of pay attention to is what's going on in the environment. Because remember, this is all about the conversations that people are having, right? We're looking for that they notice that the conversation is about real estate.
Well, sometimes things can happen that will start conversations that are sort of timely and topical. Like there maybe something like in Canada. They just changed some of the rules about investment properties. And here in Florida, I remember several years ago there was a news article that the State Farm was closing the Daytona Beach office and moving 300 people to Winter Haven. Did I tell you that story last time we talked?
LJ: I don't think so.
Dean: Okay. So talking about things that make news here or make conversation. So I read about that, that they were closing Daytona and moving 300 people to Winter Haven. And I started thinking, "Okay, if I was a real estate agent here in Winter Haven and I knew who would be on my top 150, dare I start to notice that that's an opportunity? There's going to be 300 new State Farm families moving to Winter Haven from Daytona Beach." So now I start to think, "Who do I know that works at State Farm?" So I look through, mentally here, my top 150 and I know four people that work at State Farm.
So I start to think, "I know Cindy, and Nikki, and Keith, and Susan." And I start to think, "Okay. How can I introduce this to them as an opportunity here?" So imagine if I sent an email to the four people that I know, one at a time. And said, "Hey, Cindy, I just read that they're closing the Daytona Beach office and moving 300 people to Winter Haven. Who is handling the move at the office in Winter Haven? I'd love to meet them and give them some of our guides to Winter Haven house prices. It would be very helpful for all the people moving into Winter Haven."
And just sent that email to the four people that I know. There's a high probability that they may know who those people are, right? They may know that there's somebody there. They may know the person who's handling MHR to move and I can get an introduction to that person from the inside. From somebody who works. Because you never know, Cindy may be best friends with the person who's handling the move. And that would be a very valuable introduction for me.
So, you know that value of this asset, that we're not just sticking some names in a mailing list. We're looking at your GoGo Agent database to become a living thing. And that you can email them and flag them and we can print mailing labels and do all of the things. We're looking at it as an action center that we can use to reach out to those people. Communicate with them whenever we have that opportunity to do so. So I'm going to encourage you to start paying attention and in further conversations here, we'll talk about some of the things that might be going on around in the environment that might be kind of referral opportunities or conversation opportunities, you know?
I had a financial advisor in Connecticut who one of the big events that was going on there was GE. General Electric had a big corporate office in Connecticut that they were closing and moving everybody to Boston. So there was a lot of either layoffs or transfers that were going to happen there, which are going to be big financial events for the financial advisor. So lots of opportunity, lots of conversation that's going to be going on there. And so we had in those postcards that we mail or message out to people. And this again works across all kinds of different industries. But you can see the lesson here.
He's a financial advisor, so he had written a book called Forced to Retire. And he sends out the message to people, "Hey, just a quick note in case you hear someone talking about getting transferred or working at GE. If you hear someone talking about that, give me a call or text me. I'll get you a copy of my Forced to Retire book to give to them. It's got all kinds of strategies and helping them make the right decision."
And so that sort of opportunity presents itself when you notice what's going on around you. You know, there's so much great depth to what we'll be able to do with these hundred people. And what we'll be able to do with this initial group of the thousand homeowners in Coral Canyon. So I would say now that our next job of work here is to let's get the mailing list together for Coral Canyon. Let's get who those thousand people are. I can arrange all of that from here for us with our postcards right out of GoGo Agent. And we'll get the thousand people and we can mail the first of the Getting Listings postcards into that group.
And so you've seen the Getting Listings postcard that we do, or have you?
LJ: Yes.
Dean: Okay. So you know the first thing that we'll do is we're going to offer people the November 1st option. We can target to get these first postcards out here. So we'll offer people the November 2016 Report on Coral Canyon house prices. And so what we'll need is a picture that will kind of be iconic or represent Coral Canyon. You know, one of the great golf course pictures or is there a picture of the clubhouse or the entryway to the neighborhood that we could use?
LJ: Yeah. I went down there a couple of weeks ago and took a bunch of pictures of different types of homes.
Dean: Oh, great.
LJ: And some other things like that. So I know I have a picture of the entrance. Well, I know I have a picture of the entrance. There's also a lot of pictures online. I don't know if the quality's high enough when you pull them off online of the golf course itself, but different ideas anyway.
Dean: Yeah, right. I'm sure we can find a high-res image to use. Because, it doesn't have to be a big image, because we're sending a standard-sized postcard that we'll mail. But we just need a picture that would be recognizable as Coral Canyon. And then when we mail that out, now we'll set up your landing page for doing that. Now, we need a good domain name for that. So I would recommend something like Coral Canyon Price Report or coralcanyonhouseprices.com. Something-
LJ: Already bought it.
Dean: You did? Okay, you're ahead of the game. I love it. What have you got?
LJ: coralcanyonhouseprices.com
Dean: Okay. coralcanyonhouseprices.com. That's perfect. You're good. Okay.
LJ: I try.
Dean: And so we've got the Getting Listings landing page template already set up in GoGo Agent. So we'll get that customized for you. We'll use the same picture. So we're matching what they see on the postcard. And then what'll happen is we'll also include a free recorded message for people. So we'll give people two choices where they can either go to coralcanyonhouseprices.com or we can have them call and listen to a 24-hour recorded message where we'll just say, "Thanks for calling for the Coral Canyon House Price Report. Just leave your name, mailing address, and email address if you have one and we'll get the report out to you right away." That's all we need to say on the message.
We're not trying to convince people to sell their homes. We're not trying to convince them that you are the best person to sell their home or event that we want them to sell their home. What we're doing is we're just trying to identify as many of the 100 people who are going to sell their house this year to raise their hand. Now, it's really interesting because you've been listening in on our GoGo Agent calls where Ron Reed, who's a couple of months ahead of you here, has been sharing. You know, he's done two mailings in the same neighborhood and has just got his second listing from the first mailing that he did. So that's very exciting to see what will happen here.
But I think we've got a nice active area here, you know? A thousand with a 10% turnover rate is a really good starting point. But the point is, there's nothing on this post card that is saying, "L.J.'s the best." Or, "Call L.J. and start packing." Or any of those kinds of things that are personal promotion type of things or brand building type of things. We're separating this idea of getting to know people and building their confidence. We definitely want to do that, but we want to do it after they've indicated that there's somebody who's thinking about selling their house.
So I imagined it like having this special pair of glasses that if we could fly over Coral Canyon and all the hundred houses that are going to sell in the next 12 months would light up with this green glow and we could write down the addresses and see which ones, that's what we're looking for here. That's the value. So by turning our attention away from our stealth interest, which is convincing them to sell their house with us, we're turning our attention to their need. And so when we think about it, the reason that this offer works so well is because it's the trigger thought that anybody who's going to be thinking about selling their house is going to wonder, "How much is my house worth? What can I get for my house?"
And so now when we see that they can get this already prepared report on Coral Canyon house prices. And I live in Coral Canyon, we've definitely got that horoscope effect working for us here. We're definitely saying, "That's me." And people will feel safe to raise their hand and identify themselves because it's not committing them to selling their house. Just like running an ad that says, "Hey, I can sell your house in less than 60 days guaranteed." Or any of those things that are sort of action-oriented. And it took me a lot of years to get to that discovery.
And a lot of people don't understand the psychology that drives that. You see a lot of stuff that is sort of doing this type of marketing in the marketplace which are find out the value of your house kind of thing. Which you see a lot of that on Facebook and you see a lot of people sending out postcards about it. But nobody really gets or understands the psychology of, "This is something that's kind of arm’s length and I'm not committing myself to anything. And I get to voyeur in on the facts." It's market data. It's not data that is kind of biased by you trying to tell me a number that you think I want to hear about what my house is worth. Whatever number's going to convince me to sell my house.
By selling we're offering the data on what Coral Canyon house prices are doing, that is unbiased market data that's much more valuable to me. Because I can come to my own sort of conclusion on that, you know?
LJ: Right.
Dean: Yeah, makes a big difference here. So, you know, our first couple of conversations here, I do a lot of talking because I'm kind of laying the foundation for you. Not only for you, but for everybody kind of listening here. So what's your take on what we've talked about so far? I want to hear your understanding of it and kind of clear up any questions or anything you could use some clarity on.
LJ: Okay. Well, let's see. It makes sense to me what you're saying, because it's a lot less confrontational but, like you say, even if they're asking for an online home evaluation or something like that, they still have to give you some information. They still have to talk to a realtor and they at that point don't want to. They just want to be able to peruse and I guess imagine at least that nobody's really paying attention to them.
Dean: Yeah, you hit it on the head. It's anonymous in a way, right?
LJ: Right.
Dean: They can voyeur in and it doesn't feel like you're going out of your way for them. It sounds like you've already done the work. You've already got the report and you're offering it to me.
LJ: Exactly.
Dean: It doesn't feel as obligating. But the reality is that it is, psychologically, as you'll see as we start going forward here why that's true. But you hit it on the head, it's that it feels safer. And it doesn't feel-
LJ: Here's a question, though-
Dean: Like you're going to tell me a number that you think that I want to hear.
LJ: Right. Right. Here's a question for ya. So like years ago when I lived here and was a realtor, I remember a particular realtor, actually a lady who's in my same office that had a number of listings that are in Coral Canyon. And when I went out the other day and was taking pictures, I actually saw that she actually has her own office in the area now. So is that like something that I should be overly concerned with? That she already dominates the area and I can't break in?
Dean: Well, you're going to see, I mean, you know, look at the hundred. I mean, when you look at the sales to see how many of the sales were hers, you know? Now, here's part of the thing that next week we'll talk about what's going to be the key difference here. It's like one of my favorite things in the world is coming in and taking over a neighborhood, you know? Because odds are that she and any incumbent realtor who has sort of enjoyed being the mayor of a neighborhood just because of everybody knows who they are, what we're able to do is we're able to come in and just identify the people who are thinking about selling.
Because maybe they will call her or they'll call the incumbent, but they odds are that if we can preempt that call. Because a lot of people who are thinking about maybe selling in the spring, this is what we're going to find as we get into November and December here, there's not going to be as many people who put their house on the market in November and December as there are in the new year. As we start to ramp up here. But the people who are going to be selling in the spring, they know that they're going to be selling in the spring, most of them.
So what we get now is we get them to raise their hand because any prudent person who's thinking about making a big financial decision is going to want to gather all the information that they can. The more knowledge that they have about what's going on in the market is going to be an advantage when they go to sell, right? Rather than going into it blind or just getting one person's opinion on what their house is worth.
Now, they may call her Cathy. They may call Cathy, the incumbent, right? They may call her in the spring when it gets time that they're ready to sell, but they're not thinking about calling Cathy yet, because they know that Cathy's going to try and convince them to list their house right now. And they're not ready yet. So if we can get them to raise their hand now to get the information. And now we've got six months to love up on them and provide valuable information to them and get to know them over that period of time and make them offers that are going to really make it easy for them to get started, there's a good chance that they'll not ever get to the point where they call Cathy.
LJ: Right. Yeah, that makes sense.
Dean: So, yeah. That's where especially if you're sort of anybody who's following along with us. If they're choosing an area where somebody else is doing personal promotion and doing lots of mailings and getting their name noticed. They're the name brand in the area. It's very hard to compete with that by shouting louder and more than them, right? So we want to come in and we're talking about. We mail the smallest postcards. We're mail you know, it's just information. So that's what really gets people to respond. And then, now we focus our attention on really getting to know the people that raise their hand.
And the greatest thing that's going to happen is when we start now looking for the buyers for these golf course homes. And we start bringing in the buyers and replacing all of Cathy's listings with our own buyers. You know, every time you plant a buyer into one of these golf course communities, that's an annuity for you, you know? That's an ongoing relationship that over the life of your real estate career here, that's a person that that is your opportunity when they go to sell that house. And to tap into the immediate neighbors and all the people that they're going to meet because of living in that area, right?
LJ: Right.
Dean: Yeah. I'm excited to see how this is all going to play out for you. So what else?
LJ: Oh, so when we send out The World's Most Interesting Postcard this month, what if somebody responds, what am I supposed to send somebody that they refer at this point?
Dean: M'kay. Yeah. So I've got every single element of this already mapped out for you, right? So we'll send them. Right now the things that are action items for this week or we’ll get the list, we'll get everything prepared for the cards to go out next week and arrive the first week in November. We'll set up your landing page for your coralcanyonhouseprices.com. We'll get all of that set up. And then that's where we'll pick up next week. We'll pick up and talk about what to do to prepare for when they do.
But everything that we've got, essentially what they're going to get is they're going to get an envelope with a special label. That I'll show you exactly how to create this. We've already got all the templates and everything for you. It'll have a cover letter that I've already written that says, "Here's your report on Coral Canyon house prices." And we'll offer them the three next steps. So we'll basically say, "Whenever you're ready, there are three ways we can help you." We got a pinpoint price analysis, we got a room-by-room review, and we've got our silent market. And I'll explain all three of those to you when we talk next time.
But then, along with it, will be a report of… Which is really just printouts and some analysis if we can do a graph or chart or some sort of analysis of the 100 sales over the last 12 months. To show when the houses were selling, how much the houses were selling for, and the list of all of the homes that are available in Coral Canyon right now. So that would give people a general good overview of the state of the union in Coral Canyon right now. And along with that, then every month we'll send them updates of, "Here's what's happened in the last 30 days in Coral Canyon", along with our Get Top Dollar Newsletter.
So I've already got 12 newsletters already done. 12 cover letters that we can already send out. So every month they'll get the newsletter, the cover letter, the update of all the homes that have sold in Coral Canyon and all the new ones that have come on the market, and some different inserts that we'll be able to put in there. Including one we call Helping People on the Move. Every time you're helping somebody, we can tell the story of the kinds of people that you're working with right now. The kinds of people that you've helped sell their house. The kinds of people that are looking for homes right now. And so that's all going to stimulate people into action every month.
LJ: Okay. Well, what I was actually referring to, though, was when we do The World's Most Interesting Postcard and you know, some sort of a questionnaire like, "Do you know of somebody that's somebody that's moving to a golf course community?" You had mentioned that. But we didn't ask them, you know, if they do know somebody, then we say, "Well, we would like give you something to give them." What if I send those out this month, I'm not sure what the question will be if it's already included or if we have to come up with something from scratch.
Dean: No, this will be this report on the golf course. Because the things that we're doing for the buyers are the same sort of information for people who are looking for golf course homes. So we're going to say to people on The World's Most Interesting Postcard that if you hear someone talking about buying or selling a golf course property, I've put together the report, or we'll call it The Guide to St. George Golf Course Communities. And so we'll start building while we're building your guide for the buyers here. Just how we're kind of staggering everything, and so I see like the time as we're rolling here, it will be a just in time inventory system kind of thing.
LJ: Uh-oh.
Dean: Yeah, we got your hundred together because I knew that that was going to be kind of the one thing that would be a bit of a time block potentially. So we'll get that handled. We got that done. Now you've chosen Coral Canyon. We'll get the postcards out there. We'll get everything together for that. And while that's being printed and mailed, now we can start preparing the report on the Coral Canyon house prices as a respond to the people who ask for it from the postcards. And then we can supplement that with now taking pictures of and creating profiles for each of the 10 or 12 golf course communities that there are and put that together in the guide for buyers.
LJ: Okay. So don't be scared that I'm going to offer something-
Dean: No, don't be scared. No, I got you.
LJ: That somebody's going to say, “Don't do me like that.”
Dean: No, no, no. No, no, no. I got you. And that's the thing. Is like, I thought that through. We want to get out to market as fast as we can. And we don't need to get all of your ducks in a row before we mail the first postcards. It's let's mail the postcards and what I always find, L.J., is nothing is more motivating to light a fire than the expectation that you gotta deliver something to somebody who asked for it, you know? Otherwise, these projects can expand. So if we got people asking for it, then we're creating it and you're excited about it because it's working.
LJ: Right. Okay, sounds good.
Dean: So, I've very excited. And as the things start progressing here, we'll start tracking everything. We'll start monitoring what happens. We'll talk about all of these things. And I know, there's a lot to get, to take in as we're getting everything going here. And I want to make sure that I really lay the, not only the mechanics of it, but the psychology behind it and the why's of why we're taking this approach. So I appreciate your letting me tell all the stories and stuff. And it's great for us to be able to document everything that's happening as we go.
LJ: Absolutely.
Dean: Okay, perfect. Well, I'm excited. So I'll be in touch. We'll get our action items set up and then we'll reconvene next week and keep talking.
LJ: Sounds good. Thanks, Dean.
Dean: Thanks, L.J.
And there we have it. Another great episode. I was thinking about it as I was relistening, you know, I wonder how many people right now, even today, that you know, people if you saw them at the grocery store, you'd stop and recognize them by name and have a conversation with them. I wonder how many of those people are going to have a conversation that if you were listening in on it would be related to real estate. Would be somebody that could introduce you to if only they noticed that the conversation was about real estate? Or if only they thought about you and then they immediately were compelled to call you to introduce you to the person they were having the conversation with?
You know, it's happening every week. It's happening all the time. And that's what we're really able to do with The World's Most Interesting Postcard, is program people so that when they hear those conversations, they notice them and they think about you. And they call you. And that's really one of the things that is a pillar of our Listing Agent Lifestyle. That we're maximizing the number of times that the people who know you, like you, and trust you introduce you to their friends. We don't just waiting on it to passively happen, but we're orchestrating it so that it happens more often. Because we understand the mechanics of it.
And that's what we've got all of the tools to help you do over at gogoagent.com. So come on over and join us. Take a little look around so you can see exactly what this World's Most Interesting Postcard looks like. You can hear the stories in the forum from the people who are using it. See how it might work for you. And we can help you put everything together. So just go over to gogoagent.com and I'll see you in there.
And then if you'd like to be a part of The Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcast, you can go to listingagentlifestyle.com. You can download a copy of The Listing Agent Lifestyle book. And if you'd like to be a guest, just click on the "Be A Guest" link. Tell me a little bit about your business and maybe we can build a plan for you.
That's it for this week. Have a great week. I'll talk to you next time.