Our Guest: David Knox

Join us with returning guest David Knox; a world renowned expert in real estate training! Every second of this show will be packed with tips on finding leads in your personal and professional networks and more.

Wednesday, April 21 @ 1:30 Central Time.

Show Transcript:

0:00:00.2 Geoff Stertz: Hello, and thanks again for joining us for another Fathom Live, a live stream show dedicated to giving you tips and insights from experts in and around the real estate industry. I’m your host, Geoff Stertz, and man, do we have an expert today. Back with us today, is our good friend, David Knox. David, welcome.

0:00:17.9 David Knox: Thank you very much, Geoff. Good to see you. Good to be part of Fathom.

0:00:22.0 GS: Yeah. And David, you’ve been part of Fathom for a long time, from almost the very beginning, helping us out by providing real estate training by davidknox.com to all of our agents with hundreds of videos and training courses that are…

0:00:35.6 DK: That’s correct. I started with… Oops, sorry. The lag in the audio…

0:00:38.9 GS: No, go ahead.

0:00:40.4 DK: I started up we had about 25 agents, so I watched it grow quite a bit.

0:00:45.6 GS: Wow, so there you are. And David’s common has spoken at different events and has been on the show before. If you got questions, he’s got answers. So he’s got things to share, so feel free. This is a two-way conversation, both obviously between me and David, but also online. So if you’re on the Fathom Facebook page, or if you’re watching via YouTube, feel free to shout out… Well, shout out anything but then give us your questions and comments, and if we use them on the show, it actually automatically enters you into a drawing multiple times. If you give any sort of shoutout, like Carrell, or Britney, or Anna, or Kelly, or David or many others have already, that enters you into a drawing, but if you comment or ask a question that we used in the show, it enters you multiple times which gives you better chances. So make sure that you’re doing that but, yeah, ask questions.

0:01:43.3 GS: One of the things that we wanted to throw out there as a starter, we recognize that it is a low inventory market that folks are having a hard time getting listings, but we’d love to know how are you getting listings, how is it working for you as an agent, as well as what are your biggest challenges in getting listings? Because today, we’re gonna be talking about how to get listings from your sphere and good excuses to call them. So I’m looking forward to that. But if you have some ideas or things that you wanna share in regards to that, please start commenting.

0:02:16.6 GS: Our sponsor today is GoSocial Agent, offering effective and affordable social media solutions to help agents grow their business, including getting your account set up, automated postings, agent-branded articles, buyer and seller handbooks, Facebook ad campaigns and more, they partner with Houseopedia to provide you really great content, relevant, current, great articles for your sphere of influence and your social media. It’s all to help you grow your online community and generate leads, and you can learn more at gosocialagent.com. Go ahead and smash that notification bell or that subscription bell if you haven’t yet on YouTube and you can check out last week’s show with Jenn Herman did a fabulous job, and then next week… Not next week, but a couple of weeks, we’re gonna have Aziz Shabazz, one of our very own district directors on, so looking forward to that. All right, all that aside, David, what are we talking about today?

0:03:04.4 DK: Well, we’re gonna talk obviously in a market like this is finding ways to get listings. Obviously, one of the most challenging times I’ve seen… Well, I got to be very careful. One of the most unique times I’ve seen in the history of real estate since the day I got into it 50 whatever years ago, listings have always been the fundamental basis of the industry, it always has, and the agents who worked primarily with listings are always the ones that are happier, more successful, working with buyers is incredibly joyful and wonderful, introducing people, but in terms of the long-term stability, listings is where it is, and never get more than right now in this market, that becomes the only thing you can really do.

0:03:43.5 GS: Very good. So probably a lot of question… The question on a lot of people’s minds is, where do I get listings at this point? I mean people are hesitant to sell their house because then they have to find a house and there’s… Because of low inventory, they might sell and have a really hard time getting an accepted offer on a house. So what are ways that people can reach out to their sphere of influence and get some listings?

0:04:12.0 DK: Well, it’s a great question. And I quote Marki Lemons-Ryhal, who is speaking of social media, I feature Marki in our online training quite a bit, and she does things on Facebook Live and quite a few other things, and I saw her Facebook post the other day, and she said, “We do not have an inventory shortage. We have a listing shortage.” And, yes, it’s a play on words but her point is there’s plenty of property out there. The challenge is that owners are reluctant to move, so how do we create some of those opportunities? So I thought I’d just share the screen for a second and take you to the slide. Obviously, if you work with listings, you control the market. If you work with buyers, they control you. And in a market like this, you take buyers out and take ’em out showing five, 10, 20, 30, however many homes or, market like this, two or three. And finally, you find them a home, they write an offer, and you’re one of many, and at the end, you lose and you’ve got two downsides. Number one, you’ve got an unhappy buyer, number two, you didn’t get paid, and the one person who wins every multiple offer situation is the listing agent. So, clearly, that’s where you wanna be.

0:05:23.7 DK: So how do we create some opportunities? I was talking with Rob Levy, one of the guys that we feature in our training, and it’s great to know that you have a provider of social media. So for all of you, take advantage of that, take advantage of that service because your time is best spent interacting directly with buyers and sellers, and if you can farm out your social media to somebody else, it’s a good use of your time. But Rob says, “Facebook, it’s free, but the clients have to be ready.” Now, he likes Google AdWords clicks. He says it’s expensive but you can target your leads, and he’s found out that it’s about $45 per lead to what his amounts to in his profitability, and about a 7% conversion.

0:06:04.6 GS: That’s pretty good.

0:06:07.7 DK: Another guy named Jerry Pinkas does YouTube videos, as does Sam Miller, and what Jerry Pinkus does is every few days, he’ll put out a YouTube video, one or two, something on the market, post it, you can do Facebook Live, just Facebook video. Obviously, you guys are on Facebook now. It’s an opportunity to get out in your market and give messages, keeping current matters, a guy named Steve Harney. I have no connection with him in terms of marketing other than I know him and I respect what he does, but keepingcurrentmatters.com, I think in his website, and I think if you subscribe, you can take his slides and use them on a Facebook presentation. Sam Miller, another guy we feature, he does a great social media video. He calls it Two Minutes on Tuesday, and he will… He’ll go live because Facebook Live always comes to the top, and he will cite oh, four or five different buyers he’s working with and say, “Anybody watching this video? I’m gonna share with you the five buyers that I’m working with and what they’re looking for. And if any of you listening have a property that meets those needs and you’re considering moving. Let me know.”

0:07:16.5 DK: Very cool idea.

0:07:18.2 GS: Yeah, he gets leads from it quite a bit. People direct message, he’ll just say, “I got first buyers looking for between 350 and 400, one level, three bedrooms, non-smoking.” He’ll describe. And they’re real, you don’t wanna make this up.

0:07:33.2 DK: Obviously.

0:07:34.3 GS: No.

0:07:35.0 DK: That would be no good. We’re realtors, the code of ethics.

0:07:39.0 GS: And then he gets people messaging him. Next, I would direct all of you at Fathom Realty to go to KFT 120 Knox First Tuesday, number 120. Sorry, you guys, I’m getting over some laryngitis.

0:07:54.2 DK: Hey, no worries. No, hey, just a little pause, so people can actually take notes on all this stuff, so I…

0:08:01.7 GS: You don’t wanna take a break?

0:08:01.9 DK: Yeah, keep going.

0:08:03.5 GS: Alright.

0:08:04.5 DK: Actually, I will mention, because you brought it up. Anthony Eddington commented on YouTube. He said, “Is it a good thing to invest in using Facebook to generate leads? If so, is there a recommendation regarding vendors other than Facebook?” I think it’s the same generally online ads to get leads. And you mentioned Google what was a way that that gentleman was getting leads.

0:08:28.7 GS: Yeah, he goes to go Google and buys their AdWords, and you can target certain things and post. I’m not gonna get in a whole lot of detail on it, I think Marky Lemmons or Al gets into it. They have changed the targeting on Facebook because of Fair Housing, and rightly so. So anything you do on Facebook has to be in conjunction with Fair Housing, how you target things like that, but Rob Levy, like he says he likes Facebook ’cause it’s free, but the people have to be ready to move… Buy or sell right now. But still he’s gonna use it. And then the Google AdWords where you can post ads, we do that for our training and we’ll spend a monthly amount to put that out there, we get people trying… Doing our free trials. But if you want content to promote, I’ll just… Let’s see. Can you see the website?

0:09:20.9 DK: Yes, we can. Yep.

0:09:22.8 GS: If you go to the Fathom site, log in with your username and a password, are you guys going through the Intranet?

0:09:29.3 DK: They can do that via Fathom Wiki. Correct.

0:09:32.2 GS: Okay.

0:09:32.8 DK: Yeah, and by the way, David, not everybody that’s watching is a Fathom agent, so this is, I guess, a little ad for Fathom at this point that you get all this stuff for free when you join. But otherwise, if they’re a non-Fathom agent, they can still go to real estate training by davidknox.com., correct?

0:09:46.7 GS: Yeah, but they’d have to buy a subscription and we don’t sell to agents.

0:09:50.7 DK: Got you.

0:09:52.0 GS: We only sell to companies, so you’ve really gotta be with a company that’s subscribed to our training.

0:09:58.2 DK: Okay.

0:10:00.5 GS: So and as I say, Gosh, Charlie subscribed since he was at 25 agents something, whatever you are now, so it’s been a fun ride to watch him. But yeah, when you log into the training, the video at the top of the list will always be the “what’s new for the current month.” It’s usually pretty short. We throw out a few quick tips, our latest video is KFT 147, Multiply Your Listing. And by the way, I guess while I’m here, once you have a listing, it’s your ticket into the neighborhood. And this will take you through just some fundamental things to do when you have a listing, a little checklist in there to make sure that as soon as you get a listing, I guess the checklist is in Microsoft Word, so you can adjust it. But getting out your just list of cards, door knocking around and you’re listing promoting a neighbor’s only open house, conducting the Open House and following up with just sold cards is really… It should be embarrassing for you to get one listing and then two more come up in the same neighborhood with a competitor. Come on, come on, you should be able to go… You should be able to talk to those people.

0:11:04.9 DK: Take advantage of your foot being in the door.

0:11:07.3 GS: Absolutely, in fact, I’m just gonna stop Screen Share. True story, when I listed my home in Eden Prairie, Minnesota back in 2011, while I was on the market, two of my neighbors came to visit me. One of them named Nikki said, “Hey, I… Dave I’m gonna miss you in the neighborhood.” And I say, “Yeah, Nikki, what are you gonna do?” And she’s, “Well, this home is too big for me and Joey.” Her husband had sadly passed away. Two kids are off to school, one left. And she said, “So I’m probably gonna sell this fall as well.” And I went, “Oh, okay. Well, I wish you the best.” Across the street, Marv and Stephanie. Steph called me up and say, “Hey, what would I need to do to my kitchen to make our home more marketable, ’cause we’re thinking moving to Palm Desert in the fall?” I said… I gave her some ideas. Well, within the next two, three, four months, Nikki listed and sold. Marv and Stephie… Marv and Steph, listed and sold. Neither of you is my realtor, and it’s just sad. And I probably should have done more to make sure they talked to my realtor, but that’s not my job. I had my realtor just knocked on three doors left, right and across the street, two of them, three of them listed with a realtor and sold through a realtor. And I’m pretty sure because my realtor, she’s a good realtor. I think she would have gotten them, so it’s such a horrible, horrible waste to have a listing and not be able to get more, so that one of my…

0:12:30.5 DK: Yeah.

0:12:32.0 GS: In ways to create it…

0:12:34.3 DK: Somebody asked a question here, and I know this isn’t like the subject matter necessarily for today, but they were… Well, these are expressing the frustration of getting somebody to accept your buyers offer when they make an offer, and I know that’s a whole another… We do a whole another episode on that, but any quick tips on that, how to get your offer accepted?

0:12:56.0 GS: First things come to mind if you’re gonna work with buyers, just think of the letters M and E, motivation, expectation, and you sit down with the buyer and say, “Do you really, really, really wanna buy now?” They’ll say, “Why do you ask?” “Because this is gonna be one of the most challenging markets in which you will ever buy in our history, the good news is they got the lowest rates in the history of the planet, so it’s a great time to buy. So we get that, but the flip side of it is you’re gonna be competing with everybody else that wants a shortage of inventory, and you’re gonna be very much in a competition and it’s gonna feel like you are in an auction situation like they do in Australia, so just let me re-confirm, you guys definitely wanna buy?” “Yes, we do.” Okay. Then now, E, expectations. “There’s not gonna be a lot of homes on the market. I’ll get to them as fast as I can. And if I find a home that’s on the market, I’m gonna ask that you be ready to go, like right away, in fact, keep your wallet with you at all times, so now you can see the preparations and when we find a home, I wanna try to get in, get you into it right away, and while you’re in the home… I know I may sound pushy, but I want you to just tell me yes or no.” If the the answer is no, then good we’ll move on.

0:14:05.0 DK: Yup.

0:14:05.7 GS: If you like, but if you like the house, then we need to really think about it, because the next step is when you write an offer on the property, a lot of buyers say, “Well, I don’t wanna pay full price for anything.” Well, my answer to that is, “Don’t worry, you won’t.” It’s gonna be more.

0:14:19.2 DK: It’s gonna be higher than that… Yup.

0:14:20.9 GS: Then be careful, don’t be too flippant with them, but homes typically are gonna go for over-asking price, and you can show them some actual statistics in their price range, list X sell Y, list X sell Y. I say, “This is what’s happening. So you’re gonna be in competition and there’s a fairly good chance that you may not get the property, and we’ll have to go find another one so so far… How are you feeling?” “Oh boy, that sounds kind of painful.” “Yes it is. Do you still wanna buy?” “Yeah, we hate the place we’re in now, so we hate that more.” Okay, good, motivation. And then when they find a home that they like, the big question is gonna be, “How much should we offer?” And this is critical that you do not answer that question with a number. ’cause there’s no right answer to that question.

0:15:05.0 GS: So the advice would be, “Mr. And Mrs. Buyer, the asking price in this home is 500,000, there’s a very good likelihood that it’s gonna sell for more, but I don’t know for how much more, so my suggestion is the number would be, I know they’ll take at least 500. That’s the asking price. And if you really wanna ensure that you get the property, we’re gonna have to clean up your offer, first thing is, if you wanna offer over full price, that’s gonna improve your likelihood. In terms of what number should it be, I’m gonna suggest you offer a no regret price.” The no regret price means that if you make an offer of a number and you lose, and I tell you what it did sell for, and you say, “Oh, we would done that.”

0:15:47.4 DK: We would’ve done that, right.

0:15:49.1 GS: We would have done that. No, no, no, no, I don’t wanna hear that. I don’t want you to… I wanna hear you say, “Oh gosh, we would have never gone that high.” And then you have no regrets so we can move on to something else, and then you can talk to him about the fundamentals, cleaning up, cleaning it up, contingencies, inspections and appraisals and big earnest money and no personal property and all that. Now, some of the buyers today are doing things that could get you in trouble if you advise them to do it, and if you tell them to waive an inspection or wave an appraisal… I almost wanna turn it over to your local broker to ask that question, ’cause I don’t wanna get Fathom Realty in trouble, but there are consumer protections that some buyers are choosing to waive. And I guess if you’re gonna go 50,000 over on a property, do you really care that the inspection would have covered 5,000 bucks worth of repairs? Who cares? You’re already over 50 grand, and for the waiving the appraisal, you gotta be willing to make up the difference in cash, and you really gotta have this heart-to-heart talk with them ’cause by the time they find homes too late to do this.

0:16:51.6 DK: Right, there’s not enough time. So big, big part of this is all getting your buyer prepped for it, and as far as making that offer, there’s a monetary aspect of it, I’ve heard some people, they’ll write a real nice letter with their family picture on it and their local sports team jerseys that you’re wearing those kind of things. Any other…

0:17:13.0 GS: By the way…

0:17:14.8 DK: Yeah, go ahead.

0:17:14.9 GS: Precaution on that letter. First of all, it’s a good idea, very dear friend of mine, guy named Jury Clecker was part of a multiple offer on a property in Minneapolis area, and he was not the highest offer, but he won anyway, ’cause he wrote a letter to the seller saying, “Joyce and I are buying your home to come out of a town house into a home, where we can get back into gardening and we’re really kind of buying your gardens, we love your gardens, we wanna take really good care.” And apparently, the owner of the home said to the son, “find somebody that will take care of our garden.” So that worked. That’s how he got it.

0:17:47.5 DK: Yeah.

0:17:47.5 GS: You’ve gotta be so careful. Picture the family, anything that could smack of any violation of Fair Housing will get you into more trouble.

0:17:55.6 DK: Gotcha.

0:17:56.5 GS: The latest advice I heard from Arias Media, an article is, it’s like the… We don’t even wanna know about if you’re gonna write a letter to the seller, you write one, I don’t even wanna know about it, see it or anything, but you’ve really, really gotta be careful to TNH and we talk about implicit bias where people… Deep down, they are not biased, but it’s in there and you don’t even know about it, and maybe you respond to it in such a way where times are hard. So it’s…

0:18:22.3 DK: Be cautious with that.

0:18:24.0 GS: Be cautious with it.

0:18:24.0 GS: Yeah, thank you. Good advice. Somebody…

0:18:27.5 DK: And one other thing…

0:18:28.9 GS: Yeah. The biggest fear sellers have today is that they’re gonna sell without having a place to buy, and I’m gonna talk about how to deal with that, but buyers today, I’m hearing lots of stories of the buyers say, “We wanna buy your home, you stay in there for as long as you want up until some length of time.” And I heard somebody say, “We’ll even mow the lawn for you.” Just crazy stuff.

[laughter]

0:18:51.1 GS: ‘Cause the buyers just wanna lock in the house, they’d rather own it today and move in in three months…

0:18:57.5 DK: Three months, right.

0:19:00.2 GS: And by the way that’s where you can do a buyer letter, you can say, “On our purchase agreement, we indicated the closing date of the 31st of July, however, we are flexible with our current situation, and we could go as late as September 30th.” So, things like that.

0:19:16.2 DK: Right. Gives them flexibility then to find their own place as well as getting their life together on their way out. Somebody asked… I thought this was a really great follow-up. Tracy Gonzales said, “When you knock on the door to a neighbor of a seller client, what do you say?”

0:19:31.8 GS: Good question. First of all, be dressed up, look like a professional realtor. I get that we’ve got casual Fridays in America, and I get it, and I love jeans and T-shirts, I love that, but if I’m gonna knock on a door, I wanna dress up, whatever that is for your community. I would have something with the Fathom Realty logo on it. Ideally, it would have been the Just Listed card that you sent out recently, but anything so they know who you are. You might also have a note on a clipboard in big 72 point type to hold up to their ring doorbell, ’cause everybody’s got Arlo and Ring and all these things, and they’re looking at their video, so kind of be prepared for that. But when I get to the door, I wanna walk up, stand a little ways away… You don’t wanna give ’em the bums rush… And maybe you hold up something. And if they do answer the door, if they come through the speakers, say, “Hey, I’m David Knox with Fathom Realty, and this is a courtesy call because I’m the listing agent on Tom and Susie’s home two doors down from you. It’s a courtesy call to see if you might have any questions on the property, and I’d be happy to answer them for you.”

0:20:39.6 DK: Courtesy. That’s nice. And they just might, and then you say, “Have a nice day.”

0:20:47.1 GS: Yeah, and they might do… Some are gonna come. Who knows? You don’t know. At least you knocked on the door, you came by, and if they do respond, they might say, “Oh, oh, thanks very much. Yeah, we were wondering what the asking price was,” and you can tell them the price, tell them everything else, and if they come to the door, and you can have a conversation, just smile and have some fun. “Thank you very much for coming to the door. Frankly, I’m so happy to see a real person, the way our last year’s been going. So, thank you so much. I just wanna let you know this home just came on the market.” And we know neighbors love to know about their neighbors’ homes, so just, “What questions do you have?” “Yeah, how much did they ask, and what do you think they’ll get for it?” etcetera. You say, “Right now in this market, they’ll probably get that for it. By the way, how much longer do you guys plan to stay in your home?”

0:21:26.0 GS: Now, the two questions I would like to ask, and you may not always be able to do it, but if I could, I might say, “By the way, how long have you guys lived here?” And they’ll tell you, and then say, “How much longer do you think you’ll stay here?” And they might say, “Funny, you should ask. Tom and I are thinking about moving, and that’s why we wanted to find out.” And the third question, and again, I get it… People listening will go, “Yeah, right. Good luck. And I don’t even have time to say my name before they close the door.” Well, there are those, but if you do have some rapport, Saturday afternoons, you’re walking around, they’re yard-working anyway, it’s easier, and just say, “I’m just curious, I’m helping… I’ve got some buyers desperate to find a home, and I’m doing their work for ’em, and I’m curious. Of all of the neighbors, if you had to guess who do you think might be the next to make a move?”

0:22:13.9 DK: Right. Yeah. Right now, I can think of people that… They probably aren’t gonna be there that long, and they might be looking to sell.

0:22:19.3 GS: Yeah, there you go. So you might find out that way. In fact, our video, KFT 66, Knox First Tuesday, number 66, parts one and two… In fact, what the heck, I’ll just do a quick share screen, and right here KFT 66. Now this was shot a few years ago, but you’ll see that… You can see it’s still in the 4X3 aspect ratio, but we follow this guy around and he knocks on the doors, and you’ll hear both sides of the conversation, and he ends up with a couple of leads out of it. And I said, “How did you feel about doing that?” And he said, “Oh, I hate knocking on doors.” He said, “But having done it just now, it reminds me, that’s how I got started in the business, and I gotta get back and do it again.” But her question was a good question.

0:23:04.5 DK: So you wanted to talk about getting more listings through your sphere, but also you said that you wanted to chat about helping convince your seller that they can sell and find another house. So I don’t know which one of those you wanna jump into first.

0:23:23.1 GS: Let’s do that one right here, Knox First Tuesday, number 120: “How do we list without a place to buy?” I don’t know how long the video is, 10-12 minutes. Anyway, it basically begs the question, you sit down with your owners and back to motivations. “Would you like to sell?” “Yeah, we’d like to sell but we’re worried we may not find a place to buy.” “We understand that, and it’s a very legitimate concern, and a lot of people express that, but let me ask you this question. How badly would you like to get out of this home?” “We’d love to get out of it. We have 16 children and one bathroom. It’s really a pain. So we really need to get out of here.” Okay. “If you were really interested in getting out of here. I would like to share with you a plan that may or may not work for you. If it doesn’t work, then fine, but it’s worked for a lot of people.”

0:24:06.8 GS: And then you ask them the question, “What outcome is more challenging for you: Owning two homes or owning zero homes?” ‘Cause it’s axiomatic. One of the two are the extremes. “Two. I suppose two would be better.” “Well, could you afford two payments, two maintenance, two everything?” “No, I guess we couldn’t.” “Well, how about owning zero?” “You mean we’d be homeless?” “Yes, but let’s define what homeless is. Are you really literally, literally homeless, out on the street? Okay, here’s what you would be. It’s called maybe making a double move.” And then you can take them through the fact that the buyers might… And then you say, “How long do you think it would take you to find another home?” “Oh, I don’t know. It might take us six months.” “Okay, six months. In fact, let’s get on the MLS and look for the kind of home you wanted to buy. Are there any on the market? No, no, no, no. Let’s see if any sold. Here’s one that sold a month ago. Here’s another one, three weeks ago.”

0:25:00.4 GS: And then you can say, “You know, three of them have come on the market in the last three months,” and they go, “Oh, oh, wow, okay.” “So let’s say six months, we might be able to get the buyer that will let you stay in the home for three months, and then where would you stay for the next three? Would you stay with your parents?” “No way! I don’t even wanna drive by my parents’ house.” And then you talk to them about, “Okay, maybe you move into a hotel and you pay for a double move. Five grand out, five grand in, five grand a month, you got 25,000 and a double move. You just made 50 grand more in the home you’re in. Of course, you’re paying more for the home you’re buying too, but you’re out of this house into another one.”

0:25:31.9 GS: And if you put it in dollars and cents, then I go back to Harvey McKay, wrote a couple of books, and he said, “If you can buy your way out of a problem, you haven’t got a problem.” So rather than dealing with the emotion of, “Oh, we have no place to live,” it’s like, “For 30 grand, you can make the move, and of the 30 grand, 25 of it comes out of the fact you sold your home for more.” So that’s what KFT addresses, and at the end, there’s a little script you can put on Facebook, that you can do a Facebook Live and say, “By the way, one of the questions I get is, ‘We’d love, love, love to sell, but we’re so concerned about having a place to go.’ Well, we at Fathom Realty have some ideas on how to do this.” And then you can do a Facebook live.

0:26:15.0 GS: Yeah, I think you may have answered this question to Alice said in this context, here’s a question that she would get from a seller, we are thinking to sell, but the way things are going right now, I’m not concerned I’ll ever find the house of my choice, but you’re saying, Hey, I can demonstrate to you they’re selling, they’re out there. We just kinda have to get prepped and wait for that house to come on the market and then be ready to buy it. Is that [0:26:40.6] ____ and I would concede the seller’s port and say, You know, Ms. Seller, you haven’t told me what you’re looking for, so I don’t know, you might be right, it might be that what you’re looking for just doesn’t exist, it doesn’t exist, but let’s first of all sit down and tell me… Do a buyer cost interview, price terms, everything. I say, What do you want? Well, I’m just gonna go in the MLS. First of all, I’ll search for what’s on the market? Nothing. Okay, let’s search for solds, and you get all the solds and say, would any of these met your needs and they might go that one…

0:27:07.5 GS: What? Okay, well, that was two and a half months ago. And maybe there’s another another and just say saying that they’re moving, they’re just not like… Right this minute available. Yeah.

0:27:18.0 DK: It’s like looking for a parking spot in a… In a busy mall.

0:27:22.0 GS: When you first drive into the mall, you go, Oh, there’s no parking places here, but if you stand back and… Well, I don’t know if you ever… You park your car and just sit there and you look at, Well, hey, the pole position opened up, that opened up, this opened up, pretty soon, my gosh. They’re moving all the time, but if you just do a snapshot of a parking lot, it’s like, oh, there’s no place for me. The other thing that I think everybody knows, when the student is ready, the master appears or another way, when your car breaks down, you find another car pretty quickly, if your car broke… And if you can’t find another car, what do you do? You rent one, you go to Hertz and say, I want three months rental until you get the car you want. So if you really wanna move. There’s ways to make it happen.

0:28:01.0 DK: Very good. So I know we’re way into the time here, but sphere of influence, how do I get some leads from my sphere of influence?

0:28:09.8 GS: Well, first of all, you have to have a telephone verbal conversation with them.

0:28:19.1 GS: Do you mean like actually pick up the phone and call somebody?

0:28:22.3 GS: Yep, you gotta have a two-way conversation.

0:28:24.5 GS: I don’t think we can do that. I think we’re…

0:28:26.4 GS: That wipes out 95% of agents. Right there they go, Well, okay, next technique. Do you have anything else? And when I ask agents, Why don’t you wanna talk to your sphere of influence? Some say, Well, I just don’t like cold calling. Well, you’re not cold-calling, you’re warm-calling. They say, I don’t know what to say. I don’t wanna bother people, I don’t want to sell them something like a multi-level marketer, and I don’t really have any good dialogue or it’s been five years since I’ve talked to… All of those by the way, are absolutely legitimate reasons for resisting, I get… First of all, they’re not cold calls, they’re warm calls. Instead of selling, I’m gonna go through some ways that you’re giving instead of selling, you’ll feel comfortable with. If you haven’t talked to them in four years or five years. Just wait till next year that it’ll be six. And then we’ll do this video again, and I’ll say, Wait till next year, and pretty soon everybody dies, and that takes care of it. So what I’m gonna do is overcome the objections that agents have to calling their sphere influence. So we’ll talk for about five good reasons to call.

0:29:36.0 GS: First, there’s two ways to spend your time in real estate, building familiarity or doing direct prospecting. And familiarity is expensive. It’s one way, It’s passive, it’s important to do. Familiarity falls into social media, billboards, bus benches, just listed car, just sold cars may, all that stuff is building familiarity and you should have a systematic way of getting your name and face in front of people. However, the next step is to be face-to-face, phone to phone, Zoom to Zoom with them. So sending out a just listed card is a great idea, but even a better idea is to send it out and then knock on the door and say, Did you get this card? I’m here as a cutesy call to see if you have any questions on it. And we talk about some of the reasons why people don’t contact their sphere of influence, but I wanna show you… I don’t know if you guys know Matt Ferrara, speaker in the real estate industry, a good friend of mine, I saw a Facebook post of his the other day, and I asked his permission to use it and he said, Sure. So I’ll just read this to you, somebody who was writing him, Matt, he said, “Our realtor has never checked in with us, and we’ve decided the next time we go sell, we won’t use him. Funny thing is he bombards us with mailings and advertisers every week, but he’s never picked up the phone to check on us personally.”

0:30:52.8 GS: So if you take a look at direct prospecting versus familiarity, the checked in with us is direct. The mailings advertisements every week are familiarity, and you need to do both.

0:31:04.8 GS: Both. So let’s talk about the five ways to contact your sphere of influence. Thank, Invite, inform, Customer Survey, and vendor resources. So number one, thank. Get in your database, of course, we assume we all have a database and go through everybody in your sphere of influence and isolate your past customers and anybody who’s referred business to you and called them up and thank them for their business. Now, if you’re a new agent, I guess you can’t thank people for their business, they haven’t done business with you, so this is obviously something for more experienced agents with a book of business, but this woman who sold my house, I hadn’t heard from her in seven years, and somebody asked for referrals, said, Hey, how was your realtor? She was great. Do you think I should work with her? I said, absolutely you should work with her. And my employee said, what’s her name? And I said her name is…

[laughter]

0:32:10.3 DK: And I honestly didn’t remember, in fact, Quick Tip 55, I just re-shot it the other day, quick tip 55 tells the story. Honestly, I could not remember the name of my realtor, and I had to go find the purchase agreement folder, scroll to the bottom, find her name and I went, Oh. My gosh. Sure, hi. And then I found her email and I replied to an old email, and then I asked her this question, here’s an embarrassing question that shows how bad your familiarity building is. I asked for the question, are you still in the real estate business? If you get that question, you know your marketing stinks.

0:32:42.7 GS: Uh oh.

0:32:44.2 DK: Yeah, and she emailed back kind of sheepishly, “Thanks for the extra effort in finding me, yes. I’m still in the real estate business. I’m still trying to find a way to contact my past customers and clients” I go, “Do you think maybe as good a sky writing, a text, a call, a pop-in, drop by.” Anything other than nothing. So if all you do is call your past clients, you want the thank-you call to be two-way, if you can, so pick evenings, weekends when you’re most likely to reach them. If you don’t reach them, I guess, you might as well leave a voicemail. They already know you called, and just say, “Thank you for your business.”

0:33:20.5 DK: Yeah.

0:33:21.7 GS: And they will probably come back and say, “Oh, it’s good to hear from you. Thank you. You did a great job for us.” And then they’ll probably say, “How are you? How’s the market?” So there you go.

0:33:34.5 DK: Yep, “I’ve got a lot of homes that we can sell you” or “Hey, are you looking list again? Because, great time, if you’ve checked your Zillow price or whatever else, it’s probably a lot higher than when I sold it to you,” yada yada ya. Open the door for another…

[laughter]

0:33:52.5 GS: Well, I like that twist on it, because one of the concerns is people listing now, “Well, I’m on a thank-you call, should I ask them for business?” If you don’t want to, don’t, don’t do that.

0:34:02.0 DK: Sure.

0:34:02.3 GS: You can just keep it as a pure thank-you call, and if they turn it into a business call, then you have permission.

0:34:07.6 DK: Right.

0:34:07.8 GS: But another thing that you could do if you really, really, really wanna go to town on this, before you call them, go back and review the property and maybe check and see what you think the current value is, and then call them and say, “Thank you for your business. When you guys bought from me, I think it was seven years ago now, you were one of my first buyers, and I’m just happy to know at that time you paid 339 and we’re seeing properties and they’re going through 480 right now.” “Really?” “Yeah. So you made a great investment.” “480, wow. Do you think we could get that now?” “Well, somewhere in that range. Obviously, we have to do a marketing out, why do you ask?” “Well, ’cause we’re actually thinking about buying up… ” From that point, everybody gets it.

0:34:46.6 GS: Number two is to invite. This is far more difficult, especially with COVID, because you need to have an event to which to invite them. A realtor here in Mission Hills Country Club has a back-to-season party at the Mission Hills Country Club last November. Obviously, with COVID in California, you couldn’t even be alone with yourself in your own house according to Governor Newsom, so he couldn’t do the party.

0:35:10.2 DK: Right. [chuckle]

0:35:10.7 GS: But he still sent out an invitation and said, “We can’t do the party but I still wanna honor you and thank you for your business over the years. If you’re in the desert between November 17 and 25, RSVP, and I’ll set up a time to drive by the country club overhang, front gate and we’ll hand you a pecan pie or pumpkin pie.” So the key on event marketing is not the event, it’s the invitation, giving you an excuse to call people, partnering with a charitable event, your community doing a hot dog barbecue at your office parking lot, inviting people, or any number of things. So for those of you who are social people and like to party, this is a great way to invite people to things. The third would be a simple informing call. Put together a 12-second voice mail and blast out a couple of days and just say, “Hey, Jim, this is David Knox. We just wanna… ” well, say, “Hey, this… ” [chuckle] I gotta take a breath. [laughter]

0:36:06.1 DK: Yeah.

0:36:06.5 GS: “Hey Jeff, this is David Knox, 612-590-8955. I’m calling to let you know the market here has done something we haven’t seen happen in nearly 50 years. It directly affects your home, and if you’d like to hear more about it, please give me a call. Here’s my number again. Ready? 612-590-8955.” So you open and close with your number, so they’ve got it, and then go to the next, to the next to next, and fire out a few calls.

0:36:28.4 DK: Very good. So thank, invite.

0:36:30.6 GS: Inform.

0:36:31.2 DK: Inform.

0:36:31.8 GS: And the next would be a customer survey. And I’m not… Again, this takes a little bit more time but… Go to the site, if you look for KFT63, become a valuable resource for a customer survey. We actually give you a sample customer survey. It’s in Microsoft Word, so you can edit it and put in your own logos and everything, and it just says, “Over the years, there’s been many changes in financing regulations, market appraisals… ” This first paragraph, you’d probably edit now and say, “We’re in a very unique time with lower interest rates,” and etcetera “And I’d like to be able to be of service to you. What information would you like? What is your current situation?” and then “How much longer do you plan to stay in your current home? Because before, with all your friends and associates, who do you think would be the next to make a move? And how do you prefer to be contacted?” So the idea behind the survey was originally as a way of updating contact information for clients, but it’s also a way to stay in touch and be visible. Kelly Moya, a realtor, uses this, gets about a listing or two a month out of that.

0:37:45.9 DK: Wow.

0:37:47.4 GS: So customer survey is one thing. And the next one is KFT97, and that is to become a preferred vendor resource. We just re-shot this video the other day and once again, KFT94 preferred vendor resource list in Microsoft Word, so you can edit it and it just helps you guys go through and take a look at all the three categories, transactional vendors, moving vendors, ownership vendors. And all of you should have this anyway, especially if you’ve been in the business for a while, you should all have a list of services, and get it together, and then you tell these people that they are going to be on a preferred vendor list. And now to make sure that your referrals don’t come back and bite you, you pick people you trust, you respect their personal views.

0:38:41.0 DK: Right.

0:38:41.7 GS: You let them know that you’re gonna refer your customers and clients to them, and what you expect is an immediate response, take good care of them, “Keep me in the loop. And if there’s any problems, let me know right away and we make sure we get a result.” And again, KFT97 goes through some of the concerns that people voiced.

0:39:01.0 GS: So would the idea be then like, let’s say I have somebody that does bath and kitchen remodels in my preferred vendor list, and I’m partnering, loosely partnering, with that person, and I’m sending them to past clients, but I’m hoping that, if in conversation, when they’re gonna do this remodel, it’s because they wanna sell the house or they… That person kicks that back to me and says, “Hey… ” or to the client, “Hey… ”

0:39:29.5 GS: Yeah.

0:39:31.2 DK: “Have you called… ”

0:39:32.6 GS: That’s kind of… Yeah.

[overlapping conversation]

0:39:34.0 DK: That’s the side benefit. Sure, if you’re referring to these people, they’re more likely to refer to you.

0:39:42.0 GS: That’s not the…

0:39:42.1 DK: That’s the secondary reason.

0:39:42.0 GS: Okay.

0:39:43.1 DK: The primary reason is to get your customers and clients to call you. And the way Bob Wolff, one of the top agents who we featured here, the way he does it, he doesn’t give the vendors out willy-nilly. He didn’t send out a list. He just lets all of his customers know that he has access to everything, from termites to pool cleaning, you name it.

0:39:58.6 GS: Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, yeah.

0:40:00.2 DK: So if you need any of these things, I’m the guy.

0:40:00.8 GS: Yeah.

0:40:01.4 DK: He trains them to call. And I had somebody in a seminar once said, “Guys, isn’t that annoying having all these nuisance calls coming in?” and I go, “Nuisance calls? They’re your clients calling you for help.” They can’t sell a home. They only move once every seven years, whatever [0:40:18.5] ____, but they need pool service every couple years and if they remember to call you for a drive, then they just might remember to call you when they’re ready to move.

0:40:28.0 GS: Right.

0:40:29.4 DK: And then they’ll tell their friends, etcetera. And Bob, no matter what it is… In fact, I needed an engagement ring and I call Bob. I said, “Bob, you seem to know everybody. You always know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy.” And he says, “Yeah, I got a guy,” and sure enough he referred me to a jeweller in Southern California and got the ring from me, yeah.

0:40:48.3 GS: And if you don’t have a guy, just say, “No, but I’ll do some homework for you and get back to you,” and then you have a guy.

0:40:51.7 DK: Yeah. Then you got a guy.

0:40:53.7 GS: Or a girl, or whatever.

0:40:54.3 DK: And I’m not being sexist. I just happen to know the jeweller was a guy.

[laughter]

0:41:01.3 DK: So all of you should have a list of that anyway, so when people call, you got a list of trusted, and if your list is short ’cause you’re new to the businesses, you can talk to agents in your office and you can put it in a database Excel spreadsheet.

0:41:12.7 GS: Right. We had an agent on here from Seattle. His whole business was built on that, knowing people.

0:41:18.3 DK: Yeah.

0:41:19.2 GS: I mean he was the guy to call for anything. I mean obviously house-related would be the center of that but I mean, If you need some… I don’t remember the gentleman’s name off the top of my head, but, yeah, you call him. That’s the guy. So being that person kind of your local expert is awesome.

0:41:36.6 DK: Yeah.

0:41:36.7 GS: So thank, invite, inform…

0:41:41.1 DK: Customer survey…

0:41:43.2 GS: Customer survey.

0:41:44.7 DK: And vendor resource.

0:41:44.8 GS: Vendor resource. There you go. Man, great.

0:41:49.3 DK: And so back to conclude the vendor resource, it gives you reason to call and say, “By the way, whatever, Mr. Or Ms. Buyer, just so you know, we know that you can only move about once every seven years, and we know you always need help relating to your house, so I want to you know we have a list of preferred vendor resources that deal with anything, from moving, to transactions, to home maintenance. And I just want you to know consider calling me, like your yellow pages of whatever,” and just said you’d like to be the source.

0:42:13.0 GS: Awesome.

0:42:14.0 DK: In fact, you could send out a postcard and say, “I am your source,” and then there’s a lot of spins you can do to it.

0:42:21.4 GS: That’s awesome. So a lot of homework for our viewers. I mean those are things that you can do… Today is Wednesday, you can knock out a ton of this stuff by Friday, get yourself some good habits, download some of the documents that’s on the Real Estate Training by David Knox website, and start generating some leads.

0:42:40.6 DK: There you go. If you want, I could just do a quick six steps to…

0:42:45.8 GS: Sure, knock them out. Yeah, that’d be great, the… Yeah.

0:42:48.9 DK: In fact, I think it’s… Let’s see which video it is. I think it’s KFT 136. Let’s see if I remember it. Right. Yes, Six Steps to Converting Leads. And one of the works…

0:43:03.0 GS: You’re amazing, David. [laughter]

0:43:06.1 DK: Lead, conversion steps. You can print this card out and tape it to whatever you want. But it just say this is how I respond to leads and how I recommend anybody respond to lead. Number one is to respond. Answer the phone, and if you can’t, forward your calls to somebody who can do these things. Return a call. If you’re doing any kind of online marketing, you got to have an insight associate. But there are some numbers that says 78% of prospects will do business with the first person that they talk to. And if you answer the phone, you are in that top deal. I remember I needed some carpet cleaning earlier this year and I thought, “How am I ever gonna find somebody?” And I did a Google search on carpet cleaning here in Rancho Mirage and I just started at the top of the list, dial the number, and a guy answered the phone. I said, “You got my business. You answer the phone.” I couldn’t believe it. So if it’s whether you’re calling out or you’re responding to an inquiry on a listing or whatever, the next thing to do is to thank. The first nice, sweetest words out of your mouth would be a ‘thank you’. Introduce yourself first, if you’d like, and say, “Hey, my name is David Knox. Thank you so much,” or you can say, “Thank you so much for calling. My name is David Knox.”

0:44:19.1 DK: Now we’re getting into the word smiting of it, you decide. But say, “Thank you so much for your inquiry. We really appreciate you coming by to the open house. We really appreciate your inquiry on one of our listing. Thank you. Good to hear from you. So what attracted you to this home?” and then get into some… Just messing around questioning, “House’s your house hunting?” And then if you want to prevent somebody from hanging up on you, you can say, “If this home doesn’t work for you, would you like to know of others?” And by the way, this can all be done on text. If that’s the first way you deal with these people, respond to the text. And by the way, on a text, you do have to say your name because they don’t know who you are. In a text, you say, “If this home doesn’t work for you, would you like to know of others?”

0:44:58.1 DK: “By the way, I have another home, it would be a lot easier to tell you verbally. Would it be okay if I called you?” So you wanna get away from texting as quickly as you can and get into a verbal. And then four is to learn key questions, “How soon would you like to be settled? How long have you been looking? If you find a home today that met your needs, what would you do?” And then the next nice thing you could do is just, “Would you like some help? Would you like some help? How can I help you?” And typically when you offer help to a buyer, that’s when you’ll uncover relationship with another agent. Now in a fast-moving market like this, you might jump from step one to five. In other words, somebody calls up on one of your listings and, bam, you answer the phone right away and, “Yeah, we were calling on that listing at such and such, and we’re really interested,” and say, “Great. Would you like to see it? When would you like to see it?”

0:45:41.6 GS: Right.

0:45:42.9 DK: “Could we see it right now?” “Yes, tell me… ” And then I would certainly get their name and cell so you can check it out with them and then… Actually. I just went from step one to step six. So you’ve gotta decide what to do. Now, if you go right from one… Step from one to six, you’re gonna end up with somebody at the front of a house that maybe they can’t afford to pay attention, much less buy this house, so use some judgment, but those are the six steps that I go through when somebody calls on our training.

0:46:09.6 GS: Alright, very good. Man, well, there’s enough, I think, and then some for folks to take away from this today, so I very much appreciate you coming on. Of course, we’d love to have you again at some point in the future.

0:46:22.7 DK: Sure.

0:46:22.9 GS: In between now and then, we’re having some boots on the ground agents talking about what they’re doing, a lot of this kind of stuff. The kind of the market update stuff that you’ve talked and trained about before, we actually just added on our Wiki resource for top and tail for your videos, so it can kind of give this nice little splash, and you come on in a few seconds and say, “Hey, this is Geoff Stertz with your Wiley, Texas market update. If you’re in the Wiley area, here’s what’s happening.” Duh-duh-duh-duh. And it’s got a little tail that you can either add to Canva or if you’ve got video editing software, and so just a way to be that face and expert in your area, so we’re rooting for you.

0:47:01.6 DK: What’s the name of your sponsor again, that’s sponsoring this? I just wanted to…

0:47:05.1 GS: GoSocialAgent.

0:47:06.5 DK: Okay, yeah. So I’d encourage everyone to check it out. And if somebody’s investing in you by sponsoring, check ’em out.

0:47:17.3 GS: Alright, David, well, thank you. We’ll let you go, and I appreciate you giving us a wealth of information.

0:47:23.0 DK: Any final questions from anybody before…

0:47:26.6 GS: I think you kinda answered ’em along the way. There were some good comments back and forth. One person said that they’ve been able to find leads on Nextdoor. They just advertised on nextdoor.com and not even paid ads. They’re all your neighbors. I don’t know if you’re on nextdoor.com, but I’m on there a lot, and I don’t do it as an agent, but for other things, and it’s a great way to stay in front of people as well.

0:47:50.1 DK: Yeah, absolutely.

0:47:51.1 GS: But I’m sure there would be more questions here, but I think I’m drinking from a fire hose right now. [chuckle] There’s a lot of takeaways.

0:48:00.7 DK: Okay, well, just pick one or two and you’re better off doing one thing well than six things not at all.

0:48:06.1 GS: That’s right, that’s right. Well, I hope you have safe travels from California back to Minneapolis area here in the coming days, and again, we’ll look forward to the next time we have you on here.

0:48:14.9 DK: Absolutely. It’s always a pleasure. I value our relationship and it’s an honor to work with you. So thank you.

0:48:20.3 GS: Same here. Alright, for those of you who are still watching, if you haven’t checked out fathomcareers.com, be sure to do so, if you’re not a Fathom agent. With being a Fathom agent, you get stock, a powerful CRM, truly affordable health care, you get a behavioralist transaction management system, multi-tiered support, marketing resources, and so much more. Our next show again is gonna be one of our very own district directors who really has taken advantage of social media and done a lot of things to market himself, Aziz Shabazz, so we’re looking forward to him being on here, but in the meantime, again, visit fathomcareers.com to learn more about a company that works for you, that gives you the tools and technology for your success. Thanks for watching. We’ll see you on the next show.

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