This is just one tiny excerpt from “How To Market Your Real Estate Agent Business” (a 2 hour audio training course) that you can download for free.
Jassen: Okay, moving on, in the outline you’ve already talked about special reports and how to use them could you…? I want to revisit that briefly and talk about special reports in relation to niching. Instead of, you know, directly marketing your real estate brokerage service how could you market a special report to a niche in order to like build a specialty list?
James: Well, there’s lots of different ways to do it. I can think of a couple of examples off the top of my head and that is one of them you could focus on people that own businesses. If you’re going to do more commercial property you could focus on guys that own businesses and talk to them about, you know, ways to save money on their commercial property or industrial property or whatever their doing. That’s one example.
You can target guys that rent property, you could target and mail people that are current renters and tell them how they can stop throwing away rent as a common message for that, you know own your own home we can show you how to get and own a property for the same price you’re paying in rent and if the price of buying entry level property and the interest rate makes it such that the amount they would pay in rent is similar to what the mortgage would be. You can make a pretty compelling case for them to be able to buy a property instead of renting, so you could use things like that in order to generate people to raise their hand, they order the special report, once they get the special report you know their interested in that and then you can contact them about that and say ‘Hey did you get my special report’? ‘Did you have any questions about it’? ‘Did you want to see any of the properties that matched what we talked about in that special report’? ‘I can come down to meet you or you can come to my office and we can sit down and go over those and see how it works for you’.
Jassen: Awesome, awesome, awesome! That’s good stuff right there.
James: It’s just another, another stream of lead generation and prospects. I mean, you’re not going to do one of these things and generate, you know, a hundred leads a day. But, you have enough of them going and you generate a stream of them coming in you will have much more success doing that.
Jassen: You just opened another can of worms, James.
James: Okay. Well, we’re already over time so you might as well, might as well go for it all.
Jassen: Well, with everything that we’re talking about here with all these different marketing methods, I mean, I know you already know the answer to this obliviously are you better off doing one or two of them or are you better off doing as many of them as you possibly can?
James: Well, what do you think?
Jassen: I believe you’re better off doing as many as you can. Yeah, having a wide funnel to get prospects into your database.
James: Right, and there’s a practical side to that, right? I mean, you can’t spend all day doing a thousand different things and have a thousand plates spinning in the air…
Jassen: Right.
James: …however; with that being said, would I rather have one type of system that has all of my leads coming from that that could possibly just go away? No. Would I want to have three, four, five, ten different systems that each represent approximately 10% each of my lead flow? Yeah, because if one goes away then I’m down 10% I’ve replaced it with two other ones or three other ones and I’m back up to where I was and then I can keep my average cost per lead either relatively reasonable or if I’m able to generate profit from one then I can, you know, make sure that overall their free, which is a goal for me by the way.
Jassen: Right.
James: You definitely want to have several different streams of leads coming in both for a variety of quality issues because certain types of things tend to bring slightly better quality type leads, but then also from a quantity issue of, you know, things could go away, things could change, you could be asked not to do something by your broker anymore, you could get, you could find that one generates more complaints than others, you can find, you know things of that nature coming up. So, definitely a variety.
Jassen: Well, and another thing is that if you’re doing all these things and you’re getting results as a real estate agent which problem would you rather have? Not enough prospects walking through the door or too many prospects walking in the door?
James: Well, I could tell you a much better way of looking at the problem. By the way, the best problem is to have more than enough, but I will explain to you in a different light I’ll reframe it. If you have more than, more than you can handle coming through the door what does that do to your price?
Jassen: It increases it.
James: Yeah, if you have more demand for your services than you have a supply you can raise your prices with impunity because as soon as you raise your prices a certain percentage of them are going to go away so that your supply matches demand at the higher price.
Jassen: Right.
James: So, when all of your other competitors are discounting because they can’t quote un-quote find business you’re not only able to charge full rate, but you’re able to charge full rate plus premiums, like $495.00 dollar closing fee, you know, to handle your admin costs, you know, you’re able to do additional marketing, you’re able to charge… For a little while, we talked about this with your business, if I remember correctly, you were talking about charging an upfront marketing cost in order to do listings for properties and high end properties.
Jassen: Yep. Right.
James: And, you know, everyone else was discounting on million dollar properties… they are going to drop their commission down to, you know, 2% or 1 ½% or whatever it is to save them money, no you were going to go charge a higher fee, an upfront marketing cost because you wanted to make sure they were serious and you can do that if you position yourself correctly and you have more people coming in and you can handle yourself, so, I mean, great strategies.
Jassen: Yeah, I put together specifically a marketing proposal that I would present to high end homeowners and it had an upfront fee of $5,000 that they had to, you know, pay that fee in order to pay for all the marketing that was going to be done to sell their home because their home was more difficult to sell and I did not drop my commission on the back end either.
James: Yeah.
Jassen: I mean…
James: And you know there are people out there, there are people out there that are like, ‘oh, you know, no one does that’. ‘No one does that, that’s just unbelievable, no’.
Jassen: Yeah.
James: Okay, well don’t believe it… moving on.
Jassen: Right. Yeah.
James: Because part of this is inner game it’s what you believe can happen…
Jassen: Right.
James: …and then deciding whether or not you’re going to go for it, so.
Jassen: Yeah, sure.
James: Right.
Jassen: And just for the record that was not an original idea I borrowed that idea from another broker. So, there are people doing that.
James: Absolutely, absolutely.
Jassen: But, not in my world… my business is different. (sarcastically)
James: That’s right my business different than yours is, so. You can’t do that in my city it doesn’t happen.
Jassen: Right.
James: In my city it’s different.
Jassen: Right.
James: I hear that all the time.
Jassen: Unless there’s a, unless there’s a law against it, yes you can.
James: Yeah, and just so people know I was doing lead generation nationwide. It wasn’t just in my city.
Jassen: Right.
James: So, this stuff works everywhere. Not just in my city.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. This is just a small part of what you’ll learn in the full training: “The World’s Greatest Real Estate Agent Marketing Course”.
Jassen: So, the next step is this whole mental thing. Staying focused, motivated, you know, working on; you know really keeping with it…
James: Oh, come on this is all touchy, feely kind of stuff; this doesn’t really matter, does it?
Jassen: Oh, yes it does. Hey, what was it you said on the inner game call, something about if you’re not touching, feeling now, you’ll come around eventually?
James: That’s right.
Jassen: Isn’t that what you said, James.
James: I did, I think I did say something like that. A lot of people, they hear this stuff and they immediately just turn us off so, if you’ve zoned out because we’ve started to get all philosophically on you and stuff sorry to hear that, but you know, listen to the CD again, and maybe in a few months maybe you’ll come around by then. But, it’s a hugely important part of being in business.
Jassen: It is and you know, in the interest of time, I only want to touch on one thing in relation to this.
James: Okay.
Jassen: And we do have bonus downloads and you know, entire CD’s to talk about…
James: Yeah, what section is the bonus download for this? Is this under…
Jassen: That is a good question; I need to look that up.
James: Oh, Goals and Personal Development.
Jassen: There we go.
James: Okay.
Jassen: Goals and Personal Development actually covers this step and the next step.
James: Okay.
Jassen: So, you know, that’s where the inner game stuff is, we have another CD called Inner Game where we talk about this in depth, but the big thing here is this whole thing called the law of attraction.
James: Yeah, this is really hot right now.
Jassen: It is because of a DVD and a book called, The Secret, a lot of people are… There’s this huge buzz about the law of attraction and I’m curious to see how long that’s going to last…
James: Yeah, you know, it’s so funny because this stuff has been going on for hundreds of years, there’s been authors writing about it there’s you know, all of the self help and personal development type people have been talking about it, but they haven’t’ been pulling it out and saying, okay, law of attractions the big one…
Jassen: Right.
James: …it’s all been part of this process and, you know, people want to talk about it, but now that this one book has come out there’s been a lot of buzz about it and yeah, I’m curious to see how long it’ll stay in the limelight as well.
Jassen: Yeah, so just to define the law of attraction, it says that you attract into your life that what you think about most.
James: Yeah.
Jassen: So, if all you ever do is worry about your bills, then you’re just going to get more bills.
James: Yeah.
Jassen: Whereas, if you kind of change your mindset and this has been an ongoing process for me…
James: It’s ongoing for everyone.
Jassen: Even for you?
James: Yeah, everyone. Yeah.
Jassen: Well, you’re saying you’re not perfect and you’re not there yet?
James: I’m constantly improving. So, even where I was five years ago I feel like I’m a lot better off now, but I’m still trying to make better improvements.
Jassen: Okay, the core of that is, and I like using the debt versus the wealth mentality to give you an example, but if you think about debt you’re just going to get father in debt, whereas if you focus and concentrate and dwell on building income, you know, generating an income, building wealth, then that’s what you’re going to attract into your life.
James: Okay, now that’s like the philosophical way of approaching it…
Jassen: Exactly.
James: …I’m very, you know, if you don’t want to get into the philosophical feely stuff then look at it purely from a practical sensible point of view.
Jassen: There you go.
James: If you start looking at what can I do in order to get myself away from this situation, focus on where you want to go, well guess what, you’re going to take action and to do things that are positive.
Jassen: That’s right.
James: If you focusing on woe is me I’ve got bills, then guess what, you’re not taking action toward a solution. So, I am personally the touchy, feely, you know I believe all that stuff, but at the same time I used to be like, you know that’s such a… just give me some practical stuff to implement.
Jassen: Right.
James: Okay? Well, it’s both and I’m showing you how to look at it, that if you can’t get into it on a touchy, feely level then go for it on a practical… Listen, if you look at where you want to go and you say, okay, now what can I do to get there and you start taking action toward that don’t think about the negative side of it, don’t worry about the debt, just move forward and practice that then I think that’s a very practical way of thinking of the law of attraction.
Jassen: Yeah, I mean, in a practical sense it’s like you’re saying, basically to what I’m hearing is what you focus on is what you’re going to take action on.
James: Yeah.
Jassen: So, you’re better off taking action on building a business and generating income and wealth than you are to focus on debt and generating more debt…
James: That’s right.
Jassen: …through either activity or inactivity.
James: Alright, you got bills? Stop spending, and start focusing on earning more money.
Jassen: That’s right, a pretty simple equation.
James: Yeah.
Jassen: Okay. Step six is all about personal development. You know, the first the majority of this CD was steps one and two talking…
James: Hold on one second.
Jassen: Okay.
James: Do we have two steps sixes?
Jassen: What’s that? Yeah that’s right, I forgot I mis-numbered them.
James: Oh, okay so we really had seven steps. Lets do this we’ll have six steps and we’re going to give you a bonus step.
Jassen: There you go the bonus step.
James: Yeah, so this is the bonus step we’re talking about, which if you’re keeping track is step seven.
Jassen: I’m sure we’ve complete confused listeners by now.
James: I’m sure. So, this is the bonus step.
Jassen: The bonus step; personal development.
James: Yeah.
Jassen: You know, the first two steps talked about setting up your business and that’s when we talked about the majority on this call because it’s kind of the real meat here, but once you’ve got something set up don’t just stop, keep learning. Learn how to improve things. You know, we talk a lot about continuous and never ending improvement.
James: Yeah, that’s from Tony Robbins, he calls it CANI, it’s based on the concept of Kaizen.
Jassen: Okay. The, you know, continuous systems improvement, learning more about business and you know, I talk a lot about this…
James: Yeah.
Jassen: …the most important thing you can learn about business is probably marketing.
James: Oh, yeah, marketing, focus on marketing first, yeah.
Jassen: I mean, once you understand marketing, a whole new world opens up to you.
James: It does.
Jassen: Now, there are many schools of thought about marketing, there’s a lot of stuff out there, but I personally believe that for an online business what people should focus on from, you know, if they have limited time, a full time job, you know, family responsibilities, etc…
James: Go where the fish are.
Jassen: Exactly.
James: I mean, doesn’t that make sense?
Jassen: Yeah.
James: You don’t really have time to really learn marketing and get traffic to your website…
Jassen: That’s right.
James: …go to websites where there already is traffic. Go to Ebay, go to Amazon, go to Google Base, go to a Yahoo Store…
Jassen: Right.
James: …go to these different places that already have people that, you know, you already have eyeballs on the website now you just want to put your pay job where eyeballs are going to be looking at your thing.
Jassen: Right, and once they do have the time to work on their marketing, education, and self knowledge; this is kind of my list, direct marketing…
James: On the internet?
Jassen: Yeah.
James: Okay.
Jassen: Well, okay, let me ask you, James, is internet marketing any different than regular direct marketing?
James: You know, I think I mis-heard you. When I heard direct marketing I immediately thought of direct mail.
Jassen: Oh, okay.
James: Are you talking about direct response, like you know…
Jassen: I’m talking direct response to marketing.
James: Okay. Okay.
Jassen: Which is what internet marketing is.
James: I would agree, it’s measurable, you know, if you want to put out something and find out what your results are and hold it accountable.
Jassen: Right, and you know we have an entire marketing CD. Another individual that puts out a lot of incredibly great information and about direct response marketing is Dan Kennedy.
James: Oh, don’t tell everyone his name, he’s too good. 
Jassen: Oh, come on.
James: Yeah, Dan Kennedys’ got great stuff he’s got some really inexpensive books and some very expensive boot camps…
Jassen: Right.
James: …and full courses and stuff, so start with the books and I think you’ll like what he has to say.
Jassen: Yeah, and another area where I think people can really help them boost the response rate in ratios on their listings is copywriting.
James: Yeah.
Jassen: Learning copywriting is a really great skill to learn.
James: Now, let me just give a quick example because I know we’re running low on time, but here’s the idea of copywriting. If you have, you know, you put up an auction on Ebay and it gets, you know, twenty-five viewers, if you’re converting one out of twenty-five well then you’ve got that sales ratio.
Jassen: Right.
James: If you can change what’s written on that page and not convert one out of twenty, well, now you’ve improved what you’re getting from the same auction.
Jassen: Right.
James: So, that’s a good way to improve it. You don’t have to bring anymore traffic, you’re now trying to convert more people for that particular page.
Jassen: Right, and by copywriting we’re not talking about, you know, the “c” with the little circle around it…
James: No.
Jassen: …and the next to it.
James: Yeah, we should just call it something else. We should just, you know, writing advertisements.
Jassen: Yeah, that’s what copywriting really is, it’s kind of the psychology and the science of how to write advertising.
James: Yeah, write sales letters, writing sales copy, yeah, we should try to differentiate that in the future.
Jassen: Sure, we should. Now, I do want to put in a plug for one of our other projects.
James: Which is?
Jassen: We have a blog where we do all kinds of marketing tests and we test all different kinds of headlines and you know, a lot of what we do is really testing different marketing messages…
James: Yeah.
Jassen: …and different marketing media.
James: And that’s the video, audio stuff that we have on the…
Jassen: Yeah, we have all kinds of audio visual stuff, text on the blogs and you can access that, it’s completely free and you can access that at ruthlessaccountability.com
James: Okay.
Jassen: Last thing I want to talk about before I sign off.
James: Okay.
Jassen: Once you have started building a business, you know, you’ve got some things out there and you’re starting to set some goals, work on your inner game, the whole, you know, mental stuff, you’ve got your record keeping, you’ve got an entity formed, and you’re kind of chugging along. Start looking at ways to grow your online business. We talked a lot about this with the niche selection thing, but look at related niches, different products within your existing niche. Look at additional market platforms…
James: Yeah.
Jassen: If you’re making $500.00 a month on Ebay, well, why not carry that same thing over to Amazon?
James: Yeah, I would agree. You may not do $500.00 a month on Amazon, you may only do $300.00 a month, but it’s $300.00 more.
Jassen: Exactly, and all of a sudden you’re at $800.00 a month…
James: Exactly.
Jassen: …with really not a lot more in fixed expenses.
James: Yeah, now, you know, for people that are having a hard time with some of the numbers we’re using, lets say its $100.00 on Ebay and now you can go to Amazon and make $50.00.
Jassen: Right.
James: Okay. So, use those numbers.
Jassen: Yeah, so, you know, expand into different niches, products within a niche, add, you know, an additional market place by which I mean sell stuff on another website, you know, learn more about marketing, lets see learn more about marketing, learn more about marketing…
James: Let me sense a pattern here. Do you maybe want people to learn a little bit more about marketing?
Jassen: Yes. Marketing is where it’s at, there’s a reason, James, where I always say marketing is our favorite topic to talk about.
James: We always end up talking about it.
Jassen: You know, it doesn’t matter what we’re talking about, we can be talking about starting an online business, we could be recording a real estate CD, we always come back to marketing and there’s a reason for it.
James: So, you mean the accounting and finance calls about marketing and the business selection calls about marketing…
Jassen: Actually, I think we did spend quite a bit of time on the accounting call talking about marketing.
James: Well, that’s the thing, we have to try to like get ourselves back on track and so I say ‘ok lets talk about accounting again’ because marketing is so important and it’s related to all these things .
Jassen: It is and, you know, a lot of people that start say a local business, you know, take an electrician; an electrician can be incredibly great at being an electrician.
James: He could be the best.
Jassen: He could be the best electrician in town and by background I’m an electrician…
James: Really? Oh yeah, okay.
Jassen: Yeah, I was an electrician in the Navy for five years.
James: That’s right.
Jassen: And that’s why I use that example all the time, but by trade, I’m trained as an electrician. Well, you can be the best electrician in the world and you can have the best service, you can have the best rates, you can have the quickest response time, but if you can’t put out marketing to get clients to call you…
James: You’re going to starve.
Jassen: You’re going to starve.
James: Yeah, that’s true.
Jassen: So, no matter what business you’re in everything comes back to marketing eventually.
James: I agree.
Jassen: So, have we hammered that home hard enough, you think?
James: I think so and I think we’re way over time.
Jassen: We are we are. James, I appreciate your time, thanks for joining me on this call.
James: You’re welcome, I had a great time.
Jassen: Yeah, this was a great call and I look forward to talking with you in the future, probably about marketing.
James: That sounds good, alright thanks, Jassen.
Jassen: Thank you, James, bye, bye.
Until my next post,
James
I am the type of guy that takes full responsibility for my results… both good and poor. I think you need to adopt a similar belief if you want to be become a successful real estate investor (or, more generally any type of success in business). Why?
Consider the alternative: let’s say a friend of yours is the type of person that blames everyone and everything other than themselves for things that go wrong in their life. Maybe they do not take credit for the good even. In both cases, they are giving power to other people and their environment has having the ability to impact and affect their results. If the environment and others are even partly responsible, it is easy to make excuses that I would have done this and that if only… and then fill in the blank with whatever excuse you want.
By allowing themselves to make excuses and believe the excuses, your friend takes away their ability to see challenges and know that they have the power to overcome that challenge and still achieve their result. If they stop working because they accept the challenge as a defeat instead of just another inconvenience to overcome, they are voluntarily giving up.
Personally, when I succeed, I take responsibility for it and acknowledge the help I had along the way. When I do not achieve the result I wanted, it is always me. I can see things I should have done better or differently… not in a way that creates regret necessarily, but in a way that empowers me to improve myself and try again and work harder the next time.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. Want some accountability in your business? Upgrade to our Real Estate Investor Bronze Membership today.
“If real estate investing is so great, why doesn’t everyone do it?” Maybe you’ve heard that or even thought about it before. How about the other variation I get: “If real estate investing is so easy, why doesn’t everyone do it?”
There are many things in life that are both great and easy, yet the overwhelming majority of people do not do it. I can think of two major examples off the top of my head.
First, frugality. If you are spending more than you earn, it is both great (and prudent) as well as easy to stop and put money aside in savings, yet there is a large part of our population that continues to spend more than they earn and go deeper into debt. Why? It is easy to not buy extra stuff (just don’t go to the places you can buy those things). It is easy to set a budget and check the budget before each purchase, but many people don’t.
Second, body weight. Body weight is just like money except the currency is Calories. If you eat more than you spend, you gain weight. If you have a balanced Caloric intake with what you expend, you maintain your weight. And, lastly, if you spend more than you take in, you lose weight. Despite all the crazy diet programs, shakes, vitamins, supplements and other tools for losing weight, it really is a simple intake versus use issue. By the way, I am not saying that what you eat isn’t important, but the BIG factor is Calories.
So, if both living within your means and living at your ideal weight is both great for you and easy to do, why don’t people do it? Maybe it is the same reason they don’t invest in real estate.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. Need help implementing what you already know you need to do? That’s part of what we provide in our Real Estate Investor Bronze Membership. Upgrade now.
I was fortunate enough to have some great real estate investing mentors over my career as a real estate investor and one of my mentors, the late Brent Grove, taught me the importance of being on the right side of the desk.
He taught me that you should set up your business to have people come to you and ask you if you want to buy their house. You do not want to chase people and ask them if they will sell you their house. There is quite a bit of subtlety to this business philosophy, which I will explore in this article.
One of the biggest benefits of having people approach you instead of approaching them is that, when they come to you, you are automatically established as a credible expert. They came to you for help with their situation or problem and while you still have to strengthen your credibility with them, it is much easier than having to convince someone you’ve called – who has never heard of you – that you are credible.
This benefit often shows up for us as real estate investors when we ask those somewhat sensitive questions about the seller and their property. For example, in my script for gathering information about a property, I ask if there is a mortgage on the property. If you have not established yourself as credible or you are chasing leads, this is a very, very difficult question to get answered – but when people call me I rarely run into a problem getting an answer. If you don’t believe me, try calling 10 sellers from the newspaper or from a classified ad website and ask them for info about their loan balance. Even though it’s on public record, you’re likely to get very few people who will feel comfortable enough to tell you.
Now, try asking that same question to someone who calls you on marketing you have out saying that you buy houses. For me, the difference is extreme: better than 9 out of 10 give it to me without hesitation.
The benefit of not chasing and being on the right side of the desk is also apparent when you make an offer. Make a lower than expected offer to someone who you called out of the blue and they’re likely to be offended. Make a lower than expected offer to someone who called you and you will get a much different result because they came asking what you could do and you told them what you could do. A different perspective yields a much different outcome.
Overall, I think you will find a huge benefit to having marketing out and having motivated sellers and buyers calling you rather than chasing down sellers that have not already pre-sold themselves on you and your service before they picked up the phone to call you.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. I had some great consultants and mentors… do you? Sign up for our Real Estate Investor Bronze Membership now.
Investing in real estate is all about the numbers. It’s about looking at enough properties to find the ones worth making offers on. It’s about crunching the numbers to see if a deal makes sense–whether you’re doing a fix and flip or a long-term rental or rent-to-own. Finally, it’s about making enough offers to finally get the deals that you want for your portfolio.
The final point about making a lot of offers means that investing in real estate is a game of persistence. Few of us have greatly structured deals just handed to us – especially when we are first starting out. It’s only through hustling, through making lots of offers and pushing through frustrating rejections that we finally become investors.
But persistence pays – in multiple ways. Not only do you succeed by finally closing on some great investment properties and gain sweet satisfaction from achieving your goals, but you also gain momentum from your persistence. After awhile, people do start calling you with deals, because you have been making offers and you have been networking. Things start to happen… seemingly on their own – because you initially put in the time to make it happen.
But it takes time to get there and continued effort to maintain your investing momentum.
The key is persistence. Decide that you will look at 10 deals per week – or whatever you have the time and appetite for – then don’t stop until you have acquired your first investment property. You will hear “no” many times and you will see some hot deals disappear before you have the time to get your offer in, but remember, real estate is a game of persistence and numbers. Your deals are out there, you just need to persist until you find them.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. Many real estate investors find that having a consultant and coach really helps to keep them motivated and helps to push them to achieve their goals. I strongly recommend tapping into our Real Estate Investor Bronze Membership which includes access to a wide assortment of training materials plus the on-going benefit of consulting sessions and new live training that is included with your membership. Sign up today and start profiting.
