Steve LaMothe is Sacramento’s number 1 listing agent, and the last time we had him on the show, he shared what he’s doing to get listings in a highly competitive market. But he’s not just generating listing leads, he’s actually winning them by dealing with the major seller pain points and providing solutions to them. Today he talks about two unique programs he’s created to turn leads into signed contracts. 

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1. The Power Buyer Offer - With low inventory, it’s extremely difficult for people to sell a home and buy their next one. Steve helps people buy before they sell by financing a trade-in program and providing a cash-backed offer without a contingency. He very rarely ever has to buy the home, and instead normally ends up successfully winning the house. This program increases the offer acceptance rate by 70%, and is a unique value proposition that no one else in the market has. It is solving this pain point better than any iBuyer!

2. Pre-listing improvements/Concierge Program - The overwhelming majority of buyers are looking for a move-in ready home, but most sellers don’t have the funds in hand to do a renovation before they list. Steve launched a concierge program which allows them to renovate now and then pay Elevate Realty Group on closing, interest-free, typically renovating in two weeks. Most sellers prepare to list their homes well in advance of when agents typically become privy to that knowledge. They often start preparing to list three to four months in advance, starting to do repairs and scheduling vendors. The concierge program allows Steve to get in front of sellers way sooner than when agents typically would, and helps him to get ahead of the customer journey. He also manages the renovation for the seller, which solves another pain point for them. 

Steve’s website: https://www.homesbyelevate.com/

Download Steve's radio ads for FREE by filling out this form. 

Our show’s very own co-host, Chris Watters, is one of the top-selling agents in the world, with thousands of listings in and around Austin, Texas. He also sells franchises to real estate agents, ramping up their production and selling leads in a spectacularly short time. 

Today he shares what he’s doing to get sellers to call his team and list their homes. He also reveals details on the exciting marketing experiment he just launched. 

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1. Brand Ambassadors - Chris' high speed of success when it comes to getting his franchisees trained is spectacular. One of the agents in his franchise went from 25 listings a year to 100! The key to this success is getting vendors in the agent's market to contribute money to lead generation and working in tandem on lead conversion. From home inspection to title and mortgage, the agent was able to make an extra $500 to $2,500 a month on average.

2. Seller Counseling Interviews - If you want to turn outbound cold calls into set appointments and keep those appointments, the secret to success is a long questionnaire that you do with the seller. Taking the client through this series of questions will make them more emotionally invested in showing up to the appointment. 

3. Messaging - The marketing message that's going to get low-intent sellers to call you is sending them comps for their area, or sending a piece of direct mail to them, informing them that you have motivated sellers. You can even send them a printed official offer letter along with it. The message would go something like this:

"Thank you for opening this! I have a motivated buyer that's very interested in buying your home off-market in a private sale. They are looking for a home with X number of bedrooms, X number of bathrooms, and they are expecting to pay X price range. Enclosed is a letter of intent, and I can write you a full purchase agreement with a specific offer price after a brief preview of your home, which we can do over FaceTime or Zoom or with an estimator who can come and look at your home."

"The buyer is prepared to pay 100% full market price or higher for your home as an all-cash sale. You'll receive a strong, straightforward offer with a short due diligence period and proof of funds. We've sold 5,000 homes in and around Austin, and we have 356 client reviews on Google. The real estate market is so hot with buyers looking for off-market deals that you can skip the hassle of a traditional sale—no open houses, no people in your home. Your sale will be painless and smooth."

Chris is testing out sending 1,000 signature-required direct mail pieces, so watch this space to find out the results of his campaign. 

Download Chris' ebook, "50 Ways to Get Listings Right Now," for FREE by filling out this form. 

Steven Gendel sells 40 units a year in Livingston, New Jersey, with a volume of $30 million. He’s spending money on high-end predictive seller data to determine where to focus his marketing efforts. With 10 years in the high-tech and AI space, Steven has a keen interest in data and how it can be leveraged in real estate today. His listing lead generation strategy is about focus, simplicity, and clarity. 

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Steven believes agents need to change their mindset from mass marketers on a mass scale to micro marketers on a mass scale, and using the data we have at our fingertips is a huge component of this. We can build a large business and make a lot of money by keeping it simple. In this episode, he shares how predictive data helps him cut through his database to reach sellers. 

1. Working his warm database to find likely sellers - Steven’s top listing lead source is his database backed by predictive seller data. Every six months, he uploads his database of 3,200 contacts into Likely.AI’s database refresh, which produces a ranked list of who is most likely to move in the next nine months, based on life events and purchase behavior. Armed with this information, Steven can focus on working the people with the highest scores and nurturing everyone else. 

Likely.AI scores the database from 99% in the next nine months down to 52%. The people at the top of the list are the ones Steven will call. This time around, the 15 contacts that were at the top of his list turned into four listings. You need a way to get sellers, but you don’t want to have to sift through your entire database. Using Likely.AI, you can narrow down who wants to sell right now and who you need to be reaching out to.

2. Nurturing the sellers scoring 75% or less - Since Likely.AI provides a ranking of who is most likely to sell, there are going to be sellers who aren’t necessarily thinking of making a move immediately but will in the future. For these people, Steven has a system to nurture those leads and stay in touch with them through direct mail. Anyone who scores 75% or less is going to be on this nurture list. 

3. Unknown Likely.AI seller leads - Steven also leverages Likely.AI’s unknown seller leads in his county, targeting specific areas and ZIP codes. This produces a list of 400 to 800 people every month. In addition, Steven does a five-touch direct mail campaign using Yellow Letters Complete, mailing one letter and taking a 10-day break.

Download Steven's direct mail examples for FREE by filling out this form. 

Ylopo manages $25 million of media a month and generates thousands of leads for real estate agents and teams. When we were looking for a guest with a lot of knowledge and expertise around Facebook Ads and Google Ads, Ylopo was the only choice. Today, Ylopo’s co-founder and CMO, Juefeng Ge joins us to talk all about their listing lead strategies. He shares 3 impressive analytics-backed ad strategies that their clients are using to generate and convert leads in markets across the country. 

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1. Trade-up Buyer Leads to Homeowners - Ylopo generates 15-20% of their seller leads by actually running buyer ads. When people are looking to buy a home, you can be sure that many of them are also selling, so this marketing campaign allows you to capture these leads. 

Over the last year, Ylopo has put more money into a dynamic lead capture process where there are different sets of branching questions, based on the answers given by the consumer. Ylopo has found that forms that engage with the audience lead to a bump in conversion rates instead of the typical name-email address-phone number form structure. By capturing 12-15 pieces of data before they even ask for a consumer’s contact details, their forms get maximum information and engagement. When you take the consumer through a profile building experience, you capture both a higher quality and a higher converting lead, and you build trust. 

2. 30-second branded video ads - One listing lead generation strategy that Ylopo is seeing a lot of success with is short, social media-ready videos run as ads on Facebook. Running a 20-minute vlog-style video as an ad doesn’t work because it would be too long. Instead, a 15-30 second video with b-roll footage of you interacting with your team, overlaid with text explaining your value proposition is more effective.

With digital video marketing, the real sophistication lies in the audience targeting and remarketing. You can create a series of 3 videos, the first video being the 30-second video. Create an audience of people who viewed the video for at least 10 seconds, and then run a second video ad with a tighter story or different offer. You can then run a longer vlog style video to people who have watched the second video because they have built trust by coming down your funnel. 

3. Google PPC - Ylopo is seeing results with PPC campaigns that target highly specific target keywords like “sell my home fast” and “what’s my home worth?” These kinds of ads are highly competitive so the ad creative and the user experience have to be really good. You can make your ad different by injecting dynamic elements or expertise-driven elements like live market data into your ads, for example “48 homes just sold in your area” or “the average listing price point has gone up.” You can easily get this data by using Homebot, which can provide up to 20 dynamic data points to each consumer. 

Download Juefeng Ge's Facebook video ads for FREE by filling out this form. 

Isabelle Stonebraker does 150 listings and 75 wholesale deals a year in Northern Arizona, with a unique strategy for finding and contacting ready-to-sell leads that no one else has. By having a wholesale investment business and a retail business running as separate entities, Isabelle maximizes her lead generation and can get deals where other agents can’t. Adding an investment division to your business gives you more opportunity and the ability to use your skill set more creatively, especially when it comes to generating leads. 

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Today she walks you through her brilliant cold offer strategy, from finding the leads to her highly efficient direct mail process. 

1. Cold Offers - Isabelle has come up with an amazing process for finding investment leads. Using sites like Propstreet and PropertyRadar, she compiles the homes in a subdivision of homes worth $300,000, calculates 75% of that value, and from that subtracts $16/square foot for estimated repair costs. Specifically, she’s looking for homes where the offer price works out to be more than the seller originally paid, and to those owners, she sends out an actual offer letter. Mailing 2,000 letters a week and paying $3.13 apiece, her conversion is 0.15%, so for every 680 homes mailed she gets a deal, closing 8-10 wholesale deals a month. To get homeowners to open them, the direct mail pieces have to look like personal letters or cards. 

2. Lead providers - Isabelle also generates wholesale leads from lead providers like Fast Home Offers. These sites typically want 30-day, all-cash sellers, and it’s a guaranteed lead with a legitimate contact that’s not listed on the MLS. They pay anything from $200 to $600 per lead, so in order to make money, you have to convert at least 1 out of every 4 leads. 

3. Agent Referrals - Working in Northern Arizona for a long time and being well-known for doing investment deals has allowed Isabelle to generate deals through fellow agents. If an agent comes across anything that wouldn’t be right for a listing, they refer it to Isabelle and she gets it as a wholesale listing. 

Download Isabelle's cold offer letter template and contract for FREE by filling out this form.

Kimo Quance is on track to close 163 transactions this year with a volume of $100 million in San Diego, California. In a competitive market with higher price points and thousands of agents and iBuyers, Kimo pulls in between 500 and 700 listing leads every single month thanks to his internet lead generation strategy. He has learned how to fine-tune his search engine visibility as well as how to generate seller leads from buyer leads. In today’s episode, he shares exactly how he does this. 

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1. PPC - Kimo generates the majority of his listing leads from Google PPC ads, spending $3,500 to get a minimum of 500 leads a month, which results in an average of 3 deals. He ranks #1 for the search term “homes for sale in Santee, California," and generates a ton of listing business, even though his PPC campaigns are focused on buyers. Kimo’s client acquisition ROI blows past the national average, and part of his success can be attributed to the work he’s put into building a highly authoritative, relevant, and fast website, which reduces what Google charges per lead, and helps Kimo rank higher in organic searches. 

2. Sphere - Kimo stays in touch with his database with Vyral Marketing emails. He also sends quarterly personal letters to a few hundred past clients, and he has found that using physical mail to communicate with his most valuable contacts is worth paying for. 

3. Paid Lead Providers - So far this year, Kimo has generated 10 deals from lead providers like Homelight and Opcity who charge a 25 - 35% referral fee for every listing. Most agents are willing to pay 20% of the cost of the commission to acquire a lead. With lead providers, they take on the risk of getting that lead so paying an extra 5% of the lead acquisition is actually good, especially because the listing to lead conversion is so high.

Download two of Kimo's quarterly client letters for FREE by filling out this form.

Mikki Ramey is the number one agent on Zillow in Charleston, South Carolina, and her business benefits greatly from organic search, which makes up 30% of her total transactions. She has built a ton of visibility and trust in her market because of those reviews, along with working a unique niche—nurturing relationships with medical personnel and her database. Today on the show, you’ll learn how she does it. 

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1. Reviews - Mikki has generated 550 reviews on Zillow, and she also focuses on Google and Realtor.com reviews. She took advantage of client reviews as soon as Zillow allowed them, which is part of the reason why she has so many positive reviews. She shares how she uses verbal communication to prime her clients throughout the customer journey, from the listing presentation to the end of the transaction. To incentivize her clients to post their reviews on all three platforms, she gives them a $50 Amazon voucher. She asks for the reviews right after the money is wired into their account, using that emotional high point to piggyback on the ask for a review, which has been very effective. 

2. Medical professionals/residency coordinators - As a medical spouse, Mikki taps into a niche that she has a lot of insight into, residents who have just moved to Charleston. She has built relationships with resident program coordinators, and they essentially function as her affiliates. She gets the coordinators to promote her to residents, informing them that she’s available as a Realtor, and then she maintains this relationship for the doctor’s entire employment journey. To build her list of medical professionals in Charleston, Mikki does a ton of research to get a list of all the residents in the area, and then she looks up tax records to see who is a homeowner. She operates this part of her lead generation as a separate referral network, and even created a site, drmoves.com to help medical personnel across the country find homes. The riches are in the niches, and by attacking on a narrow front, Mikki has created a stable lead source that keeps on giving. 

3. Sphere of Influence - Mikki’s third lead source is her sphere. Her policy is to “feed the database like it’s a hungry teenager," and the most effective nurture strategy is using Homebot through YLOPO to send a monthly home valuation. She’s also making content to mitigate objections before they even come up. The number one concern sellers have is where to move after the house is sold. Mikki’s strategy: buy a cheaper house as an investment property, live in it until they buy their dream house, and then rent it out. 

Download Mikki's Client Review System for FREE by filling out this form. 

In 2020, Dan Beer sold 438 homes and earned an excess of $10 million in GCI in San Diego, a staggeringly competitive market with thousands of agents. In the San Diego area, Dan’s brand is virtually inescapable—he dominates in billboard, TV, and radio advertising. A large portion of his massive success comes from his sphere, with targeted nurture strategies that run throughout the year. He has also created a marketing arsenal that drives massive value to everyone in his CRM. Today on the show you’ll learn how he does it:

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1. Sphere of Influence - Dan runs an effective 33-36 touch program for every single person in his CRM. He shares how his team puts out two educational videos each month, which are then repurposed on social media, touching all the online, PPC, Zillow, and open house leads. They have a stream of constant, decently relevant videos going out to up to 1,500 people. 

Their 1,500 past clients get monthly mail and an invitation to three events a year: a bingo night, a blockbuster movie night, and an “Octobeer” fest. Additionally, the clients who have ranked them as an eight, nine, or ten in likelihood to refer them get physical gifts—Dan is spending $120 on each one every year.

2. Farming - Dan’s farm has grown from 2,500 to 30,000 homes, and he’s touching all of these people twice a month with a monthly newspaper, monthly postcards, digital touches, and billboards on their driving routes. It’s no coincidence that the ZIP codes they farm are the ones where they are by far the greatest market shareholder. 

To identify the right ZIP code, Dan chose a neighborhood with a lot of community pride, an area with a high neighbor communication rate, and where people show up to community events often. 

3. Mass Media - Dan’s third source of leads is mass media: radio ads, TV ads, and billboards. He likes to think of his mass media strategy as a high-impression, far-reaching market coverage that boosts every other lead generation channel they have running.

Download Dan’s business plan for FREE by filling out this form! 

Gary Ashton has built the number one RE/MAX team in the world, with $1 billion in GCI. His team is also the Official Real Estate Team for the Tennessee Titans NFL team, and the Nashville Predators NHL team. Gary made a huge commitment to and investment in a massive staffing, branding, and advertising operation.

The key to Gary’s system is sports marketing, putting money towards long-term branding, hiring licensed local ISAs, and clever radio ads with catchphrases that stick in people’s minds. His team is layering in multiple pieces to create undeniable recognition and credibility in the Nashville market.

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You’ll learn how Gary generates thousands of leads with a unique marketing strategy including his “get your dream address without the stress” slogan. His main lead generation tactics are: 

1. The long-term branding play - Gary has invested in billboard and radio advertising, but that isn’t something to dive into too early. Don’t do billboards and expect the phone to start ringing immediately. Billboards don’t work by themselves, they amplify what you’re already doing. Create a solid foundation over time. 

2. Memorable radio ads - Gary’s ads stay top of mind with the use of catchphrases like “don’t sell without the intel” and “get your dream address without the stress.” By sticking to these catchphrases over the years, his team is instantly recognizable to the consumer. 

3. The emotional strength to spend on marketing - To emotionally withstand the pain of paying thousands of dollars in advertising and staffing and waiting to get the return, do it in small bite-sized chunks. Make it a gradual increase in spending, and stack up the small stones. 

4. Branding and marketing at the highest level - Gary leverages his status as the Official Real Estate Team for the Tennessee Titans NFL team and the Nashville Predators NHL team for brand association, credibility, and visibility. Instead of the standard sponsor deal where he gets a suite, he chose to get promotional tickets and to have a tailgate at the stadium. Instead of marketing to 12 people in a stadium suite, he can market to 30,000 people walking past the tailgate. He has further entrenched his association with the team by having TV ads running during games and radio ads presented by the voice of the Tennessee Titans. 

5. Licensed ISAs - Gary's team uses in-house licensed ISAs who are based in Nashville. They know the market and they can talk to buyers and sellers with authority. That way, the client never feels like they are being handed over to another assistant. 

Note how Gary uses a concerted but consistent strategy to help the customer create their own journey. 

Join us for this interview and learn how to layer in all the pieces of branding and marketing that will pay off in lead generation!

Andrew Duncan sold 460 listings last year in Tampa, Florida. Andrew has catapulted himself into being a local celebrity and the Tampa expert on all things real estate. A large part of his success comes from his mass media strategies. After years of building his reputation through radio, billboards, and other avenues, Andrew has learned the ins and outs of mass media advertising and messaging. Today on the show you’ll learn how he does it. 

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1. Radio Advertising - Andrew has figured out how to spend his advertising dollars differently over each quarter of the year to get maximum ROI. He shares that he spends the most marketing dollars in Quarters 4 and 1 as opposed to the summer months, because by the summer most people have already made the decision to sell and who they will sell with. He consistently has commercials running on radio stations that cater to his target audience (not wasting money on stations that have a high rate of teenaged listeners) and has built up ten years of impressions. As competitors like iBuyers move into the market, Andrew has found that the best radio ad message right now is offering his own instant cash offer. 

2. Sports Endorsements - Andrew has been the official real estate agent of the Tampa Bay Lightning for six years now. Because of all of the other mass advertising Andrew was doing and the reputation his brand created, the team approached him to become an advertising partner. 

3. Building and Development - Another of Andrew’s listing pillars is becoming his own client. After being in the business as long as Andrew has and generating enough income, it made sense for him to start buying and developing his own land. This helps with getting seller leads primarily by sign impressions. He eventually plans to have his own small construction company to build his own houses on the land he’s acquired. 

Join us for this episode to learn from the master of mass media on how to find listings in the ongoing listing-scarce market!