Episode Transcript
So this is a. Most of this system that we're going to talk about right now is based on the matchmaking system from Agent Rise. I've just taken it and added much more, a few more steps to it. So you can actually go click down and follow these steps and you will convert leads. We've done it several times.
We've done it. We keep doing it. This is the system that we use for our buyers. Maybe a new agent that comes onto the team. This is the system they follow and what they get. They'll get closings. They get transactions. So. Um, today, did I miss anything in that in leading up? Nope, nope, great intro and then, uh, this is buyer flowchart.
Buyer flowchart. Okay, so, um, stick around to the end, I'm going to show you how, I'm going to tell you how to get this buyer flowchart. I'm going to make it available to all of you, um, so stick around to the end and we will, uh, we'll make sure to, to, uh, To make that available for you all. All right. Um, so anyway, so buyer, so buyer leads.
So we're, however you get your buyer leads, um, we have a, we have a system for agents that come onto the team. Um, open house is the, the pillar with which we get, we chase leads, um, as an agent that comes onto our team. So, but it doesn't matter if it's open house, Um, if it's, if you use Facebook leads, if you're buying leads online, wherever your lead is coming from, we're going to start with the lead comes into your system, like your lead is, it hits your CRM.
And let me just pause for a minute just to talk about CRM. I am a firm believer of using CRM. It keeps you organized. It keeps your leads organized. As you get more and more and more and more leads, you, um, are there, they're there. Organized and ready to go for you. Don't be intimidated by a CRM. They're not most of them.
I never met one or haven't met one yet. That was. Easy and intuitive at first, but once you start learning it, once you start playing around in there, you, it becomes easier and easier and easier. And then there, and if what I do with my CRM, I use KV core, especially when I was learning the system, I just went to YouTube and whatever it was, I was trying to do was like, uh, change my, change my auto campaign to my leads.
And I would type that into YouTube and boom, there's an agent out there that made a YouTube video. I wish I could say that I made all the YouTube videos, you would just listen to me, but that I did. I don't have made any YouTube videos on a CRM. I'm not an expert, but I can tell you there's a lot of people out there that can share that information.
So, um, learn a CRM. That's it. That's like step one. Get a CRM and learn it. Um, but you can use the system without a CRM, but you will find that if you are pulling in a lot of leads, you're going to get lost and confused and it's going to be a little bit nutty. So we're going to, we're going to talk from, we're going to make the assumption that you're using a CRM and we're going to go from there.
So, um, lead comes in. First thing to do, they go into your CRM, like we just said, to beat that horse. Then, um, you're going to assign a campaign, an automatic campaign to them, depending on where the, the lead came from. So if it came from an open house, you've already had a conversation with them. You may have their search criteria already, because that's the goal.
When you're talking to buyers, you won't, you don't want to. Be their best friend. You don't want them to, uh, invite you over for, for, uh, dinner on the holidays. Like that's not what you're going for. The only goal you should have when you're talking to a buyer for the first time is to get their criteria.
What kind of house they looking for? Where are they looking? What, what kind of house they want. So we'll get to that in a minute. If you haven't gotten that information, they go into your, to your CRM, they go on an automatic campaign that's, that's, you know, the first couple. Emails and texts are regarding.
Did you, what you, um, how they got into your, into your system. So if it's a specific ad on Facebook, you're going to refer to that ad on Facebook, if it was an open house, it's going to be like, Hey, thanks for coming to the open house, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, um, And to get, and having people sign in and getting their information is for another, another episode, we're, we're going to, we're going to assume that we've gotten that stuff and they're going into the CRM now.
So we start off, we use a system called the 5 4 1 system, and I, I've kind of begged, borrowed and stole that system from other agents, um, really successful teams. And that we know that probably common household names within the industry. Um, I've kind of hodgepodge things together. I've come up with a system of five, four, one.
So for the first five days, um, before you've gotten their criteria, before you've really talked to them and found out what kind of house they want, the first five days, they're going to get an email, they're going to get a text message, and they're going to get a phone call from you. All those things. Now the email and the text message automated from your CRM.
You can see now the CRM's, you know, coming, being more and more important. What do you think? Have you ever, have you ever tried to do that, James, without using the CRM, without using automation? I have and it's a lot of extra effort. It's a lot of effort. Yeah, it is sustainable. No, not even close. When you get more and more leads, it gets to be a little bit, well, not a little bit, it gets to be impossible to keep up with everything.
Three's a lot of leads to do all this with. Yeah, for sure. One's a lot. So the first five days, you get an email. Automated email. So the lead comes in as soon as it hits your CRM, it's set up to automate the lead goes out, or I'm sorry, the email goes out to the lead, a text message goes out to the lead saying, Hey, I just emailed you with the list you were looking for.
I just emailed you the information. Um, you know, if they're signing in electronically at a open house, I just emailed you the disclosure for the listing. You visited, whatever, whatever. Um. That's, that's like the first text message in email. Um, and then the email of course has a link to whatever information you promised them.
Um, then the, you want to set them up also, you want to have trigger them to, um, get on your, a weekly email, which we'll talk about in a minute. You want to make sure that they're set up for search alerts. Now the question would be like, TJ, but we haven't gotten their criteria yet. How are we going to set them up for search alerts?
Well, they, they probably came into your system because of. A particular listing, a particular house, definitely. If they were at the open house, we use Facebook ads that are, that are geared towards specific kinds of homes. If not a specific listing, it's at least like, um, you know, houses in. A specific suburb of Atlanta on an acre or more, like, so, so we'd have, so we have a broad criteria for them.
Set up a search alert. And we even set them up. Most of the time we'll set them up with a monthly market report as well for the, um, for the zip code. And this is why CRM gets more and more important because this, all this stuff is in your CRM and most of the CRMs, just about every CRM that I know of has a monthly market report that you can automatically email.
They have the search alerts. But you can email people, set people up for so, um, that's all designed in these, in these, uh, customer, um, relation management systems. Um, so that, so that's it. That's the setup right there. So you haven't spoken to them five, five days. Email, text, call until you get ahold of them, right?
Then if you haven't gotten ahold of them, the five, four, one, the four in that system is you've been through the five days. You haven't gotten a response. They haven't responded to your text. They haven't called you back. They haven't answered the phone. So then you go, I mean, you can't, you can't sustain calling them every single day until they, that's just a little bit stalkerish and freaky.
We're not going to do that. We're going to back off a little bit after the fifth day, we're going to go to for four weeks, once a week. You're going to reach out with a text, email, phone call still after that four weeks. So we're, what, we're a month and five days, just about, just a little over a month into trying to contact this person with the intention of just getting their criteria.
Then you still haven't talked to them. Then they just go to a long term, um, campaign, so to speak. And you're, you're sending automatic emails out every now and again, text messages. So you're doing like one touch. So it could be an email, it could be a text, um, it could be a phone call, but all these folks are still getting your weekly email.
And, um, they're getting the marker reports and all the stuff that you set them up for already. Now, I want to touch on the weekly email. So you want, you want to take this one, James? I feel like I'm talking a lot. I'm gonna take a sip of my coffee. Well, the weekly email, I mean, it's, it's, it's basically just a way to stay in front of your sphere or in front of your people in your, in your CRM.
Um, and we get it from, uh, Keep Concurring Matters. And, you know, it's just great information about the markets, great information about what's going on in, in, in the, in the. in your neighborhoods or actually in the country. And so it's just weekly, um, email and they get a chance to read. And you know, in top of that email, there's also portions of that that I can check out, um, you know, your blog as well as stuff about their home.
They would go into a listing to see what they want to move into. Um, there are links in there as well. So it's always asking them something, give them the opportunity to click on something. Yeah, there's calls to action in there for sure. But the, the, uh, so Keeping Current Matters is an awesome resource.
It's amazing. You can actually, um, if you subscribe to them, you, most of you probably know this about Keeping Current Matters. They do a great job with marketing, but you can get a blog that is written by them and their people and it's, it's, um, branded to you. So with branded to your team or branded to you as a, as an agent.
So you can, um, what we do is we just, I just pull a blog that pertains to buying a home. And we send it out in their weekly email. If they click on the blog, the blog pulls up, it's got our team name. It's got our contact information. If they click contact us. I get an email that somebody has come through my KCM blog.
It's pretty cool. I like it. And we don't get paid. I actually pay them. So, but I do enjoy the service. It's great. Um, so that goes, there's a different blog every week. It's a different subject to try to get people to click on it. And then it's, then like, like James said, there's, there's a, you know, a search for homes.
Here, get a marker report, you know, that it's a very, it's a, it's a template of an email. The only thing that changes is the blog every week and you can set that up in your CRM to go out automatically as well. Um, or you can use constant contact. You can set these things up, uh, automation. If you haven't picked up on this right now is the key to converting more buyer leads.
The more automation you have, the better. Until you start talking to somebody. So we're going to get into that now. So, um, like I said, lead comes in, you set them up for all the stuff we just talked about. You call them, call them, say now you get a hold, you get them on the phone at whatever point in that process, you get them on the phone and you get their search criteria.
That's the, that's your one goal. You want to get their search criteria. You want to know what they're looking for. And what we do, we use the acronym LP MAMA. I don't know if anybody's ever heard that before. It's about half the agents I talked to have heard that acronym before. LP MAMA stands for Location, Price, Motivation, Agent, are they working with an agent?
Money, how are they going to pay for it? And then the last A is set the appointment. So, location, it's a, Hey, you, you, you clicked on our ad about the home in, um, in, uh, Fayetteville, Georgia. Uh, is this, is this where you're looking for? Are you looking in, in, in just Fayetteville? Or are you looking in the surrounding areas?
Like, where do you want to end up? Price, the house you clicked on was 655, 000. Is that, that's the price you want to be in? Where, like, where are you looking? I think it's like 650, 000 to 700, 000. Okay, great. You get the, the price criteria that they're looking for. And then, um, agent, how long have you been looking?
And they'll say, we just started. Or, we've been looking for months. Oh, you've been looking for months. How many, have you been out, have you made any offers on any homes? It'll be like, no, we haven't, no, we haven't really haven't been that serious. We're just starting to get serious. Or they'll say, yeah, we've made three offers on houses and haven't, haven't gotten them and then you can, that's, you can cut it right off there.
Like, oh, so you have an agent. Great. Who are you working with? Great. That person's amazing. You're in good hands. Good luck to you. I'm going to, I'm going to let them take over. I don't want to step on anybody's toes. So, um, if, if you have any questions, have that agent contact me, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you get, get out of that.
You just ethically, it's just slimy to try to steal somebody else's client. I don't even ask if they, have you signed anything with them? Like, I don't even go there. If they express unhappiness and they're like looking for another agent to work with besides the one they've been working with, then I'll ask the question.
Well, where are you? Have you signed something with them? And so on and so forth. But I don't know if they say they're working with another agent and they've made offers, they clearly have a buyer's agreement. Um, I'm not going to go there unless they're expressing how unhappy they are. And I'm going to tread lightly on that one as well.
Side note for there. And then, uh, search criteria, beds, baths, you want a fenced in backyard, you want an open concept. Um, I had a, I had a client once that did not want a stairway as soon as you open the front door. Like for some reason here in Georgia, it's like all the houses, as soon as you open the front door, the stairwell is right there to go up to the upstairs.
They didn't want that. They wanted that stairway to be hidden somewhere in another part of the house. Um, so anyways, that, that, that's, that's what you're looking for there. Then you enter the detailed notes into your CRM, pin the notes, and then we move on to, um, what's called what we call the matchmaker system.
You put them in your matchmaker system and James, I'm going to let you take, take this one to get, tell us what the matchmaker system is. Well, the matchmaker system is basically what helps you stay in connection and give your worth to who you're working with. They want a house. So what you do is you got the criteria and you just, uh, in a systematic way, whether it's once, twice, three times a week, whatever it is, search for upcoming houses, search for a house.
Once you find that one, you just give them a call. Hey, this is, uh, James with, uh, you know, and I found this perfect house. It checks off so many boxes that we've talked about. Give me a call back. We can go over the details. Boom, gives them a reason to call back. Now, all of a sudden you're giving them something they want, value added to that phone call.
Yeah, a hundred percent. Like if you call and say, Hey, just checking in with you, I've done it. So don't feel bad. I've done it. I've done it too. So no, they don't need you to check in with them. Like, I don't know if you've ever shopped for anything that they, where you've had to do a little bit of research, like you, you don't need a salesperson to check in with you.
If you have a question, you're going to reach out to them. But if somebody calls me with something that I'm looking for. Then I'm going to, I'm, I'm compelled to call them back. So that's, yeah, basically that's, that's it. Hey, I was on the MLS this morning. I saw a coming soon checks off all the boxes you're looking for.
I instantly thought of you. Like I always say that because people like to be thought about. So I totally thought of you and our conversation about what you're looking for. Give me a call back. I want to tell you all about it. That's it. Hang up the phone. And if they call, then you, if you, they answer the phone, obviously you're going to tell them all about it.
Um, whether they're ready to buy now or they're just browsing or not, that's not the point. The point is that you're calling them to tell them that you were thinking of them. You saw something reminded you of them and you're working for them before they even hire you. So that's, that's the, that's the point that right there, they're going to, they're going to be, yeah, they'll, they'll be compelled to work with you rather than you convincing them or begging them or, or checking in with them.
to convince them to work with you. So timeline, when we're, part of the criteria, we're going to get their timeline. So when do you want to be in a new home? If it's zero to three months, we're going to match make with them two to three times a week until that we start getting out looking at houses and they, until they become a client of ours.
And then we just continue on the process. Um, if they say six, uh, three to six months, then we're going to do it probably once a week. Um, maybe more if we see something. And usually if they're six months, that, that, that, that process is going to happen really quickly and they're going to soon go to, look, I'm going to, I need to buy a house now.
And then you're going to start matchmaking with even more. And then, um, there's the people that are like 6 to 12 months. You're going to go down to probably, you know, once every other week. Maybe, uh, once a month or two, two times once a month, something like that. You don't want to be pushy, but you, but you want to let them know, hey, I was thinking of you.
I remember our conversation. I was thinking of you. Then, um, if they're like 12 months out, then you just, they just go down to once a month. Um, you know, an email and text message is probably fine for a touch. Um, but really just once a month and when you call it might be a different conversation rather than hey, I saw a house that you need to go look at because they're like, well, I told you buddy that I'm not even buying a house till next summer.
It might be, hey, the neighborhood you're looking in, like there's six houses that just came up and they sold in six days. Whatever the case may be, just give them information about the market and just say, Hey, I sent you a couple listings, um, just so you can see them come and go. So when you're ready to go, you have all the information you need.
Um, I mean, there's many, many scripts you can talk about, about that, but. Yeah, and one thing I want to add about the, just one I want to add about matchmaking, you know, think about it too. It's not, it's, this is a critical aspect of what we do here, but you'll have a lot of potential clients that have the same kind of criteria.
So when you matchmake, all of a sudden you've got five people to call on the same property, you know, so it gets easier and easier too. 100%. Yeah, it does get, it does get easier. Yeah, you pick a property and we We can get into, into that too, and I'm going to give you a way to contact me if you want to dig in deeper to that.
Absolutely. Um, and we, if it comes down, if you really, really want some more, we can book a call. I'm happy to do that to, to kind of explain some of this, because this is kind of a lot to start to finish. So. I did forget to mention, as soon as you get ahold of somebody, turn them off the auto campaign in your CRM.
Turn that off because you'll start sending them messages that are designed to get them to respond to you. If you've already spoken to them and then you send them another message that's designed to get them to respond, they're going to get confused and they're going to be like, this guy is sending me auto emails and whatnot.
So turn that off and then you're going to add their timeline. A timeline reminder campaign in your CRM that has no outgoing messages to the leads that are in your CRM. All it does is remind you of how often you need to matchmake, how often you should be reaching out to them. Just gives you a reminder like, hey, call this person you haven't matchedmake with them this week.
So on and so forth. So there's, we do three, zero to three months, three to six months, six to 12 months. And then over 12 months, they're all different reminders, call reminders for us. And then as they move their timeline, we change the campaign for them. And like I said, the campaign is not a drip campaign outgoing to them.
It's just a, basically a campaign of automatic task reminders for us to reach out to them. So, I mean, in essence, if you do this, if you follow this steps. You're going to get to the buyer's consultation and I don't want to go too long on the, on the, on this episode. It's really just about the converting the leads, getting to the point where you get in front of them, you get showing houses to them.
So I just want to stress the point, like we talked about in the beginning is of buyer consultation, like sitting down, explaining the process, explaining what earnest money is, explaining the inspections, the repair requests, the documents. I always bring a packet to them in a folder. It's got a letter from me.
Um, and all the teammates, all the team, everyone on my team brings the same letter from me. It's like a promise from the leader of promise from the, the owner of the team of what they can expect from us when they hire us to represent them. And then, and there's also like the home buyer roadmap and, uh, testimonials.
Make sure you put testimonials in there. I have references. I put, I put references in there. And then, um, you're also going to add this list of your, what. You bring to the table, what you do for them, your value. I would bullet point it out and just say, here's what you can expect from me when you hire me as an agent.
Negotiation, um, deciphering inspection reports, uh, relationships that you have with other professionals where you, if they need something like a, a radon inspector or a, a roofer or whatever, you, you have those connections. Um, a handyman, whatever it is, because buyers need handyman sometimes depends on all the negotiations that you go through after they close, they might need a handyman and so on and so forth.
Um, So the most important thing though, is bring that buyer brokerage agreement, give them a copy of it right off the bat. I, I say, Hey, you don't have to sign this right now because it's intimidating. It's the contract. It's like, Oh no, we're signing a contract, we're signing your name. That means we're legally bound and committed.
People get a little freaked out by that in the beginning, especially buyers that haven't really done it before. They're going to be like, what is this? So explain what it is. Explain how you get paid, explain your value, have them be like, take this, read it, let me know if you have any questions on it. The next time we go out to look at houses, I'm going to send this over for you to sign it electronically because legally I really can't do anything.
And ethically, I can't really, you know, represent you until like you hire, officially hire me to do so. Right. And then I always, I always put the caveat in there. It's like, hey, if you, I'm not going to force you to work with me if you don't want to work with me anymore. Like, I can promise you that I'm, I'm not going to do anything that's going to, uh, make you not want to work with me.
I'm paraphrasing. I don't actually say it like that, but I say if you don't want to work, if there comes a point where like you don't want to look at houses anymore, you've found another agent or your mom gets a real estate license and you're going to use her, we take this, we tear it up. No, no harm, no foul.
That's it. Um, cause people get a little weird, weird about it. And some people, I know that there are people out there listening right now. They're like, what? You do what you tell them what whatever do you do your business how you want to I know that if you start working with me You're going to want to keep working with me.
That's it. And there's a rare, rare occasion that walk away. I've not had one client walk away. So you just give them that you just set their mind at ease. Like, Hey, this is not a marriage license. You're not signing a marriage certificate. It's just like, it's a, it's a buyer's agreement. If you don't want to work with me, God.
Dammit, I'm not gonna go through the emotional turmoil of trying to keep you working with me or trying to go after you for your commission. Imagine if we as agents went after, went after buyers that like broke a buyer's agreement for commissions. How much business would we get? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Use TJ cause he sues his, his, his clients, bad business.
So just put their mind at ease with that. So anyways, I went off on a tangent there, right there. Did I miss anything, James? What, what else did I not talk about? Did we not talk about it? We need to add into here. No, that was the entire buyer's consultation. I mean, the, the flow chart, that was really good. Um, again, do you want to re I do want to reinforce the fact that once you get their criteria, you automatically that moment, take them off the drip, the campaign.
Yeah. Yep. 100%. That's a big one that I missed starting off too. It's just I forgot to take them off the campaign. They would keep getting these emails and texts and I'd come call them at the same time. It's just awkward. Weird. It is. Absolutely. So I did promise how you could get a copy of our buyer flow, our buyer lead flow chart.
I'm going to put it in the Facebook group, Facebook group called, what's it called? I just changed the name. It's called It's not called I changed the name. The Real Estate Real estate collaborative network. So if you go to Facebook and then after www. com, Facebook backslash real, the real estate collaborative network.
com or I think, no, it's Facebook, www. facebook. com slash the real estate collaborative network. Go there. I'm going to pin it in a post. It's going to be in, um, files. In the Facebook group. So if you haven't joined that, go join that group. Um, a lot of stuff I talk about from this podcast, a lot of stuff we talk about is going to go end up in that Facebook group.
Um, I have websites, kind of, I'm revamping the website for the Age of Mind podcast. It's, it's under construction right now. So just go to the, go to Facebook, get on the, the, the real estate collaborative network and you can get this document downloaded. And if you have questions, I'm sure you're gonna have questions.
If you're really serious about, and you're looking at this and going through it, if you have questions, email me at TJ McGraw at the agent mind. com. So just the name of the name of the podcast, the agent mind. com, TJ McGraw at the agent mind. com email me. I can answer questions. Um, bear with me if I don't answer right away, but I will get to you within 24, 48 hours.
Um, and if you want to book a call with me, um, if you want to learn how to partner with us. Um, get, get all this information, like. Not spoon fed to you, but, but to get in the room with us, we can talk about that. There's several different ways to do that. There's even a free way to do it. So, um, let me know about that if you wanna partner up with us and, um, and, and, and really take your business to the next level.
That's it. James. Thanks so much, man. This much. Hey man. I'd love it man. Love doing it. Yeah, I, I like, I like having, uh, somebody else on so we can, so it's just not my voice droning on and on and on. So cool. Thanks so much everybody for listening. Um, welcome back. I'm excited to be back and I hope you enjoy season two.
