Steve: Hello, this is Steve Strickholm, President of KDNA Full Throttle Coaching, and I'm here with our national Coach Frank Obringer.
We are going to be talking in these five sessions of coffee with the coach on how to build a lead generating database. Session one is going to be on why a realtor should have a lead generating database.
Session two will be what's the best practice for keeping the databases. Why it's important to identify groups is going to be session 3. Four is going to be on how big should your database be, I'll let you guess on that. And then the last one is how to train your database to send referrals because referrals are the life of our business.
So we're going to start today with session One. And Frank’s going to be talking about why all Realtors should have a lead generating database. I believe you're starting with real estate sales are all about relationships.
Frank: Yeah Steve, it's surprising I've been in the business for 27 years and how many of our top producers really don't have their databases set up where they're really utilizing and creating leads on a regular basis from the folks they've done a great job with, from their sphere of influence, from folks today interact with every day.
So I don't care if you're brand new to the business or been in the business for 20 years you really should have a database that has all of the contact information in one place, is accessible, and we'll talk a little bit more about that but it's about relationships. If you don't have their contact information how are you going to build a relationship with them?
Steve: You know in along those lines, I remember I studied that with talking about how much time and money and energy it takes to create a sale from a new customer then from somebody that you already know.
Basically, the studies have shown it takes five times as much time and energy to get a sale from somebody you don't know than from somebody you do know. So that's why you can work five times as hard when you don't have a database, but if you do have a database, you can work a lot less hard to make a lot more money.
So talk to us about how the database is not just contacts, right? It’s also your sphere of influence.
Frank: A couple things I love - I used to call it the 2% / 10% rule. If you had a hundred people in your database you can expect if you stayed in contact with them, sending them something once a month, you get about 2% of those folks to buy from you. But, you can take that from 2% to 10% in your engagement, by not only sending them something every month for 12 months, but then following that up with phone calls.
By following up with some sort of an interaction where you actually have the opportunity to build a relationship with them, you can take that to the 10. So, when you talk about who should be in there: it's everybody. It's your family, it's your friend, it's your past clients. Then this is the one that a lot of folks miss - it's all of the vendors, all of the individuals that we do business with. They should also be in your database. We should be reminding them on a regular basis. The title companies, the mortgage brokers, “hey I'm in real estate and I'm not just giving you business, I'd like to get some business from you too.”
Steve: So I would also think that this would apply to people like your gardener and your house cleaner because they're all running around working lots of other people homes and they can tell you if they know somebody else is thinking of buying or selling a house.
Now you've got that potential lead through the gardener, house cleaner, or whatever - that's all part of your sphere of influence now. I know you've got some thoughts on the 20% of sphere is a place to start tell us about.
Frank: You know, that’s the idea that if you're only getting 20% of your business is coming from your sphere, you're working too hard. Our top producers, the majority of their business that they get is from their sphere of influence and that's what I'm saying.
It's so critical to stay in touch with them to really have relationships with them and if you don't have all their contact information you should have their phone number, their email address, their home address so you can mail them a card.
You should be friends with them on social media. All of those different categories should be marked and filled out in a database, and we're going to talk more about actually building the physical database, but you need all of that information. Most agents don't have it. They go, “oh yeah I got them in my phone.” But they don’t know how to get them out of their phone and how to have a system to stay in touch. And that’s what we are going to talk about over the next few sessions.
Steve: Great. So I think the key thing here is if you really have a good database, and you’re staying in touch with people in that database, and that’s not just past clients and friends, but your sphere of influence which is a large umbrella - then you can get two to ten sales a year from each hundred!
So if you can get two or three hundred people there, that’s ten, twenty, thirty sales a year and now you’ve got a full time business, right? That’s an incredible idea!
Frank: Yeah, and think about how quickly you can build that database. Every time you are doing an open house you are adding 5, 10 people. You should be adding people to your database every single day.
Steve: Great, so I have a I have an asparagus story told me yesterday by a friend of mine. It turns out it takes two years to harvest it so he said “I'm not going to wait 2 years,” and he just didn't plant them for the first few years and then he went “oh my God I can't believe it, I have no asparagus so I'm going to plant it now.” So he finally planted it after two years and it took him four years have asparagus.
What I learned from that is two years is going to come anyway so the idea is to build your database today and in one to two years you can be making 1, 10, 20 sales out of your database.
Okay everybody thanks so much we'll see you real soon take care bye.