KGCI: Real Estate on Air - The Truth Behind Why Most Sphere Marketing Sucks!

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

Have you noticed that the marketing system you're using for your sphere of influence just isn't producing the same results that it once did? Well, guys, today we're going to talk about the dirty truth why most sphere marketing systems just don't work anymore. Welcome to the influential real estate marketing podcast, where agent entrepreneurs come to learn how to generate and convert more leads by using the latest in technology, social media, and lead generation systems. Here are your hosts, national speakers and veteran agents, Amber and The Rook. Man, I love that. What is going on, guys? Hey, real quick, today's episode is sponsored by influential branding. Now, one of the things when you're constantly asking realtors is does your knowledge, success, and experience echo across the internet?

We wanted you to put your best foot forward, and you can do that with some amazing social media branding. So go check it out, your influential branding.com. Are guys, have you noticed that the marketing system that you're using for your sphere just isn't producing the same results that it once did? Because I know I personally have been in the business for 17 years, y'all. And let me tell you, what I used to do to market to my sphere of influence that worked at such a high level just wasn't getting me the same results because, gosh, things change. So this is something that has to be addressed, maybe not a popular topic. But today we're going to talk about the dirty truth behind why most sphere marketing systems just don't work anymore. Yeah, and here's the thing.

No one likes change. But we have to ask ourselves, are we doing things because it's the way we've always done it? Or are we doing the things in our business because it truly is the most effective way to do it? Yeah, guys, because the truth is the reason why sphere marketing just doesn't work anymore is because most sphere systems are using outdated techniques. Bottom line. Yeah. That just aren't working. Now I can tell you, most of you that might be listening, might have tried coaching before.

I know that since I've been in the business, again, since 17 years, I've always had a real estate coach, right? And ironic, right, because we coach now. But I've always had a coach. We still have a coach now, don't we, babe? Absolutely. We've got some people that we go to for specific things. It's not the same person that's going to be coaching you for everything. So we've got a coach for one aspect of our business, another coach for another.

But I'll tell you, every coach I've ever had has told me, you need to mail to your sphere of influence. You've got to mail to them. You got a call. It's all about the calls. And I'm going to tell you back in the day, that was true, right? We didn't have in 2002 all the social media that we have now. We had to do mailings because there wasn't anything else to do.

Yeah, I remember so much when I got in. I got in 2009 that the old guard, the veteran agents were just giving some amazing advice. But in my heart, it just didn't make sense. Like, okay, well, you got to do phone calls. You got to jump on that phone. Don't be afraid of the phone. And they always talked about these stories that when they first started, all we had was the phone. It was a rotary dial phone.

And that's how they got their business. A rotary dial. Some people listening may not even know what that is. Right. There was this thing called a rotary phone. And what happened is it had a bunch of holes in it. and you put your finger and you turned it to call people. It took you seven minutes to call somebody.

Have you seen the video of the young kids when their parents put the rotary phone in front of them? And they said they didn't tell them what it did. And they had no idea what it was. So, so sad. That was pretty funny. Missed out. And I'm so guys, and I'm not saying, because I guarantee we have people listening right now. They're like, I make phone calls and it works at a high level.

Listen, we're not saying anything done enough times can't work, right? because if you get on the phone, you dial enough people, it's a numbers game. Yeah, somebody's going to answer. But as far as an overall system of building stronger relationships with my sphere of influence and me relying just on the old school techniques, we have data that shows it's not working, not just what we're saying. Well, I guess that, yeah, because what I was saying was that, you know, they were saying, you got to make phone calls.

And the thing that never made sense to me was if phone calls, you know, if phone calls, you Pauls is the way to get business. How come more realtors aren't excited to do it? Like I don't, I never saw so many realtors avoid something like a power hour. Like when you say, we're going to a power hour and do some lead in. We're going to do some calls. It was like scattered. Like I'm all of a sudden, I'm busy. Like, realtors had appointments for days if you say power hours. I got an appointment. I'm so sorry. We'd find anything else to do but call people. Now, hey, we're, we're hashtag guilty, you guys. So we're not judging by any means. I know that phone calls. I did do phone calls and they did used to work at a high level but I'm going to admit I never liked

doing them right I always felt like I was bothering my sphere but I knew I had to get over it right but then as I got over it and kept doing it as the years past it became less and less effective because well there's several reasons why it's less effective and we're going to study the data on this but let's look at it first from the agent perspective right the phone calls as you talked about Jay, people admit that they just don't like doing the phone calls on the agent side. We don't like doing them. Right. Now tell us about like when you first got your license, you're what happened. Well, okay. So, you know, because I think people can relate to this. Yeah, let me know if you guys can relate to this. It's, it's, you know, I was in school. I was

learning to become a realtor and they was like, all right, people, today we are going to be practicing our scripts or we'll get their scripts out. We're going to start calling our sphere. remember we don't want to be a secret agent you want to say who do you know we're going to do the forward technique and i was like family occupation recreation dreams always got the R messed up i was like a real estate no okay so and so i which is a great technique by the way it is so but here's the thing i pick up the phone i make a call everyone's making calls and then i'd go oh okay i'm going to go out to the hallway and i call my mom you know i'd like hey mom what's up yeah i'm in class no no yeah just pretend i'm pretend i'm trying to

like go sell your house right and I think that's why people don't want to make calls like with their accountability partner because we're really just calling our closest friends and family that we know we'll pick up the phone we're going for the lowest hanging fruit possible and even then we're really just kind of checking in we're not really asking for a business or it gets so uncomfortable that by the time we do ask for business it's just like awkward and we're kind of joking about it and they're like no and like okay good okay good and you know I want to give credit out there to any agents that might be listening that do calls at a high level. Like you're calling your sphere of influence. You do ask for business and it's working for you. Kudos to you. But we're talking to the

masses right now, right? And we're being completely honest and transparent that from the agent's standpoint, not only did we not like making phone calls, but even when we got over it, there's the other side of things, which is the consumer side. And I think this is where things have shifted because we used to know phone calls worked. We just had to get over the fear. of making them. Right. But then you finally get over the fear of making them, we find they're not working anymore, meaning people aren't answering the phone.

This is the challenge because statistics show, you guys, that only two out of 10 people are answering their phone. And this even applies to people who might even know you. And here's the thing is, you know, the realtor piece is, you know, several surveys have been done. We did our own survey. We sent like 27,000 surveys. We got a whole bunch of feedback.

that's where that comes from. But on the other side of it, you know it to be true. You know that when we're calling people, they're not answering the phone. In fact, we do it as well. As a realtor, I will see, you know, see, you know, the calls come in and we look, like said, 10 out of 10 people look at their phone. Only 2 out of 10. I actually pick that bad way up.

And it's not that they don't like you guys. So it's not like they're not answering because they don't like you. It's that they don't know how much time this call is going to take, right? And then so when you've got both those things happening, And a lot of people just don't like talking on the phone anymore. They prefer text messages or other avenues of communication that just didn't use to exist anymore. Well, and that's the question that I would just ask you guys real quick. I mean, think about it.

You can say it out loud even. Do you prefer a phone call or a text? You're going to say text. It entered your mind even before I finished my question. Now, again, we're not saying 100% of people like text. They are going to be that 2 out of 10 that do prefer the phone calls, and we're fine with that. But if I'm counting on only, if only 20% of them like a phone call and my Sphere marketing system is to make calls, that's leaving out 80% of the audience. This is why those data techniques cannot be counted on anymore at a 20% rate.

And this is where we've seen where, you know, realtor is like, no, there's some people that love phone calls. That's great. Keep calling them. But if you're looking at- Go ahead and call them if they love that. Exactly. But if you're looking at how to spend your time as effectively as possible, you've got to start someplace. And so it is that uncomfortable thing that we ask is, are you doing the things out of habit

or because it's effective? The only way to truly know is to just work. If you have not been getting through to people, it's not that they're busy. They just don't want to pick up the phone. But in that scenario, have we tried something else? Have we tried another method of going after this person to figure out what is the best way to get a little? And to relationship build with them.

But that is why it still is mind-boggling to me, that most coaches and even real estate companies are still beating the drum. Call, call, call, call. When statistics literally say that only 20% of people want calls. So why would I do a system based around something that only 20% of the people are wanting? Yeah. And I think that's the core of it. It's not that we're saying phone calls are bad. I don't want to get no hate mail.

it's the fact that when you are basing an entire program off of something that is statistically proven to only be 20% effective, I don't logically understand it. I don't get it. I don't get it either. All right, let's go on to the second thing that coaches and real estate companies, we've been guilty of saying, which is the whole mailings. And we kind of hit on that earlier because they're saying, do the mailings, meaning mail to people. And we are saying the calls. Let's get on to the mailing part, shall we? All right.

So this is something I'm super passionate about. And I know I'm probably not going to make any friends, but when I take a look at mailings, I take a look at a couple things. Number one, I take a look at magazines that we send out. Number two, I take a look at postcards that we send out. And this includes, like, just listed just olds and whatever. And then I also take a look at the, like the newsletters. I think those are the three biggest areas when it comes to mailings that I want to talk about super quick.

Well, what about the schedules, the football schedules? The football schedules. Oh, my God. Okay. So here's a quick story. There's so many aspects of this. Here's a quick story about the football schedules that I want to say. I've got a brother-in-law who's a die-hard Packers fan. I mean, just die-hard. And he's from Wisconsin. Maybe that has to do with it. Wisconsin. Big shout out to with all people from Wisconsin. That's how you actually have to pronounce Wisconsin. You can just say Wisconsin. No. Just say it the right way. You have the right way. And so he, we were at mom's house. And he comes in because we all, you know, have dinner there. And he comes in. He's like, hey, do you know this realtor? And I'm like, look, I speak in front of her. realtor? So obviously, yes, I know every single realtor in the DMW area. So he's like, I will never

use them. I'm like, I'm okay. You want to give them a call and tell them that there are numbers right there. And so here's what happened. And you know where the story is going is he got sent a Dallas cowboy schedule on a realtor's magnet. Which is pretty common that people send. Which is very common. It's, you know, you want to do, you want to brand yourself. You want to give them the football schedule. piece. Keeper pieces. And so here's my question is that, does that realtor know, number one, that he just pissed off someone who hates the cowboys or, and we'll never use them.

And so that's the disconnect that I really started saying, I don't think that we know this is happening. Well, yeah, because we're just assuming, hey, everybody likes the cowboys because I'm in Dallas. And the fact is, every time we go to survey people as we're teaching is like, hey, how many of you are cowboys? me, it's actually a small amount of people because there's so much diversity now in different cities that you can't assume everybody likes the same team or that they want that magnet you're sending.

It's surprising that there's not a whole lot of cowboy fans, but whatever. But my thing also is though, is you sending a Dallas Cowboys schedule or whatever town you might live in, is that training the consumer that you're the real estate expert? Because I went to many of listing appointments myself where I was interviewing to list their home and they're on their refrigerator because we usually do the interview in the kitchen is many realtor magnets, including cowboy schedules or whatever that is. And that didn't necessarily mean they were using that agent or even remembered to call them. It was they went over to the magnet when they needed the time for the game, not when they wanted to hire the real estate experts.

Well, yeah, I would say how many of you guys have ever been on a listing presentation where you see magnets from other realtors on their fridge and you're like, I'm here. All right. So, but let's go back to the mailing things. Okay. Here's my. my biggest challenge with with uh sphere marketing that centers around the whole idea of sending people mail um and the first and foremost is the biggest one for me and it's not trackable now well most the things most of the things i do want to say that there are some companies out there um i'll give a big shout out to corfax because they have print postcards that do have a trackable piece in there but here's a deal if you're sending out religiously and and with amazing amount of tenacity uh and being diligent

in sending out your mail pieces, is there a trackable piece on there? Are you tracking the URL? Like the only place that URL is or that website is on that one piece? Or is there the only place that phone number exists is on that one piece? So if someone calls from that number, you know exactly from that piece. And I guarantee you the answer for a lot of us is we'll know. In other words, if you got a lead, you would know for a fact. It came from a mailing because it's coming from a unique phone number or website address

that you assigned only to your mail. So that you can track the ROI. And in most cases, people are not doing that. Every time I go out, because we get mailers. We get the big long letters, you know? Jason loves getting the mail, y'all. I don't know what it is. Like, I hate the mail.

I would let it sit out there for like a month. True. And get it one time a month. But he is like, oh, my gosh, we'll go get the mail today. It's kind of like Christmas. It's like a mini Christmas, I think. I don't know. I just like it.

All right. I like when Amazon knocks on my door. That's what I like. I don't like the mail. Or like groceries. We get groceries delivered. All right. So back to this, it's whenever I go out to the mailbox and I can recognize that letter,

I can spot it in a heartbeat. And the minute I pick it up, in my head, I think the realtor has no idea I just pick this up. And then I open it. And in my head, I'm like, the realtor has no idea. I'm opening this. And then I'll scan it. And I'm like, number one, it looks like a Wikipedia page, which just hurts my heart. But number two, it was like, they have no idea I'm reading this right now.

And all that interaction, and that leads to the second point, this is expensive. It's not like you're getting like cheap paper. This stuff is thick and is laminated. It costs a lot to mail all those people. And it costs money to get postage to mail all the people to get the envelopes. Hopefully you're not looking at these. And you're having to fold it and stuff it. And let's say all that's taken care of for you.

There is a cost to doing that. And I don't understand why us as a business owner would give money to a company and they and they they don't let you know at all if it's working it's not trackable it's not trackable yeah the working is always um has always been the variable like whenever we've been sold it with roltures it's like you know the calendar thing or or the print marketing thing how's that going for you man i get leads okay well how many have you gotten in the past 12 months and they struggle to find that answer there's no definitive answer to i sent out this many mail pieces i got this many leads my cost per lead is this and therefore I can scale it.

And so that's the other piece of it. So number one, it's not trackable. Number two, mailings are expensive as all get out. And number three, you can only see them once a month. Right. Whereas I might be able to spend that same dollar amount like on a Facebook ad and be seen 14 times by that same person in a month versus you can only go check your mailbox and have that once a month.

Like I said, and honestly, I like, to say that we just don't know. I really, or like we're, we're too busy to find out. Yeah. Yeah. Because Facebook ads, did a Facebook ad campaign for a real tour. And I think we ended spending like $107 and we got 32 leads in three weeks. In a very specific targeted area. So we knew how to talk to that consumer. Now, here's the thing, you guys. I don't want to blanket statement mailings just like we don't with phone calls, but we are going to base this on stats. Okay. because I do, there is the other side of the coin when it comes to mailings. There are so few people mailing now on a consistent basis that if you're doing it right

and if you're giving it a lot of time, you could see some major benefit to mailing. So what we're not saying that all mailings don't work. What we're saying is the reason why most mailings don't work is because they're not trackable. People are not doing it on a consistent basis because it's expensive. or it might not be training them that they're the real estate expert, and you have no idea if what you're sending is being read or seen. And a lot of times somebody's opening it. It's not training them that you're the real estate expert.

We got one the other day that was about taxes, you know. And even though that might be an item of value, it's reminding somebody about their IRS taxes and what they need to do, not really reminding them that you're the real estate expert. Right. So keep that in mind. I'd like to propose something to you. Like, if you're also on the fence or you're kind of getting offended by maybe something we're saying,

here's what I would challenge you. Maybe I can just change your respect a little bit. I want you to hire me to do some farming for you. It's only going to cost you $100 a month. I'm not going to tell you if it's working. Occasionally, I'll send you a lead. Would you do it? No.

And if the answer is no, then I just described a mail piece. You just describe most marketing systems. I just described most marketing systems that rely on mail. And again, that's the thing. It's not saying that they all don't work, but when you're basing a system off something that is unknown or like proven not to be working. There's no specific call to action that's leading you to a website or a phone number that's tracked just from the mailing only to let you know it's working.

So, so guys, just the mailings, if you're not doing it right, this is why most sphere systems don't work because those mailings. And God forbid, you're sending a set your clocks back or a happy Easter to a neighborhood that doesn't know you like you trust you. They don't care. Their phone tells them to set the clock back. It's like, that's not training them that you're the real estate expert. And I don't, I guess my worry with this is always that when we talk to you, we talk to you as marketers. And because we believe that you cannot be a realtor unless you're an effective marketer. And sometimes I'd rather tell you what you need to hear and and have you get upset than just tell you what you want to hear and then have you just be all happy,

go lucky, and then not getting the business that you deserve. And plus, this isn't coming out of judgment because we are the ones that failed at this to, in order to go out and actually look for that research of, hey, this used to work and now it's not working anymore. So why? Well, we look at the statistics and it's really telling the story of exactly what we are going through. So mailings, they're not trackable. They could be expensive unless you're using the right kind of system. They're only seen once a month typically, and that's if you're doing monthly. Sometimes it's less.

And the content doesn't always train the person that you're a real estate expert or may not be pertinent to the person. Those are the challenges. Now let's talk about another very popular thing used in sphere marketing systems. And this one's going to ruffle some feathers probably. Really? Well, we started already. I might as well keep going.

And that is the concept of doing Popeyes. The concept of Popeyes is phenomenal. The concept of a realtor getting face-to-face, belly-to-belly with their spear, giving them a gift, the law of reciprocity. This is the epitome of something that will work. I'm not asking you for anything. I was just in the neighborhood and I wanted to give you a gift. And who doesn't love gifts? We all love gifts.

And obviously remind you, who do you know, looking by yourself alone? But how cool is that concept? And if you're a fan of Popeyes, that's great. And we actually think Popeyes work. So just so you know, we're not saying Popeyes don't work. Let's not even argue that. Popeyes do work. But there is a challenge with it.

There is a massive problem with it. And that is... It's not scalable. I want to repeat this. I want you to hear what I'm saying. Again, I want you to try to get past that offense. They're like, people love my pies. That's not what I'm saying.

I want you to hear me. It's not scalable. Now, according to most of the highest producing role towards in our industry, that if they can get their sphere to be about 500 people and have a sphere marketing program that is effective, they consider themselves recession-proof. So the goal is to try to get your sphere to 500, right? And that's your database.

I'm talking about your sphere. Or more. We talked about that in our last podcast. Go back and listen to that if you wanted to distinguish between the database and the sphere. So here's my thing. How many people in your sphere could you have that you could physically do a pop-by-to? Because you're supposed to do what? Quarterly.

Quarterly. You know, best case scenario, you want to do a one quarterly. So, okay, so if I've got to visit people quarterly. And you have like five or six hundred in your sphere. Well, not even that. Let's go back. Let's say I've got a hundred people. That's what?

One person a day? Every day? If I'm doing that math, right? A quarter is what? 90 days? Three months. Okay. So 90 days, 100 people.

So I've got to go take my car and drive to one person's house a day. But most people have bigger spheres than 100. Actually, we run into so many roll tours. I think the average is like 250. Okay, so that's what? That's a lot of Popeyes. So basically, the point is we've seen people especially do this. They're not spreading it out anyway.

They're usually doing it seasonally. So maybe at Valentine's Day and Thanksgiving and things like that. So the problem here is not that pop buys don't work. That's not an issue. You don't need to argue with us. You don't need to send us hate mail because we know pop buys work. They do work. What we're saying is they're not scalable because if you do that to a sphere quarterly,

you're like a freaking Uber driver at this point, right? Pretty much, yes. Might as well pick up some people along the way, take them their destination, make some money. Not scalable. You know, top agents are taking the same concepts in creating pop ins, you know, where you're really, it's about creating events where you're, you can provide value and gifts and people are popping by your office or your event. So let's put this into real world context because I want you got to grasp it because this is just genius that you could, option A, and I want you guys to be honest, tell me which one you'd rather do.

Option A, you have a garage or kitchen full of pies for three months as you slowly deliver every single one of those out to your sphere or option B, you take the, those pies to an event and all of your sphere comes to that event to pick up their pie and you get the lead generate and they get to walk into this really cool event see a wall of pies knowing that one of them is theirs and all of them come to you and you just get to play host so option a uber driver option b host which one do you think is more effective so again guys this is not hate on certain things it's anytime we do business we might have done it and it worked great, but is it working now? Because here's how you know. If we've mentioned it and you're like, I don't agree with you. Mine's working. If you can track it to actually bring you closings, then keep doing it.

But we're looking at the data people. This is an opinion. This is data. So here's what we want you to get as an entrepreneur as a marketer. You know your sphere marketing is working when it is trackable, when it is scalable and when it has a high return on investment. If it's trackable, then you'll be able to know I send out this many and this is how many sales I'm getting back. That's my return on investment. It has to be trackable in order for you even know if it has a high ROI. It has to be scalable.

In other words, when my sphere is 100 or when my sphere is 600, the same system is going to work. So those are the three things that you really want to pay attention to, no matter what system you're using, it has to be trackable, scalable, and have a high return on investment. And the only thing I'd want to dive is just a little bit deeper into is the high ROI. Now, what we mean by that is what is your cost per lead? Because a lot of us will say a very dangerous phrase, and I'm going to say this, I want you to listen. Maybe you've said before. Well, I got a listing out of it, so pretty much paid for itself. That is a disconnect to whether

or not our marketing is working. For some realtor, that's the end. all. Well, I got a lead. I'm sorry, I got a listing out of it or I got a buyer out of it. So it paid for itself. That's not how marketers look at something. That's not good enough. Yeah, because here's the thing. Think about this. Let's say for every lead that you got, you gave away an iPad. Not like the newest iPad, but let's say you've spent $500 and gave them a lead. At some point, you could get a lead and get a listing and say, you know what? It paid for itself. Does that mean that it makes a whole lot of sense to be giving away iPads to every lead? No. So it's not about I got a listing so it makes sense. It's about my cost per lead is this. Okay, my cost per lead is, I'll take Facebook ads.

It is $7 per lead. And every time I spend $7, it takes me 12 leads before I get a listing. So how much money am I actually spending? So for every $84 I spend, I get $3,000, $8,000 back. I will do that every day of the week. That's what I'm talking about. And you guys, I want you to know this stuff. We've been studying for about the last 22 months with both top agents, but also outside of real estate with what are top marketers doing across the country to get better trackability, better return on investment,

better relationship building, and things that are scalable for small databases to large databases. Because that's important. The foundation that we're setting is important that we can scale. it larger. So just know, again, this is not opinion. These are things based on statistics, and this is what we've been studying for a long time. So if you guys need help with this, we are here for you. So here's your call to action for the day. All right, so guys, take a look at this. I want you to take a look at your sphere marketing plan.

Is it trackable? Is it scalable? And does it have a high ROI? And if it doesn't, the time is now to change it now not later not tomorrow not next week it's now all right if you guys need help with this this is something that we really specialize in now and helping you create models and systems that have all three of these things and are getting high return on investment so reach out to our office go to our website we'd love to take a chat with you about it wouldn't we jay well here's the thing i i do i do want you guys to call us because i do want to talk about this with I don't want to argue with you. Again, if you feel that what you're doing is the best, that's fine.

But if it's not trackable, scale, or higher, or why, then are we just making personal decisions not based on data? Yeah, but we're here for you about it. All right, you guys, we want to thank you for joining us today. If you've liked what you've heard, remember to subscribe to the podcast, to listen to future episodes and leave us a review or share with a friend today. Yeah, if you want exclusive content and free tips on the latest in real estate marketing and lead generation, then join our Insider's email list by Google.

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