On the show today we talk… Marketing & Acquisitions with Erik Bee!
Listen on: iTunes | Stitcher | Spotify
Show Links:
– Lead Sherpa for text messaging
– UltimateSellerAppointment.com
– RealEstateFunnelSystems.com
– Seth Godin
– Gary Vee
– Tony Robbins
– NLP Training
Show notes for Marketing & Acquisitions with Erik Bee
The Vantastic Life is…
– is on the road headed to Arlington WA
Here we go with the notes for the Erik Bee podcast.
Streamline and automate your marketing with Erik Bee. For years Erik spoke for the FortuneBuilders as their top coach, so he has been at the top of the game for many years.
He now is the co-founder of Real Estate Funnel Systems, and today he is going to spill the beans.
Erik and Joe have had a bromance for many years, and have been best friends since grade school.
Erik
My dad has been in real estate appraisal for a lifetime. And I got into the real estate appraisal business right out of high school, and did it for many years.
I remember my dad telling me to look at real estate from different angle because things were changing.
So I was doing appraisals about 60% of the time and listings 40% of the time. And that was when Joe and I got the entrepreneurial bug, and that’s when we met Than Merrill of the FortuneBuilders.
Than was at a REIA event in Seattle, and he sold a bootcamp out in New Haven where I met up with Joe (living in NYC) and we both went to the bootcamp.
We were in the first Mastery class and that led to being featured by the FortuneBuilders for many years, which finally led me to being hired by the FB’s and got involved with creating a lot of their Mastery curriculum.
That then move me to the CT Homes side of their acquisitions business with JD Esayan where I did many transactions with that side of the business.
I got myself into a cycle of learning and teaching, and learning and teaching.
Then I got recruited to another high level real estate group to grow their real estate acquisitions team. This company had a tremdious volume of leads but not a way to convert them.
This was a great year that allowed me to go on 300 seller appointments and close 98 of them. So I took the time to perfect my system. Everything that goes along with a high level of sales.
Which finally led me to create my own system from years of teaching and training to create Real Estate Funnels Systems.
Julie
Just to be able to use someone else’s money to test all of these ideas.
Where the FortuneBuilders and the 2nd company doing the same things to create leads?
Erik
Minor differences, little things. Manly they were really committed to spending over $20k a month to marketing, and if you’re spending that amount of money you’re going to be creating leads.
Julie
And I assume that you’re not going to spend of $20k a month?
Erik
Well, it depends on if you can handle spending $20k a month…
Julie
What do you think if the number 1 challenge for real estate investors and why they can’t scale their business?
Erik
It often comes down to a lack of consistency. It’s tough for them to stick to their marketing campaigns. You have to track your metrics, and then see where you need to make your adjustments. And then re launch.
If you’re doing good marketing it should have a building upon itself process.
Most people aren’t tracking the right metrics or aren’t tracking at all.
It comes down to being in the game and being consistent in the game and getting a solid ROI.
Julie
You said… it’s really an individual by individual things. I like that you pointed out that everyone has their own definition of success.
Someone might not know how to adjust to retest. Does that make sense?
Erik
There is not silver bullet other than being committed to the experiment. If you’re not getting a good response rate… maybe your mail isn’t getting to the right person. So maybe you change from standard to first class.
Or maybe try square rather than rectangle envelopes.
And we are testing these things to the same list.
You make one small tweak to see if you get a better response rate.
You want to make sure that you’re not recreating the wheel every time.
Julie
This whole podcast is about “what do we want to learn about” and then we share it with our friends.
How large do we need to that control group to be? Or test group, or list…
Erik
Bare minimum I would say is 1000, and it’s always a numbers game. We are always looking for a 1% response rate. So if you only get 100 calls and that leads to 50 leads, and that leads to X number of appointments.
I wouldn’t do direct mail with less than 1000. And if you’re doing direct mail, it can get very expensive very quickly. Especially if you’re doing a 3 touch or 5 touch campaign.
Julie
Do you want to dig in or touch on mindset before we move on?
Erik
Well, mindset is so important. You need to look at this from a sense of consistency. And without the consistency you won’t be able to tweet and adjust.
What budget can you sustain without getting results for a while? SUPER IMPORTANT!!!
Often times this is where people drop off, and it’s the fastest way to get out of the business.
Scale back your marketing budget to someone you can really afford.
If you have a smaller budget direct mail probably isn’t the best approach.
Julie
What types of things are you tracking? KPI’s and has it changed over the years…
Erik
Once you get into a good rhythm of tracking your metrics, it really doesn’t change.
Response rate (calls)
How many were leads
How many leads are appointments
How many contracts from appointments
One thing that we’re doing is a ringless voicemail. Some of these are doing a 20% response rate, but the response to lead was very low.
That’s an example of something that was great on response but not overall good because we wanted more leads.
Julie
Because you want to be doing the best down the line at appointments to contracts.
Erik
Exactly.
And often times with direct mail we’ll see a very low response rate, however the responses that do come in have a very high response to lead ratio.
They are a very motivated seller.
It’s understanding that it’s not just one metric that’s the be all end all. You have to understand it all.
Julie
Let me ask you about the ringless voicemail (RVM). When you’re calling the same seller, and changing your RVM, do you feel that you keep dripping on them until they turn into a lead or tell you to F off.
Erik
It’s all the same as direct mail.
Julie
What about compliance?
Erik
We try to be as compliant as we possible can. We scrub our lists against several things. The RVM list is very critical to scrub against the do not call list.
Julie
The other guru’s are calling the do not calls because they aren’t trying to get people to buy anything.
What do you think about that?
Erik
I am not an attorney so do you own homework on this.
You are right. Your message matters when you drop your RVM.
If you just say “I’m interested in purchasing your house”. That is not illegal, as far as I understand it.
Auto dials vs. individual dials is what you need to understand.
One program vs. another could get you into trouble. Depending on if your calls are dropped all at once vs. dripped out.
Julie
Beyond direct mail what do you think is working today?
Erik
The biggest thing is the omnipresent approach, so getting to your clients from several different angles.
Back in the good old days direct mail was the be all end all, or door knocking. But now days with social media and the smart phone era… Even the older demographic has smart phones these days. Which opens up a huge opportunity that has direct mail, plus RVM, plus text, plus Facebook all from the same group.
So if they aren’t looking at their mail… then you can text them, and if they don’t do text, you can get them on Facebook.
You just want to be consistent. That way you can reference other pieces of marketing that you’re sending them. That way they will think you are on top of it and really interested.
Julie
Is there a sequence that works better than other?
Erik
Absolutely!
So, generally speaking… we typically start with a letter because we know that the letter takes a long time. We upload that list into a custom Facebook audience so we’re now showing up on their Facebook feed. You have to have their full name, email and cell phone number. And you don’t get 100% match.
For every marketing campaign we do… we start with a skip trace. And that will create a match within Facebook and you can create a Facebook audience.
Then we’ll do a RVM, and that will reference the letter.
It’s reminding them that we are trying to get ahold of them.
Then we follow up with a text message campaign.
Julie
I’m going to get uncomfortable with you here. We are on podcast number… 80 or something.
I want to ask you on the texting thing. What are the rules on texting people?
Erik
Great question. I’m not an attorney or expert in text. This is rapidly changing.
We are thinking this will change in the future. But right now it’s important that working with a company that understands these laws. We work with Lead Sherpa who has an in house attorney that helps to keep their clients in compliance.
With texts you can’t do a full blast. You have to use local numbers (which is long code). You have to do some things to make sure you’re going to get this delivered by the carriers.
Julie
If you’re freaking out that’s why we get these great people on the show. These are the roadblocks.
I like this, and do this. I call it pre framing, that I stole from Sean Terry.
I know that a lot of you have fear. I have fear that I might do something wrong.
We actually want to do things the right way. We are all here to help each other here.
This is a topic that matters 100% of the time.
Erik
I think you are spot on and we all have our own reasons for not doing enough marketing. Money, time, fears. I’ve had all of these own barriers myself.
Julie
I think that fear is something that people don’t talk about. I’ll tell you, I get scared that I’m going to Eff something up. So align yourself with someone that’s going to help you.
Erik
The thing is… it’s always about the clients best interest. Where the client is getting their needs met at the highest level. That’s all we concentrate on .
That message is consistent in our marketing and in every level of the transaction.
If you do this you won’t have upset clients.
Julie
Let’s talk about that. What do you do with email?
Erik
We use that primarily for Facebook. Generally speaking cold emailing is hard to get through the spam filters. If they haven’t opted in you can do yourself harm.
Once they’ve opted in we will put them in a drip email campaign.
Julie
What’s the Ultimate Seller Appointment System?
Erik
We work with clients to create and implement a complete marketing plan for our clients, but more importantly what you’re talking about is once you get the leads what are you doing with them.
You could make any good marketing campaign look bad with a poor seller appointment.
I’ve done like 1500 seller appointments over the last decade, and I’ve really found a great system that’s called the ultimate seller appointment.
I’ve gone through the whole thing and think of it similarly to an appraisal.
You have to calculate the value and the fix up/rehab.
As an appraiser I was having a pen and paper, and measuring tape.
And then you have to present and get the close.
Julie
How do we get at this? Do we need to be in our coaching program.
I met Joe because Erik and Joe were the weekend coaching team for the FortuneBuilders.
Erik
So this system that I outlined here was a process of me being really critical and all of these nuances of the seller appointment. Out of my own determination I put this together.
I have over 350 seller appointments on my iPad. That was kind of my hidden advantage. And it’s competitive down here in San Diego. Don’t leave the point of sale was one of the biggest lessons I was learning.
With this, I had all the comps, I had all the documents, I had it all, and was ready.
Whenever I would show my process to everyone I always get this blown away response.
People were always hounding me for it. My iPad system is a one time purchase where you get everything that I use all together in one package with a full training library. How exactly I use the iPad system.
There is a website and we just put this together at UltimateSellerAppointment.com
Julie
I know you were using this years ago so I can only guess that you’ve gotten better and better at it.
Erik
Totally, we just kept getting better and better at using this and there’s nothing better to me than helping people to do better in their business.
You can work with my on marketing at RealEstateFunnelSystems.com. Every thing from marketing plan, to language that they’re using, to what documents to use.
Julie
One last question. Erik, thank you so much!
Are there any podcasts that you listen to these days?
Erik
Seth Goden
Gary Vee
Tony Robbins
NLP Training has been a big evolution in my life. And have recently gotten licensed as a personal practitioner. This has helped me to help clients and people around me.
Julie
My funny little joke is that I think of someone touching me on the elbow.
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