Episode #114 – The Simple 3-Step Follow Up Formula That Closes More Deals

You're listening to the “REI Marketing Nerds” podcast, the leading resource for real estate investors who want to dominate their market online. Dan Barrett is the founder of AdWords Nerds, a high-tech digital agency, focusing exclusively on helping real estate investors like you get more leads and deals online, outsmart your competition, and live a freer, more awesome life. And, now, your host, Dan Barrett.

Dan: All right, hello and welcome to this week's episode of the REI Marketing Nerds podcast. As always, this is Daniel Barrett here from AdWordsNerds.com and, of course, REIMarketingNerds.com where you can get all the past episodes of this podcast. I hope you are really enjoying your week. I hope you're having a wonderful time. [01:05.0]

I thought I would shift focus a little bit this week, and I'm not going to be talking theory. I'm not going to be talking mental models. I'm not even going to be talking advertising or search engine optimization, which, of course, is how most people know me. I want to talk about something that's near and dear to my heart, and something that can pretty immediately make you more money in your real estate investing business and something that can be applied pretty much right away. I'm teaching you this because just to give you a little bit of context.

One of my deepest, most deeply held beliefs is that the best way of internalizing any lesson is to teach it to someone else, right? The best way of making sure that something front to back is to teach it and what I want to teach you right now is a process that I have been gradually rolling out in my own business and in the businesses of my investing clients, and this has to do with follow-up. [02:12.2]

I'm just going to give you a bit of background. The reason this is so important to me is because, look, I am in a technical field, right? If you know me, I work with real estate investors to help them find more leads and deals online. That's what I do, right? I'm either doing search engine optimization or we're doing Google Ads or doing Facebook ads, or doing Bing ads or doing YouTube ads, all that wonderful stuff. The stuff that I am doing for clients is technical, right? If I'm in there doing SEO for a real estate investor, I am maybe modifying the keyword density on a given page. I might be looking up latent semantic index keywords to include in their copy. I might be looking at their title tags and optimizing them to drive up the click-through rate. [03:09.2]

If you don't really know what most of that stuff that I just said is or what it actually looks, or what it entails, you are just like one of my clients. The vast majority of my clients don't come in with a whole lot of preexisting knowledge of what search engine optimization is or what it looks like. I mean, other than what a bunch of marketers have kind of crammed down their throats over the course of many years, and a lot of times those expectations are wildly inaccurate. It's just people will just feed any amount of B.S. to people to make a buck, and so people will come in and with all sorts of ideas about what I do and I have to communicate it to them.

Historically, the biggest problem I’ve had in this business of working with real estate investors, it hasn't actually been getting leads. I think we do probably the best job in the world of doing that in the way that we do it. The biggest problem that we've had is accurately communicating the nature of what we do, and that's actually much more difficult than it might seem. [04:14.7]

I’ve thought a lot about how to talk to clients, how to follow up with clients. Now, the way that this applies to you and to motivated sellers is that the vast majority of motivated sellers have no idea what you do. They don’t know what subject two means, right? They don't know what a wholesaler does. The whole idea of, Hey, you're not even selling it through an agent, even that is foreign to the vast majority of people.

The thing to understand about people in general, this is true of investors when they're talking about online marketing. It's true of motivated sellers when they're talking to an investor. It's that when the path forward is unclear, when we're not sure what's going to happen next, when we're not sure what the next step is, when we're not sure what we should expect, we tend to shut down. [05:14.6]

It is much easier for people to simply try to forget about something and go back to what they were doing than it is to deal with uncertainty. People, in general, we hate uncertainty. So, in any part of our process, whether it's an investor, that's working with me to improve their Google rankings or get more leads from Google Ads, or whether it's a motivated seller that's working with you to potentially sell you their home, every place in which we create uncertainty is a place where we could lose that deal.

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I'm going to say that again. Every place where you create uncertainty is a place where you can lose that deal. So, one of the simplest things, and this is the immediately applicable trick that we have been using. I mean, it's not a trick, right? It's the thing that we have been using in our follow-up and in our marketing. It's the thing that we've been doing for our clients in the real estate investing space and it's the thing that you can immediately turn around and apply. [06:54.1]

It's to think of your entire marketing funnel all the way from the cold call or the door knock or the yellow letter, the website to the form, to the email to every conversation. Think about every single place that that seller is going to interact with you and think about three things, three things you want to communicate, three things you want to make absolutely crystal clear. And if you do this, you are going to have incredibly effective follow-up and you are going to close far more often.

Are you ready? Here are the three things. Number one, remind them how they got there. You are on my list because of X, Y, Z. I'm knocking on your door because of X, Y, Z. You are on this website because you clicked an ad. Thank you for coming here because you search for me in Google. We have to remind them how they got there, because as weird as this may seem, people very often forget how they got to any given part of a marketing funnel and it doesn't matter how far along they are, how new they are. They're always going to need that reminder. [08:09.3]

So, that is the thing number one to keep in mind for really effective follow-up. Remind them how they got there.

Now thing number two, what to expect. Here is what is going to happen next. Here is what's in this email. Here is what's in this postcard. Here's what we're going to do in this conversation. What should they expect? What's it going to feel like? How long is it going to take? Just telling them what they have to look forward to, it's going to create a sense of anticipation. It's going to create a sense of ease. It's going to reduce tension and uncertainty. [09:00.3]

Thing number one, remind them how they got there. Thing number two, that you need to communicate what they should expect, what's going to happen next. Then, finally, thing number three, to remind them of for crystal-clear communication, really effective follow-up and closing more of your leads.

Thing number three, the very next thing you want them to do. We're not going to tell them the next five things they need to do. We're not going to tell them about the thing we need them to do a week from now. We're not going to tell them about the thing that we might need them to do. We are going to tell them only about the very next thing they need to do, because no matter how easy it seems to you, overwhelm is a very real thing.

I don't know, is this going to work out for me? Can I do this? It’s going to take too long. It's going to be too hard. I don't have all the paperwork. People will rather skip that kind of thing all together and deal with the fallout. Then they would go into a situation where they are uncertain about what's going to happen. [10:15.9]

These three things together create an environment where people are certain about what is going on. They feel comfortable about what is going to happen and they are for far, far, far more likely to make it through your process, your sales, your sales process, your communications process, the sales process, the close process, whatever it is. Those three things to recap are, remind them how they got there; tell them what they can expect; and then tell them exactly what you want them to do next. [11:00.0]

If you can include those three elements on every single piece of your marketing, your postcard, your landing pages, your website, your emails, your text message, everything, and even in-person conversations, if you can think about, Have I checked those three boxes? you will not only close more. People will view that process as much easier, much more pleasant, and they will come out the end of it feeling much, much better.

All right, that's it for this week's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. Those concepts, I will tell you, they have revolutionized how I think about my own communication. I hope they do the same for you.

Hey, look, if you want more tips and tricks like this, join our Facebook group. You can go on Facebook, type in “REI Marketing Nerds.” That's REI Marketing Nerds, and you'll find it. It's a free group. We would love to have you. There's a bunch of awesome investors in there from all over the country. I'm posting content in there every single day, just like this, educational material. I would love to have you. [12:02.9]

Once again, join our Facebook group. We miss you. We want you in there. Go to Facebook.com and type in REI Marketing Nerds. Request to join and I will happily add you.

Look, thank you for listening to this podcast. I very much appreciate you and I will see you next week.

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