Hello, hello, welcome back to the High Performance Agent Podcast. I'm Tina, glad you're here. I'm recording this sitting in my backyard as summer wraps up.
I hope you don't get any background noise, but I have something on my mind and I wanted to record it while I was feeling inspired and energetic about it. This market has been really rough this summer. I think it was probably right around June 1st when things in Baltimore got a lot slower.
Listings slowing down with both big prices and also speed of sale, number of showings, number of offers, lower buyer lead flow. And there were a couple big picture thoughts I had about it. One, I feel it was an after effect of the economic instability that kind of kicked off around April 1st when all the tariff stuff started.
And it was sort of this, I feel the consumer market is always a step behind the news cycle, but eventually the kind of the vibe of economic instability and just that persistent cost of living is catching up with consumers. In my opinion, not to mention persistently high interest rates and at some point they will gradually improve. Maybe that's gonna happen in September, more to come on that.
But basically I was, okay, this macro thing is happening. I see it happening. What am I gonna do about it for my business? And first of all, I happened to have an exhausting spring for myself.
It was lovely, but also very busy. I was covering a team member's maternity leave with pleasure, training several new team members, heavily involved in transactions while also trying to keep my academy business going. And it was just a lot, it was a lot.
When things slowed down, I was, okay, number one, I've been here before, I welcome this. I welcome this time because it's not going to last forever. I have years of proof that my business withstands all market cycles.
And when it slows down, it eventually speeds back up later. I welcomed it as a, okay, I'm gonna just let this be. I'm not gonna freak out.
I'm not gonna start going really hard on lead gen because quite frankly, I didn't have it in me. And when I don't have it in me at this point in my life, in my business, I can't even make myself. I used to be able to at least make myself go hard when I didn't feel it.
And I don't know that when I crashed out from my end of workaholism cycle right around the end of 2019, it's something changed in me fundamentally. And that person is no longer there. I'm still driven.
I'm still motivated. I'm still wildly ambitious. I still get really frustrated when things aren't moving as quickly or successfully as I perceive that they should be.
But I just can't run and operate on fumes anymore. That kind of informed my thought process, but quite frankly, we have not had as many sales this summer as I would have liked or would have expected. I'm at a point now where I've recharged.
Here we are, the last, second to last week of August, where I feel really ready to sink my teeth in and get things moving. I posted this on Instagram the other day, fall is my favorite time to lead generate because spring is more about servicing business than creating. And yes, in an ideal world, we're robots who are constantly creating, staying on top of the lead generation and marketing side of our business at all times.
I pride myself on someone who has systems that do that to a decent degree. And then there's the human side of, when you're full up, you're full up. I sometimes stop welcoming getting busier when I feel I'm at my capacity.
All that being said, I'm, okay, seasonally, some of my favorite things are about to happen where I have the capacity and the energy and interest to get busy with business. Cause I also wanted to enjoy my summer. I had a really rocky summer in some ways.
An immediate family member was in the hospital for weeks and it was awful, scary. They're home now, they're okay. It was also very sobering to be, what are my priorities? My priorities are my family and my own kids, myself, my parents, my husband, and that everything is secondary.
It is key to me to live in alignment with that. Family first, which sounds such a nice thing to say, but for a long time, it was hard for me to really bring my business in alignment with that priority level. Now it's dear to me.
This summer was another reminder that you cannot get that time back when people are gone and when your kids are grown. All that to say, I kind of spent some time making peace with the market and what I spent my time on, just looking really differently than I expected. I think if I look at the summer as a 14 or 16 week period, I had a couple of weeks that were wildly productive.
Launching my agent Instagram account was a high point. I've been thinking about doing that for a long time. I am glad I finally took the dive.
It is nice to have a very specific focus for that one place. I had a huge influx of people come along and follow, partially driven by my magnet lead generation strategy. If you're listening because of that, welcome.
Glad you're here. That kind of leads to where I'm going. I'm, okay, it's September, I'm ready to go.
I'm teeing things up. I'm gonna be putting a lot more on my plate temporarily. This is a season where I feel not just ready to do that, but excited.
Basically the point of this episode, besides giving you maybe a little bit of a window into my mind and what it feels to be me and run a business that looks mine, because I think sometimes it's easy to romanticize what other people are doing and what it must feel for them and what it must really be for them and how much money they're really making. I think real estate is such a, truth is such an elusive thing in our industry. I try to give as much truth as I can, especially in the podcast form, because I feel it almost feels confessional for me.
The point of this episode is to share five things I'm doing for lead generation right now to create new relationships and strengthen my existing relationships and tee up more business. This is all predicated on the fact that I have a lot of working systems. I have a CRM that I love.
I have, everyone I've ever met and done a deal with and more is in my database. I have super consistent, high quality email marketing, going out to those people at all times. I have a very consistent social media presence.
I do wish that I was doing things even more laser focused with my Instagram specifically, my client facing Instagram. That's something that I'm continually looking to work on. If I were to say that's one thing I could be doing differently, I wish I was showcasing more local real estate on my account.
That's something that has just not come as naturally for me because I'm behind the scenes in my business. It is a lot of extra effort to acquire the content and whatever. If I was just out there showing houses and taking listings myself all day, I would just be taking five second videos of everything I'm doing and turning them into reels and just creating content.
For me, it ends up being a little more engineered. What I'm instead focusing on is sharing what I am doing and all the local places I'm going and things I'm doing. I shared where I got my nails done recently.
I share what I'm up to with updating and decorating my house. That's my foundation and that foundation pays my bills. That foundation supports my team.
I've been laying that foundation for a really long time and it works, it's high functioning. What I'm sharing with you is kind of the cherry on top for growth and engagement. If you have holes in the foundation I described, you don't have to have a foundation mine.
Depending on who you are and how you tick, some of that may not fit. I do think what I listed is pretty essential. If you do want a relationship and referral driven business that is fueled and kept alive by social media, as opposed to tons of face-to-face networking and politicking and having lunches with past clients and coffees and all of that is great.
I just literally do not have time for that. I could make the time, but then it would take away from time I spend with my family and on my academy and my podcast for agents and the coaching I do for agents. That's the trade-off that I've made.
What I'm doing aside from that foundation, I have two giveaways that I just executed and three events that I'm working on. I wanna walk you through what I'm up to, a little bit of a debrief of what's working, what I'm doing next with the goal being to give you some nugget of something that you can run with, whether it's something you haven't done before or something that you're doing, have done before or are doing now, but can next level it and get better results, better efficiency, better strategy and outcomes versus just doing things for the sake of doing them. First of all, I did my magnet giveaway.
I have a very recent podcast episode all about that. The concept is that I put a post up or a form up in various Facebook groups and on an Instagram post, basically saying, hey moms and parents, parents overall, but definitely mom heavy. If you want a free magnet that goes on your fridge with a calendar of this year's school schedule, fill this form out, I'll mail you one for free and thank you very much.
It's something people want and the key to online lead capture and getting people to give you their contact information is to just find something they actually want. Then it's much easier to get them to engage, to fill out and to be excited about that and to feel connected to you and your brand. This magnet is one of my best tools, hands down.
I also think other giveaways work really well. I'll talk about that later. They're actually a lot less work than the whole magnet project.
I do think the magnet project is something I'm happy to do once a year. I wouldn't want to do giveaways like this constantly because there's making the form, there's posting about it, there's ordering the magnets, there's mailing the magnets, there's communicating about the magnets. But also I use all of those touch points as rapport building and brand building.
It's more than just throwing up a giveaway and giving away, you know, $100 gift card to a local store or business or service that people really love. The magnet thing worked great for me. I actually have my form opened.
I ordered 400 magnets. I shipped 300 directly from my supplier. I have more people filling out the magnet form every day and I'm just letting that roll.
I think I'm at 340 people right now and the balance of the extra 100 magnets actually arrived at my doorstep the other day. I'm gonna have a local teenager in my neighborhood stuff the envelopes, stamp them, and then I do have a printer at home. I'm just gonna do a mail merge and take my spreadsheet and mail the other 80 or 100 in early September to the people who have signed up for the magnets more recently.
What I'm doing now is I just imported all of my magnet requests into my CRM. I labeled and tagged anybody who is a lead. If you're just listening to this as a sole agent, you're gonna follow up with your leads yourself.
I assign the leads to my team members and I divvied them up between our three sales agents and they're all reaching out to anyone who said they're thinking of buying, selling, moving, or need a market analysis. I gave them actually a ready to use email template and text template for any of those use cases of buy versus sell versus etc, even a voicemail script. They're gonna start hitting those people up and just making friendly outreach, getting in their inbox.
Basically it's sort of casting a line out and seeing who's real. Some people who check the boxes on those forms are real. Some of them aren't.
You find out who's real, talk with them, try to set an appointment. If they're not ready for an appointment, set a task to yourself to check in again in a month or so. Put them on an MLS auto email drip, nurture them.
If they're going in your CRM, that means ideally they're also going in your email marketing, maybe getting invited to a fall event. That's my system. I just rinse and repeat as I add people to it gradually over the years.
That's what I'm up to with the magnet strategy. We had 10 leads that were buyer or seller or buy-sell and 14 market value inquiries. I am sure there's some business in there that we're gonna take in the near future, plus long-term business, plus referrals from those people where they may be happy in their house, but maybe didn't love the realtor they worked with.
Now they're gonna refer me. That happens a lot with the way I database build, whether that's in my CRM directly or through my social media presence, especially Instagram, because I'm heavy on stories. People reply to my stories.
I build a relationship with them in the DMs and then they refer me. Or they're, oh my gosh, I'm in my house. I've owned it for a year and no one told me about this.
No one told me about that. I wish I'd known you. That's when I pounce and say, I hear you, I've got you, happy to give you my contractors and just do me a favor.
If you know anyone that I can help, please introduce me. They're usually, yes, thank you very much. It does help to go to that point though and say, hey, I'd love your support.
That's what I'm up to with my Magnet giveaway. I also have a Facebook group, a local geographically focused Facebook group that I'm the founder, I'm the admin. I run giveaways in there periodically for the same reason.
I list build, I grow my database. I have people check the boxes if they're thinking of moving. I put them all in my database.
I reach out to the leads. I also have a secondary email newsletter that just goes to that group of people. It's all about that area.
I basically send one email to my database, my entire database, the first of every month, give or take. That's my monthly newsletter, if you will. If you want that newsletter template, it's $19.
You can buy it from me. It's called Email Made Easy. It is in the notes of this podcast.
If you scroll towards the bottom, there's a list of my products and you can find it in there. On the 15th of the month, I send a slightly different newsletter just to my geographic niche. I recap one or multiple interesting houses on the market or that have recently sold and do that local flavor.
I also share things that are events that are happening specifically in the area locally. It's rinse and repeat. My VA Googles and figures out a few things that are happening event-wise.
She finds a few listings with some criteria I've given her. I look at it really quick, put my eyes on it, maybe edit a few words and push send. That newsletter, as well as my main client newsletter, I regularly get people replying and being, I'm ready.
When can you come over? I'm ready to sell my house. Then I'm, oh, great. My team member's gonna be there.
They don't even meet me. They're, okay, great. Can't wait to have the Bellevue group.
It's branding. It takes a long time to build this, but it's worth it. It's profitable.
It's the best client types and interactions you can have when you do this. If you're not, if you don't have your people in a database, if you're not doing basic email marketing, please message me and I can point you in the right direction. There's multiple ways that I can help you with that from the simplest email template to a much more big picture strategy of really getting your shit together as it were.
That's what I am doing with my giveaways for my geographic Facebook group. I gave away something very locally focused, a dozen crabs, cause everyone loves crabs in Baltimore to a really popular restaurant where people love to get their crabs. I had, I think almost 200 people enter that giveaway, which is a pretty good outcome for the size of that group as well.
Same thing. They're in the database now. We're reaching out to the leads.
We have a similar email, text, voicemail script for reaching out. Basically what we do is we call. If they don't answer, we leave a voicemail, a friendly, hey, I'm reaching out.
Tina, you filled out this form, mentioned you wanna buy, would love to chat with you. Call me or text me anytime. That's the voicemail if they don't answer, plus an immediate text that mirrors almost that same thing because as you probably know, texts have a much higher open and response rate than calls and voicemails.
We make it easy. I also have an email followup that mirrors that, that I love to send out a day or two later if they don't call back or text back, hitting them up that way. I say, hey, left you a voicemail the other day.
Email might be easier. Just wanted to get on your radar. Here's my information.
You mentioned this. Here are some ways I can help you. One of the things I do with buyers is I dangle, hey, if you're interested, I can show you some off-market and coming soon properties.
That is something people actually want that they, yes, they can find coming soon properties online, but just the idea that you might have something that isn't just accessible to them day-to-day is a great way to get a response. For sellers, what they often want from me more than anything is advice on what to do or not do for resale and or my good, affordable, reasonable, trustworthy contractors. It's often a blend of that.
They're, oh my gosh, thank you. Because it's that mental labor and fear of not knowing what to do or they don't know the right people. They know that they need to paint the whole house.
For a lot of consumers, they don't have connections. Obviously, that's why we're valuable. What's helpful is not to just say, hey, if you're ready to sell, call me.
No, hey, if you need my favorite contractor, let me know, I can hook you up. Then if they reply, that's my in to say, hey, can we come over? Can we help make sure you do the right things? Can we at least FaceTime? Can you send me pictures? Something to really engage, get more information, and build a relationship. That's what I'm up to with giveaways.
That's all about generally new database additions and new lead acquisition. What I'm up to with my events is mostly nurturing people in my database, but also capitalizing on my digital geographic farm, aka my geographic Facebook group. By the way, I also have a free guide on how to build a Facebook group mine.
You can find that in the show resources if you haven't seen that already. That's one of my most popular resources with agents. I have three events on deck, two in September, no, one in September, one in October, one in November.
That's a lot. I don't recommend you do three events in a row. I may regret it, but I do try to run with things when I feel inspired.
What I'm doing at the last week of September is I'm going to host for the first time an in-person networking meetup for business owners who are all in my digital geographic farm, who are in my geographic Facebook group. This is something that's been on my mind forever, and I've never gotten around to it, even though these are the kinds of things that, in my
opinion, are very easy to throw together, as long as you have a venue and maybe even someone who will sponsor coffee and donuts, and then you don't have to do anything except put together an RSVP form and see who comes. Whether it's three people or 30 people, anyone who comes to network is generally excited to meet a couple nice people.
In fact, intimacy is a wonderful feature of small events where you can actually connect with a handful of great people instead of making small talk and handing out a bunch of business cards. In a way, I'm, why haven't I done this sooner? I know why. I've been really focusing on my agent network, but I have this big group of people.
Many of the people in there are business owners. In fact, it's all the people that are constantly wanting to spam the group and market their businesses and post about their businesses every day. Basically, I do have a title company that is, they're my go-to.
They are based in the area that my group is in, and they do have a really nice meeting space, that helps. I've had a few events there now. I reached out, said, hey, can I have this event at your business? They're, of course, we would love for you to bring a bunch of business owners in that will now know about our business.
And yes, oh yeah, and we'll provide breakfast. I'm, great. I picked a date.
I like to do events about a month out unless they're complicated. That's just enough time for me to plan and promote it and not feel I'm behind the eight ball. Then what I did for events, I really like to use Eventbrite for RSVPs where generally Eventbrite's really good because it's free, even if you're having paid tickets, which I'm not for this.
It will automatically remind people before the event a few times, which is essential. Just the automation of that is really critical. I just threw up a really basic Eventbrite.
I was a little at a loss for what to call it. I put it into chat GPT. I ended up, I'm calling it something really basic.
It's literally Lutherville Timonium business owner networking coffee. It's kind of a mouthful, but you read it, you know exactly what it is and you know if it's for you or not. Made a description.
I've got the link ready and I'm gonna just post it in my group once a week leading up to the event and just say, please RSVP so we have a headcount. Any business owner is welcome. See you then.
My goal with this, first of all, people are gonna sign up in Eventbrite. That's more lead capture for me. These are definitely gonna be some people who have never filled out my other giveaways.
Definitely gonna get some database growth about it. What I'm most excited about is taking my online relationships to in-person level. I am certain that there are some like-minded people that are gonna come to that event who will start referring me business and I'll start referring them too.
Business to business networking is a beautiful thing, especially if you are engaging people who are in the home services space. I used to do networking groups back in the day where it was more people who, I couldn't refer to them that easily and they couldn't refer to me that easily. They sold advertising.
They sold commercial products that have nothing to do with me. But if I'm putting together a group where there's lawn people, painters, contractors, alarm system sales reps, all this stuff that I deal with all the time and they deal with people like me. I'm really excited.
Even if I just pick up one new relationship from that session that starts sending me business, that is a win and it builds my brand, creates more goodwill, makes my group even stronger. I'm sure some of those people are gonna bring a friend. I'm pumped about that and I'm gonna keep it really low lift.
I'm not gonna stress about who's coming. I'm just gonna promote it in the group once a week with scheduled posts. I will mention it in the forthcoming newsletter that's gonna go out mid-month to that associated email list and then I'm gonna see who comes and I'm gonna let my title company pay for the refreshments and it's one less thing for me to spend money on.
That's my September event. I'm excited about it. In October, this was a little bit of a, this is the one where I'm, am I gonna regret this? We'll find out.
I moved into my new house almost a year ago. I do have a nice backyard and I've had a dream of doing some sort of very toddler specific and young child specific event here. We had an Easter egg hunt here in the spring and it was awesome.
That is definitely going to be a mainstay of my events moving forward. I'm, you know what? Let's do something with pumpkins. I used to do an event at a farm every year but it always, that was a big, bigger, more expensive, complicated event and it always fell too close to pie party and it felt two big events at once.
It was too much for me. What I'm gonna do here is more of a low key, small group pumpkin painting party. We're calling it paint a pumpkin is the working title of the event.
I'm going to invite not my whole database because for me, my whole database is everyone that's in there, whether you've transacted with me or not and I just have your contact info. I'm inviting past clients and referral sources only which is still a very large swath of people. But of course, not all of them have young children or grandchildren.
I'm not expecting hordes of people to come. I'm just throwing that together. I already got my lender on board.
I'm gonna ask him to just buy and bring or deliver all the pumpkins a day before for however many kids come. I'm probably gonna rent some small low tables because I don't really have what I need. I will say my nanny has turned out to be my secret weapon with my events.
She is good at planning crafts, putting everything together. I'm very blessed to have her. Part of why I'm saying this is I don't do the things I do alone.
You probably have someone amazing right under your nose who can help you. There are always artsy people around who love this stuff. If you're, I wanna do this, but I don't know exactly where to go with it.
I haven't had a pumpkin painting party before. She's gonna think through more about what paint is gonna dry the fastest and what snacks make sense and all of that. We're gonna have it on I think a Saturday or Sunday morning.
I think it's the first weekend in October. I'm gonna do it at 10 a.m. I'm gonna have, I think again, I'm gonna do Dunkin' Donuts. I'm not gonna do expensive catering or a food truck.
I'm just gonna have coffee for the parents, munchkins, maybe a fruit platter, simple. I've learned with kids events too, don't overdo it. Simple is better.
I'm expecting this won't be huge. I'm going to celebrate that because I wanna actually talk to people. The downside to our pie party is it's gotten so big that it feels a little bit transactional because it's just people are roaring through, getting their pie, moving on.
Some stay and talk, some don't. But I get tied up handing out pies and I don't really get to connect. Part of what I loved about the Easter egg hunt this past spring was that it was free form.
People were here. They were here for an hour to two hours between before the hunt and after. I really connected.
There's something about having all the kids running around where it felt everyone could make small talk with each other even though they didn't necessarily know each other. I'm looking to replicate that same sweet, connected energy with my pumpkin painting party. If I have 20 or 30 kids here, I'll be happy.
It could be more. I'm also thinking, depending on the vibe, once we start preschool, that I will, my daughter's starting a twos class this fall, which I cannot believe. My son is in pre-K.
I will probably invite both classes and be, hey, I'm having this. Let me know if you wanna come. I will probably keep it a little more easy breezy and just email those people and not send them my event bright just so it doesn't feel too businessy and just play it really cool and then work on adding them to my database big picture.
That's my plan for that. I am excited about it. There's always a chance with events like this that I'm, ooh, this was more than I bargained for.
Just gotta keep a very simple mission in mind, some snacks, one craft. You know how kids are. They get crazy or have tantrums and everyone's ready to go after an hour anyway.
That's gonna be a new experiment. When my business was cooking at its highest level, I was doing quarterly events. Since COVID, I've pared down to two events a year with sometimes a third auxiliary small easy event, which is definitely what feels most doable for me.
This is dipping my toe in the water of, how can I add one or two more events a year that do touch the best and most important part of my database, but don't take a ton out of me. That's the thought process behind that. In November, I am doing my annual pie party, which is our signature client appreciation event.
I've been doing this event. I've done it at least 10 times over the last 20 years. We've been doing it every year in a row since 2019.
I kind of tried some other things for a few years. We have that dialed in to a science. Two things for you.
If you wanna have a pie party and you've never done one before, or if you've done it before, but there was a lot of room for improvement with everything, how many people came, how many people actually got the pie, how many people tagged you and thanked you, how many referrals you got, all the things we hope for from our parties, especially with pies, I have two really good resources. Number one, I packaged everything you need for a pie party into this really fun product called Pie Party in a Box. It's a digital product.
It's linked in my show notes. It's my checklist, my templates, my event invitation template, my email templates, my text templates. Literally, it's A to Z everything you need to know, do, think about, and plan for to have a really good pie party.
You can buy that, and it's an incredible product. I launched it last year, but it was very close to Thanksgiving by the time I put everything together the way I wanted, and the people who used it loved it, and this year I'm trying to get the word out way earlier for people who want that kit. I also have a podcast walking you through that and everything with my pie party.
That's a free resource. You could start with that, listen to it, maybe buy the Pie Party in a Box if you want. You will just need to scroll back into my library and find it.
I'll try to also link that up in the show notes here. Right now, I have saved the date with our venue and my team. Late August, I've got a date, and I have also just, I have a Facebook group for my clients, which is nice.
I use it to get the word out about events and just do warm touches that have nothing to do with marketing and listings and stuff that and I did put out there, hey everyone, it's happening, save the date.
That's where I'm at with that and then I'll start planning that more in late September.
I try to get my order form out at some point in October, close out orders by early November, maybe the second week of November at the latest, and then we always have the party the Monday before Thanksgiving.
I used to do it the Tuesday or Wednesday before.I found that I got better attendance on Monday.
A lot of people haven't left town yet and they get the pie, and they may, they may save it for Thanksgiving, they may eat it that night.
I have a lot of people that eat it that night.
That's been a way for me to maximize the attendance and connect with more people and not have so many people go, oh man, I'm leaving town that day, or, or the other issue I had when I used to have it really close to Thanksgiving is traffic's really bad and then people would literally give up on coming to the party once they got on the highway and found out it was going to be a nightmare.
That is my brain dump.
I know it's a lot, I have a whole team.
I have a full-time administrator.
I have a VA.
I have a marketing assistant, and I do have a nanny who helps with me with my events, and I have years of practice.
As always, don't compare to me, don't try to do it all, but I'm hoping there's a kernel in everything I shared with you in this episode.
Of something you can do that would move your business forward, grow your database or nurture who you have, level up your game and get more business cooking for the fall and for 2026.
As always, I love questions, I love feedback.
I love hearing your wins.
Follow me on my new account at higher performance Agent on Instagram.
Shoot me a message and let me know if you're gonna implement something from this, or if you have a question or need a word of advice, if you need one of these resources and just want me to, you know, hand you the link.
Happy to chit chat with you and I will see you soon on my next episode.
