Rob Minton - Renegade Millionaire Real Estate Agents

Automatic Lead Conversion - Part One

I was recently interviewed by Dean Jackson about how I built my business. The interview was transcribed and I've included part one for you in this blog post.

We’ve got a very special Marking Monday for you this week. Recently I interviewed my friend Rob Minton.

Some of you might be familiar with Rob, he was able to build a very successful real estate practice in the Cleveland, Ohio market and he was subsequently able to sell that business recently for more than a million dollars.

Rob has some great insights on choosing a very specific niche market and then applying direct response marketing to that business to build it in an incredible way so that clients were actually applying to work with Rob and his team.

So we’ve got some great insights for you today and I hope that you enjoy this interview and tell all your friends.

——-

Hey Rob, thanks for joining us.

You’re welcome Dean.

Hey, where in the world is Rob Minton today?

Rob Minton is calling from his home office in lovely Cleveland Ohio, and I always say lovely before I say Cleveland, little, supposed to be a little joke because it’s not really lovely here.

Cleveland Rocks.

Go Browns baby, right?

There you go. Well Rob I really appreciate you taking the time to spend with us today, and I know you’ve got an interesting story about how you built your real estate business, so can you share a little bit about your career in real estate sales?

Yeah I’d be happy to, and just kind of a quick warning, I’m struggling with a little bit of bronchitis, so if I, I’ve got cough drops and all kinds of stuff, so I will do my best not to cough up a lung as we go forward. I got my real estate license in the mid 1990’s and I was working for a small company, you know this small brokerage, and I was working with buyers and trying to get listings, and I did what everybody else did, I was out there copying other real estate agents that I thought were successful, and at some point I started to read some books on business, and I decided to open my own brokerage, and this was about near 2000. My main strategy at that point was I’d run a lead generation advertisement offering a free report, and a prospect that would be interested in that free report would call and leave a message, or maybe they’d go to my website and request it, and then I, the idea was we would return the phone call and in that phone call try to set an appointment with the person who requests the report and, so that was kind of the main approach, and…

Did you start right out of the gate, using direct response like that? Like were you familiar with it, and you started immediately applying it to your real estate business?

No actually, no. My original broker was old school, so we weren’t doing any direct response advertising whatsoever, but when I made the decision to start my own company and I started to hire agents, I realized that I needed to do something to be able to have new clients coming into the business on a consistent basis, and when I started research marketing, direct response seemed like to be the best approach to use going forward. But the problem is once you generate the lead, what do you do with it, right? How do you get that lead to become a client? I recruit a couple of agents and the idea was “Okay I’ll generate the leads, I’ll hand these leads off to my agents and then my agents will make these phone calls” – you’re laughing.

Well I laugh because we always joke that it’s like, you expect and you think that you can generate all these leads and hand somebody the ball on sort of the fifty yard line and they can take it from there, but the reality is you’ve got to, you’ve almost have to hand it to them on the goal line and push them over the edge.

That it, nobody told me that right. I’d hand them the ball and they’d fumble it like Cleveland Browns would do, and so what ended up happening was, because I own the business, I’ve got to pay for all the expenses. In addition, I ended up being the one making the phone calls because I couldn’t get them to do it. So I’m on the phone in the evenings, I’m on the phone on the weekends, I’d set the appointments, then I’d hand the appointment off to my agents. When they had the appointment they would do fairly well. But at some point, I realized this strategy is not sustainable going forward. I can’t be the one driving every sale for my business. Sure if I'm working by myself – yeah that would work – but to try to feed your agents that way is not a really good business strategy. I didn’t have the cash flow in the business to hire like an outbound call person or a telemarketer. Ihad to figure out a different way to handle lead conversion. Calling prospects to set appointments just didn’t work for me. Maybe it does for other agents, but the way you laughed is probably saying that it doesn’t.

I just think that was funny because it’s so, you know I work with a lot of agents who have teams, and the dream is that you can generate the leads and hand them off, and agents will turn them into sales but it just doesn’t work out that way.

They don’t appreciate it I guess if they’re not paying for it, I don’t know. But, so what ended up happening was I’m like “Okay this doesn’t work, what do I have to do?” I went back to books and I started studying sales letters and long copy sales letters which my original broker told me if it’s, if you’re writing something long people won’t read it, you’re wasting your time, and it turned out he was wrong. If you have a good sales letter with a neat story, people will read it even if it's long.

The same thing applies to ads though, like a lot of times the advertising sales people, and your brokers, and people who aren’t trained in direct response think you got to have a lot of white space and you got to have short punchy things because people don’t read, but you know I always get a kick out of, our mutual friend Dan Kennedy always says “Nobody reads white space”. We know that for sure.

It would without a doubt, and actually Dan Kennedy, some of his books helped me a lot. One of his books was The Ultimate Sales Letter. This is where I started to learn how to write sales letters. I simply sat down and wrote a long copy sales letter for my business. The goal was to lead a prospect to the conclusion that I was an expert and the best agent for their real estate needs. I put a call to action in the sales letter by adding “If you’re interested in becoming one of my clients, fill out this application and fax it in to my office.” The goal was to pre-sell the prospect, get them to raise their hand and come back to us again. I began advertising a free report, but the free report I sent was the sales letter that I wrote. Slowly but surely, we started to get people sending in these client applications. They would come in via fax, some would come in via mail and some people actually would drive to the office and hand deliver them. This was a huge turning point in my business, because I was able to then hand off these applications to my agents and my agents were able to convert 50-70% of those client applications into exclusive buyer contracts. One sales letter eliminated outbound phone calls and believe it or not, it actually doubled my home sales from 2005 going forward each and every year. The end of my story in selling real estate is that I sold my small real estate brokerage for seven figures in 2007.

Wow. That’s some pretty impressive growth numbers, but what do you think drove the increase in the number of homes that you sold?

Well a couple of things. First off, to touch back on what we just talked about is once I realized I could run a direct response advertisement, generate a lead and then mail them a sales letter and have an application come in, I had a predictable lead conversion type strategy in my business. If I wanted to sell more homes, all I really needed to do was generate more leads. Because the sales funnel worked so well, more leads meant more client applications, which turned into more home sales. Once this was in place in my business, I could leverage it further just by running more lead generation advertisements.

The second was targeting a specific niche in the market. This is different than what I think a lot of agents do. A lot of agents want to be everything to everybody. This is virtually impossible. By selecting a niche, you’re saving a lot of time. You’re able to offer some compelling benefits to your specific niche, and when you do you’ll see an increase in response rates.

How would you describe a niche? I’d love to hear how you would describe what a niche market is for people who maybe not have a crystal clear understanding?

… It’s a gap, a possible gap in the marketplace where other real estate agent’s aren’t necessarily paying attention to that you can dominate. In my business, I decided to niche with real estate investors. Back in 2004 – nobody was really paying attention to investors. I’m not saying working with investors today is the best niche because of all the problems with financing here in the States, but at that point in time no one really wanted to work with investors. In fact, most agents felt investors were a pain in the neck to work with. I decided to make investors my entire business. Basically a niche is a pocket in the market which you can excel at.

Yeah, like a definable market rather than just saying anybody who wants to buy or sell a home – that’s pretty broad, but when you can narrow it down to investors would be a niche, or first time buyers would be a niche, whatever. A segment of the market like that.

Definitely segment of the market. The hard part is letting all other opportunities outside of your niche go. A couple of other things real quick on what I think helped drive the number of home sales is I finally learned the real value of a lead. When I first got into real estate, I didn't see this value. Next was lead conversion systems like the sales letter. The sales letter helped to automatically convert prospects into clients. I viewed this as a very powerful sales asset for the business. Those would probably be the high points which drove our increase in home sales.

Now isn’t it amazing though, because we talked about a lead conversion system and for me, that’s what’s so, that’s why I believe we have so much in common, I like everything that you’re doing because everything that we do is really based in systematic results and the value of system is knowing with predictability what’s going to happen. Like you know if you generate a bundle of a hundred leads and you send out this sales letter, the start of your lead conversion process, and I love how you call them sales assets, because that’s exactly what it is. If you’ve got an add or a postcard or any type of lead generator, or a website that predictably creates a result when you drive people to it, that is an asset. You don’t have to, you put in the work, you’ve done the, you’ve done all the hard work about it, and it can continually be deployed.

Oh without a doubt sales assets are probably the most valuable thing you can have in your business. I had one advertorial advertisement that I referred to as my million dollar ad. When I ran this ad, I would generate three hundred leads. I’d mail three hundred sales letters and would have twenty five new clients – clockwork.

Like clockwork, exactly.

Month after month, month after month, month after month.

Well based on what you’re saying in the market place today, what do you think is the best niche to be in right now? We’re talking here in the fall of 2009.

You know, I know probably listeners aren’t going to want to hear this, but I think foreclosures have to be something everyone has to pay attention to. Even though the media’s saying “We’ve hit the bottom” and you’re hearing all kinds of competition, and foreclosures in certain areas, I still firmly believe foreclosure home sales are going to be a major opportunity for many years to come. There are many reasons why I believe this niche is one to exploit. Obviously our unemployment rate is continuing to escalate, which means more people are losing their jobs. More homes are going to be foreclosure. I think we have a pretty big issue headed our way with all the option arms that are going to be resetting. From what I’m reading, 94% of the people that have pay option arms are only paying interest. This means they’re going negative in their monthly payment - on top of the decrease in value. So I think we will continue to see a large number of foreclosures coming into the market over the next two or three years. Even though you might not be excited about foreclosures, I think that’s where the majority of the home sales are going to come.

Either, it’s certainly, you see all of the, like you said it’s all over the news, you know it’s got, it’s coming. There still continues to be more and more of them, and that’s way, I guess there’s some momentum in it, in that the buyers who are buying, it seems like that, to them seems like they’re getting a deal. I mean it seems like that’s what they, that’s what the buyers are really interested in, is buying <crosstalk>

Oh yeah, no. You said the media has trained everyone to want a foreclosed home. This means it's a lot easier today to attract foreclosure buyers. Prospects are already trained to want a foreclosed home by the media. This has dramatically reduced the cost per lead for agents marketing to foreclosure buyers.

Well there’s momentum.

… Yeah because you’re riding in the wave of what the media’s telling everyone. The media attention  drives your marketing cost down dramatically. To give you an example - when I was running my business, my average cost per lead was probably about fifteen dollars. Today agents who market to foreclosure buyers are generating leads sometimes for 30, 40, 50 cents. And in many cases, they're generating free leads  onCraigslist.org. Or if they’re running an advertorial style advertisement, they’re generating high quality leads for a dollar, two dollars, three dollars. I used to pay fifteen dollars, on average, for a lead. This simply means the media exposure on foreclosures is a huge benefit to real estate agents.

See it’s kind of interesting too that you, when you have an asset like your system, the conversion system that you were talking about, you don’t, you’re not afraid to spend money to generate those leads, even though, you talked about generating two, three, four hundred leads a month, and on an average cost of fifteen dollars, you’re spending four, five, six thousand dollars in generating those leads, and a lot of people just don’t have the confidence to do that because they don’t have a system that would convert.

And rightly so. If you don’t have a lead conversion system, you may be wasting your money.

That’s exactly right, but here you are, you knew that you’re going to spend that money, but then at the end of the day you’re going to have twenty five new clients, and you’ve got the value of that is way higher than the money that you spent to generate those leads.

You know it’s funny you bring this up because I honestly believe buying leads for your business is the single best investment you could possibly make. Especially if you have a lead conversion system that turns prospects into clients. It beats every other investment opportunity available by a wide margin. 

Stay tuned for part two of this interview coming soon!

The Best Time to Send Marketing Emails to Your Database

Dr. Frank Luntz recently released a new book titled "What Americans Really Want... Really." It's a great book for those of you who are serious about marketing. Dr. Luntz has conducted over 1,500 surveys and has studied how people live and what they really want in their lives.

Hint: It's a fast-track guide on how to understand and communicate with your prospects.

Early in the book, he summarizes the typical day of an average person. This little study is very revealing from a marketing perspective. As an example, he found that most people begin their day in the dark because they have long commutes to work. More than 3 million people travel 50 miles or more to work. He pinpointed this as being a great opportunity for connecting with your prospect because you may have their uninterrupted attention.

He also found that most people now go online within minutes of waking up to see what's going on in their community, the weather and to get updates from their friends and family. This finding indicates that you should try to deliver some of your marketing messages, newsletters or other client communications so that your prospects have them first thing in the morning. My testing has shown this to be true. My email open rate tends to be higher when the emails are delivered at 6:30 a.m. This doesn't mean you have to personally send the email at 6:30. It simply means you have to program your email to be delivered at 6:30 a.m.

In fact, most people have checked their email before leaving their home for work. Dr. Luntz even found that if someone is under the age of 30, they've probably received a text message, too.

On surfing the Internet he wrote:

"Only a handful of people acknowledge surfing the Web at work for personal content, even though it is well-known that website traffic spikes when people first get to work, during lunch hour, and again right before they leave for home."

Seems to me these three time zones might be very helpful for delivering your marketing messages or driving traffic to your website. They tell you when and how to deliver your marketing messages. Simply by engineering your marketing around how people live, you'll notice an increase in your response rates. More emails will be opened. More people will visit your website. And you'll ultimately sell more homes.

The "Farmer" Report

I just completed a new 15-page report that you can download right now. I call this new report the "Farmer" Report because it includes a simple lesson from two farmers that helped my business dramatically. I honestly didn't "see" this lesson. My mentor, Dan Kennedy, opened my eyes with a short story. I've included Dan's story in the report.

You can download the PDF right now at:

The "Farmer" Report (PDF)

After Dan shared the farmer story with me, I vowed to make a big change in my business. I share exactly what I did in the report. I continue to use what Dan recommended in my business today. Dan does, too! Many real estate agents "see" this operating in my business but don't copy it in their businesses. Hopefully this new report may motivate you to do something similar in your business. 

You'll find a lot of great stuff in this new report. In fact, you'll read about...

- How to lock clients to you for life

- The only 2 things you need do have a successful real estate business

- How to insure your database

- 6 questions you must answer about your business

What I've shared in this new report is extremely valuable. It's not a new secret by any means. As soon as you figure it out, you'll probably think "Oh, that's nothing new. I've heard that a million times." And you would be 100-percent correct. The problem is the majority of you aren't doing this in your business even though it's one of the most important things you can do. Or if you're actually doing this in your business, you're not very consistent with it.

Download this report now at:

The "Farmer" Report (PDF)

Is a database of 500 prospects enough?

Last week, I received a great question from one of my Renegade Report members. The member asked the following question:

"My database has around 500 prospects. Every now and then I send them deal alerts but very few respond. I've only been able to generate a few appointments and a few offers to date. At what point (1,000? 5,000?) can I expect people to make offers and actually buy?"

This is an excellent question, isn't it?

First off, if you're marketing to your database of 500 people via email, you have to understand that only a small percentage of people will actually read your emails. This is because of spam filters, dull email subject lines, and competition over your prospect's inbox by other marketers, friends and work-related issues. Let's assume that only 10 percent of those in your database read your emails. A database of 500 prospects would indicate that 50 people read what you've sent them.

In marketing, 50 interested prospects isn't a very large number.

This doesn't mean that you won't sell, it just means that you're not going to generate huge results through email marketing, unless you build a larger database. With 50 interested prospects, you can assume that 5 percent to 10 percent of them might respond to your offer. This would translate into two to five responses, depending on what you're marketing and how you're marketing it.

As you can see, marketing is all about numbers. The larger your database, the more responses you'll receive. You shouldn't expect 100 people to respond to something you offer via email if your database has only 500 prospects. It simply won't happen.

This is why building a large database is so critical for your success. I constantly preach that you should generate 100 leads a month for every full-time agent on your team. My monthly lead-generation goal was 400 leads. Throughout a year, my database grew by 4,800 prospects. Unfortunately, not many agents are listening. In fact, I get negative comments from agents who say 100 leads a month is too many for one agent to handle. Simply not true! In fact, it's a major limiting belief.

Imagine how your marketing would change if you had 10,000 prospects in your database? One email would be opened by 1,000 prospects (10 percent) and 50 to 100 (5 percent to 10 percent) would respond to the offer made in the email. The game changes dramatically.

Everything gets easier.

As you start to think about 2010, make sure your marketing focus is on building your database. It's the best investment you'll ever make. If you need a little help, I strongly suggest downloading my program titled "31 Days to a Larger Database" for just $12.95 available at:

http://www.31daydatabase.com

Oh and don't wait for January to start implementing new strategies for your business. Let your competition blow off November and December waiting for the New Year to start.

Begin implementing your 2010 goals now and get a head start!

Use "Sales Assets" to Build Your Dream Business

Most real estate agents do not focus on creating assets within their businesses. They simply focus their time and attention on trying to sell homes to generate income. This is fine, but it's not the best long-term strategy for your business because it forces you to continually sell, month after month. You have zero leverage.

A better strategy to consider would be to focus your time and attention on creating what I refer to as "Sales Assets." I define a “Sales Asset” as a sales tool that can be used to generate sales without your day-to-day physical involvement.

My very first “Sales Asset” was a sales letter that compelled prospects to apply to become one of my clients. Once the sales letter was written and tested, it could be relied upon to deliver a certain number of new clients each and every month. This sales letter transformed my business. The best part about the sales letter was that it wasn’t dependent upon me or didn't require any of my time. I simply hired a part-time high school student for a few hours a day to mail the sales letters and client applications magically appeared in our fax machine. These client applications were given to my agents, who then met with the prospect, signed them to an exclusive agreement and then sold them a home.

The next “Sales Asset” I created for my business was a free class presentation that compelled attendees to become our clients. This included all the marketing to get a prospect to register and attend the class, as well as the actual presentation for the class. The class presentation was designed to motivate the attendees to become our clients. In other words, it was a tool to convert prospects into signed clients.

This was a lot of work, but the work had a large payoff because once perfected, it was another “Sales Asset” for my business. I personally taught the first few classes and worked the bugs out of the system. Then after the “Sales Asset” was providing predictable results, I delegated the class to one my agents.

At this point, my business had two powerful “Sales Assets” that could be significantly leveraged. As an example, if I wanted more clients, I could simply run more lead-generation advertisements that would put more compelling sales letters into play. Or I could schedule and market additional free classes
that would be taught by my agents.

Both of these assets operated without my direct involvement. My responsibility was to generate leads and then make sure the "Sales Assets" delivered the expected results. I was able to work from home in a T-shirt and shorts. My agents worked with our clients and I was able to enjoy complete control over my schedule.

The reason is because I focused on creating "Sales Assets" instead of selling homes. Your role shouldn't be to sign clients or sell homes. Your role should be focused on creating and leveraging "Sales Assets" for your business.

It’s far more profitable to build “Sales Assets” for your business than it is for you to sell homes yourself.

These assets give you the ability to create new clients (income) at will. They can be engineered to provide a consistent flow of new clients from week-to-week, eliminating the roller coaster income we’ve all experienced. More importantly, “Sales Assets” give you complete control over your time
because they don’t require your manual labor after they are created, tested and in place.

Here are two questions for you to ponder:

1.    What “Sales Assets” are you using in your business right now?
2.    What “Sales Assets” are you testing or experimenting with for your business for the future?

6 Steps to Generating FREE Leads on Craigslist

This is a guest article by Josh Schoenly.

After years of trial and error using Craigslist, I finally created a system for consistently generating quality leads for my business, and I’ve decided to share the steps in this article. 

Step 1: Create An Account
This is the easiest step by far, but it is critical to getting the best results and to track your results as well. All you need to do is go to Craigslist.com and click on the login button. Then on the next page, if you don’t already have an account, you’ll click on the area that says “Don’t already have an account.” You just fill in your information, name and email, and you’ll be sent an email to confirm. Once you receive the email, click on the link in there and, voila -- you have an account you can start to use. 

Step 2: Pick Your Campaign
Here is what I mean by picking a campaign: If you are going to generate leads on Craigslist, you need to do it with a purpose. You must choose the kinds of leads that you are looking to work with. Here are some ideas: foreclosure buyers, lease option buyers, apartment building buyers, luxury home buyers, first-time home buyers, buyers in a particular school district -- you get the idea. 

Step 3: Create Your Campaign
This step can be a little time-consuming (really only 30-60 minutes), but the good thing is once you are done, it’s done for good. You may want to go back from time to time and tweak, but most of the work is complete. Here is how to create a campaign for Craigslist lead generation. Once you have picked your campaign, you then need to create several different ads to post and generate traffic. Craigslist doesn’t allow you to post the same ad over and over, so you’ll need several different posting titles and posting descriptions (you’ll also want variations for the location and price boxes as well). By creating different titles and posts, it allows you post frequently, which allows you to consistently drive traffic to your landing page or squeeze page (never send the traffic to your main Web page) or to e-mail or call you. 

Step 4: Implementation – Posting Your Ads
Here is where the rubber meets the road. Now that you have your campaigns created, you need to start posting. I recommend to post twice daily during the week and at least once a day on the weekends. You will want to be posting when there is a lot of traffic to Craigslist because the longer your ad is up, the farther down the page it goes. So you probably don’t want to post at 5 in the morning, as it’s not likely that many home buyers are surfing Craigslist at that time. Now, it is critical to be consistent posting your ads. This literally takes just a couple minutes a day, but it will become one of those things that after some time becomes a bore to do. If you really can’t stay diligent with it, have your assistant (if you have one) do them for you or you could even hire one of your kids to do it. I know I am stating the obvious here, but if you don’t post, you won’t get leads, so make sure you stay consistent. 

Step 5: Follow Up
Here is where it starts to get exciting. Depending on the information you collect from the leads you may be able to follow up in several ways. If you are just collecting name and e-mail, obviously that means your only form of follow up will be through e-mail. If you are collecting phone numbers, which I would recommend, then you can make outbound phone calls. If you are able to collect full contact information, including address, I would highly recommend sending a sales piece, ideally a sales letter, enticing them to work with you as a client. Your follow-up must also be consistent and scripted. If you are offering a free list of homes, whether they be fixer-upper or foreclosures etc, make sure you are regularly sending out the list. For example, in my business I send my free lists to my leads every Thursday morning. This does several things -- keeps me on a schedule and creates an expectation from the buyers that they’ll be getting their new list each Thursday. In order to get maximum response from your list, you need to make different offers to them. Here are some ideas for offers you can be making to get them to raise their hand to work with you: teleseminars, homes tours, group open houses, live seminars, etc. 

Step 6: Track & Improve
The last step is the least glamorous, but might be the most important of all. You need to be tracking your ads and results from the start. If you don’t track, you’ll have no idea what’s working and what isn’t. Here are some of the things you need to track: which ads are getting the most response, how well your landing page is converting, how many leads you are getting daily, how many leads turn to clients, how many leads open your emails, and more. Now this part of the business isn’t much fun, but you can only improve what you track, and if you aren’t tracking this information you have no way of improving your results. 

Josh Schoenly has literally cracked the code to lead generation on Craigslist. Over the last 3+ years he has generated over 7,000 leads using his own system. For a limited time you can download Josh’s Craigslist Marketing Matrix and accompanying 30-minute video explaining exactly how he does it at www.CraigslistMarketingMatrix.com.

How Real Estate Agents Can Use "Proof" in Their Marketing

We can learn a lot from attorneys.

Think about the typical criminal court case. The prosecuting attorney must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant is guilty of the crime in question. To make this more challenging, they don't have to prove their case to one person, they must prove their case to an entire panel of jurors.

How does this apply to you?

In your next client sales presentation think about "proof." Does your presentation prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that you're the best real estate professional for the prospective client?

Proof requires evidence.

Most agents don't prove anything in their presentations. They say a lot, but they don't back it up with proof. Some agents will say ...

"I'll sell your home fast" or "I'll sell your home for top dollar" - PROVE IT!

To become a top-level marketer, you must go beyond "telling." You must start "showing." Remember the famous line "Show me the money" in the movie Jerry Maguire? "SHOW" was the key word. Would this line have been as effective if he would have said "Tell me the money?" Of course not.

This is exactly what we do when we don't prove what we say in our marketing.

Imagine that you have to give your listing presentation tomorrow. However, instead of giving the listing presentation at a seller's home, you have to give it in court in front of a judge and jury. Would you be able to prove to the court that you are the best real estate agent for the job?

To get a feel for how to prove your case, you should study other successful marketers. Last week, I stumbled across two different marketing pieces that did a fantastic job "proving" what they claimed. I suggest you study these two marketing campaigns to see what I mean. Both offer a world-class education on marketing.  

1. The first marketing campaign is about a sports betting system. Now I'm not suggesting that you bet on sports. I'm simply suggesting that you study how this marketer proves, beyond a reasonable doubt, that his approach is successful.

Click Here to See "Proof" Example Number One

Read through this entire sales letter and list all of the different ways this marketer proves his case. You'll find testimonials, verifiable earnings, screen shots, photos and more.

2. The second marketing campaign is about creating income through online businesses. This campaign is a little different because the best "proof" comes in the video included in the sales letter.

Click Here to See "Proof" Example Number Two

On this page, scroll down until you see "Your Money Proof Video." Take a few minutes to watch this video and see how powerful it is in building his case. It's simply amazing.

"Proof" is critically important in your business. Make it a priority to study other marketing campaigns to learn how they prove what they claim. Also make sure you add proof in every step of your marketing process. This would include any marketing materials delivered via mail, email and your sales presentations.

How Real Estate Agents Can Generate Quality Leads Inexpensively

Post by Rob Minton
Follow Me on Twitter

After writing a post about ranking lead quality, I received many questions about joint venture relationships. In the post, I ranked joint venture leads as being the 2nd best lead you could generate. A joint venture relationship is defined by Wikipedia as:

A relationship formed between two or more parties to undertake economic activity together... The venture can be for one specific project only, or a continuing business relationship such as the Fuji Xerox joint venture.

Probably one of the best recent examples of joint venture would be between Apple and AT&T for the sale of the Iphone. AT&T benefits from the joint venture because they receive millions of new cell phone subscribers without incurring any marketing cost. These new subscribers are delivered to them when someone buys an Iphone from Apple. Apple benefits because they receive compensation from AT&T for a portion of the new cell phone subscriber's bill. This cell phone revenue helps Apple offset their costs to market the Iphone.  

In the big picture, both businesses benefit from the joint venture relationship. The main benefit of a joint venture relationship is a lower cost of sale.

As real estate agents, we have the opportunity to engineer joint venture relationships into our businesses to reduce our cost per sale and our cost per lead. This lead generation strategy is very important in today's market because of the reduced volume of home sales. Many agents are struggling with cash-flow and are looking to generate new leads inexpensively. Joint venture relationships should be an integral part of your marketing plan.

As an example, I setup a joint venture relationship with my attorney. I drafted a letter for him to send to his database offering my book for free. If someone in his database wanted to have my book delivered to them for free, they had to call my hotline and leave their name, address and phone number. I covered the cost of the mailing and handled everything on my end. We mailed 200 letters to his database and generated around 40 leads. The cost per lead was around 40 cents each. More importantly, all 40 of these leads were high quality because his letter was an indirect endorsement of my business. His clients requesting my book were "pre-sold" because of this indirect endorsement.

My attorney benefited from this joint venture in 3 different ways. The first benefit was that we referred our clients to him to help with asset protection and estate planning. I recommended him in our client newsletters and featured one or two of his articles. The second benefit to him was that he was able to offer a special gift to his database without having to spend any money or do any work. The letter was written from him, but we handled everything for him. The third benefit was that many of the leads requesting my book called him to ask about us. This gave him an opportunity to talk to clients he hadn't talked to in a long-time. This was a win/win relationship that helped both of our businesses. We both generated new leads and clients inexpensively from our joint venture relationship.

If you think about this for a minute, you might realize that this little joint venture strategy could be repeated with lenders, insurance agents, financial planners, accountants, home inspectors, home staging specialists, interior designers, contractors and other local businesses in your marketplace. You could offer to send a letter to your database promoting your joint venture partners and they would obviously send a letter to their database promoting you. This would help you create win/win relationships.

I know what you're thinking...

Sounds great, but I don't have my own book! You don't need a book to implement this strategy. You do need something of value. How about a special report or a free CD? Or you could setup a conference call with your joint venture partner and interview each other. You could market the conference call to your database and to your joint venture partner's database and share the leads generated. An example of a great joint venture conference call right now might be:

"3 Costly Legal Mistakes Buyers Make When Buying a Foreclosed Home"

During the call, you and your attorney could highlight some of the mistakes buyers make. At the end of the call, you both could have a special offer for listeners.This same strategy could be repeated over and over again with different joint venture partners:

"3 Costly Mortgage Mistakes Buyers Make When Buying a Foreclosed Home" - Lender JV

"What You Must Know About Insurance When Buying a Foreclosed Home" - Insurance JV

Hopefully you can "see" how powerful joint ventures can be for your business. They do require work to set up, but they are very valuable lead generation tools. You'll generate high quality leads inexpensively and you'll attract more "pre-sold" clients to your business. Set a goal to launch one joint venture promotion a month for the rest of 2009. Once the first promotion is created, it will be a piece of cake going forward because you'll be able to reuse marketing pieces with each new joint venture!

How to Rank the Quality of Your Leads

Post Written by Rob Minton
Follow Me on Twitter

In previous articles, I've stressed the importance of consistent lead generation. I've also shared that my goal was to generate 400 new leads each month. In this article, we will focus on lead quality.

This article is timely because many agents seem to know focus exclusively on generating in-expensive leads. These in-expensive leads tend to be lower quality.

Here is an interesting finding from my business:

Lower quality leads are attractive because you don't have to spend a lot on the "front side" to generate the leads. However, you end up having to spend more on the "back side" trying to convert these lower quality leads into clients. The "back side" is the marketing you deliver to the leads once generated. This would include special reports, sales letters, and more.

In my business, I rank the quality of leads as follows: (Ranking is from Highest Quality to Lowest Quality)

1. Referral
2. Joint Venture Endorsement
3. Leads registering to attend a special class
   
4. Leads responding to an advertorial advertisement
5. Leads responding to a "solo" email or "pay-per-click"
6. Leads responding to a classified or home buyer magazine advertisement
7. Leads responding to a craigslist (or similar) advertisement

The problem is that most agents are now focusing on craigslist or classified advertisements which attract the lowest quality leads. They then struggle to convert these leads into appointments and/or home sales.

To be successful, you're marketing campaign must include leads from each source listed above. In fact, I might even suggest that you invest more resources on the top 4 or 5 strategies for higher quality leads. The amount invested to generate the lead will be higher, but the amount invested to sign a new client or sell a home will ultimately be lower. 

If you follow this advice, you'll soon notice that you have less competition. This is because the majority of your competitors will be focusing on in-expensive advertisements that attract lower quality leads. How many agents in your area are consistently setting up joint venture marketing campaigns? How many agents in your area are running advertorial advertisements? I'll bet there aren't too many.

Why?

Because if an agent focuses on lower quality leads, they won't sell very many homes. With limited home sales, their funds will be tight and they won't be able to afford to run advertisements that attract higher quality leads. You'll gain a long-term economic advantage simply by focusing on attracting higher quality leads.

The bottom line is that a lead is not a lead. There are different qualities in the leads you generate. You should create a comprehensive marketing campaign that focuses on generating higher quality leads and let your competitors fight over the lower quality leads.

Additional Marketing Related Articles:

3 Ways to Compound Your Marketing

Killer Lead Generation Strategy for Real Estate Agents

Is It Possible to Buy a New Client

3 Ways to Compound Your Marketing

Post Written By Rob Minton
Follow Me on Twitter

Do you remember learning about the power of compound interest in high school? I do. I can still remember my teacher showing charts of what happened to money over time when interest was compounded from period-to-period. Here are two definitions for "compound":

• intensify: make more intense, stronger, or more marked
• put or add together; "combine resources"

Compound interest is a powerful saving strategy because your savings intensify over time. This happens because you earn interest on the money you originally saved and then you earn interest on the interest previously earned. With each passing compounding period, your savings earn more and more interest.

I believe the same thing can happen over time with your marketing. There are three basic ways this can be engineered in your business:

1. As you sell homes and earn commissions, you increase the amount of money invested into marketing. This compounding increases each year as does your sales.

To engineer this in your business, you must set a specific percentage of your commissions to save and allocate to marketing. In addition, you must have the discipline to increase this set percentage each year. From my observation, this compounding doesn't actually occur for most agents. This is because most agents have a tendency to spend every penny they make. They don't develop the discipline to save or re-invest a fixed percentage of their commissions. 

2. Consistently testing new lead generation advertisements and lead conversion systems in your business.

In number 1, the goal is to increase the amount of money you invest into marketing. The trick is to use the additional marketing $$$ to test new marketing campaigns. Marketing is really about testing. You must be testing new advertisements all of the time. One new winning advertisement could help you sell hundreds of homes. This happened in my business because I tested weekly.

3. By creating marketing pieces that have the ability to go viral.

A viral marketing piece is something that gets distributed from one prospect to their friends and family. Over time, you're marketing expands from person to person without any additional effort or investment on your part. Examples of viral marketing could be a report your wrote and distributed, a book your wrote, an audio recording, or a video. The key is to make your viral marketing piece awesome. The content should be really good so that people will want others to get the same information.

I accomplished this viral strategy by offering a book I wrote as an eBook and then giving each person the right to give the book away to others. Slowly but surely we began to be contacted by people interested in our services that hadn't responded to any of our lead generation advertisements. When we met with them, they would explain that a friend of theirs had passed on my book to them. This is compound marketing at it's best.

Step back and think about how powerful compound marketing could be for your business over time. It intensifies from period to period bringing you more leads, more homes sales and higher profits.

Unfortunately, most real estate agents don't think about compound marketing. They are very haphazard with their marketing. Its the "dreaded" task that they put off and rarely get to because their too busy.

Here are the steps you should take to compound your marketing:

1. Think long-term about your marketing instead of short-term.
2. Make marketing THE priority for your business.
3. Save a portion of each commission check you receive and reinvest it into future marketing.
4. Increase the amount invested into marketing over time, as your income grows.
5. Constantly test new lead generation advertisements
6. Constantly test new lead conversion strategies
7. Create viral marketing pieces and encourage prospects and clients to give them away

How You Can Use The News to Sell More Homes

Post Written By Rob Minton
Follow Me on Twitter

In my previous blog post, I highlighted a brilliant lead generation advertisement. I showed how the marketer beat the newspaper at their own game! At the end of the post, I challenged readers to review the advertisement again to see if they could find another marketing lesson.

I've included the same advertorial for your review again. This time, I want to study a different strategy used by this marketer. Here is the advertisement again:

(click on the picture to enlarge)

Let's look at the headline of the article on top. The headline is "7 smart places to stash your cash." Why is this such a good headline? Really think about it.

The headline is so good because many people are worried about the banking system and losing money kept in bank accounts. We've all heard horror stories from the depression about banks going under and families losing everything. People fear losing money saved in banks because of their horrendous financial condition. The news continuously reminds of bank failures and this magnifies our fears further.

This brilliant marketer has used this fear of bank failures to promote armored safes. Robert Collier, a marketing legend, was famous for teaching that we should "enter the conversation our prospect is having in their mind." This means we should market to what our target prospects are thinking about.

• What are they afraid of?
• What do they want?
• What challenges are they having?

This marketer realized that people are scared about losing their money. They have capitalized on the news media and the fear created. I'll bet the majority of safe manufactures have missed this massive opportunity.

The news has been doing the same thing to real estate. When you read or watch the news, I strongly recommend that you do so from a marketing perspective. You must start to ask yourself:

How Can I Use This In My Business?

For many years, I didn't watch the news or read a daily newspaper. This was because the news is filled with sad stories, problems and negativity. Who needs all of this on a daily basis?

However, over the last few years, I've realized that I can use the news to my advantage. I now subscribe to the USA Today because I want to see and feel what my prospects are thinking. I usually find something in each paper that I can use in some way. This advertisement is a prime example of how I used the newspaper to my advantage. I used a fantastic advertisement to teach real estate agents how to improve their marketing.

One last tip...

If you actually read the article in this advertorial, you might have noticed that one of safe investments highlighted was "real estate." Couldn't you model this strategy and use real estate as a safe investment in your marketing?

Aren't people worried about inflation? Real estate is an excellent way to protect yourself against skyrocketing inflation which we will probably face in the future.

Killer Lead Generation Strategy for Real Estate Agents

Post by Rob Minton
Follow Me on Twitter

When building my real estate company, I used one form of advertised to generate over 95% of all of my leads. The form of advertisement I used was the Advertorial advertisement. An advertorial advertisement is defined by The Free Dictionary as:

An advertisement promoting the interests or opinions of a corporate sponsor, often presented in such a way as to resemble an editorial.

An advertorial is an advertisement that runs in your local newspaper. The goal is to make the advertisement look and read like a regular article in the newspaper. At the end of this special article, a free offer is made to the reader. The free offer could be a free report, free CD, free class, or a free book.

The purpose of the advertorial was to generate leads. These advertisements tend to cost a little more to run because they are larger in size than a classified or display advertisement. However, in most cases, they generate a larger number of leads. The higher cost is justified by the leads generated. In many months, I was able to hit my target lead generation goal of 400 leads from one, well placed, advertorial advertisement.

One of the problems a marketer has today with advertorials is that the newspaper forces you to make the advertisement look like an advertisement. Sometimes they require thick borders which scream advertisement. In addition, they sometimes require that you include "Paid Advertisement" on the top of your advertisement. These requirements typically kill response and ruin the advertorial advertisement. In many cases, the changes required eliminate advertorial advertisements from a marketer's arsenal.

In this blog post, I'll show you how to follow the rules imposed by your newspaper and still run your advertorial so that it still generates a ton of leads for you. Consider the following advertorial found in the USA Today:

(click on the picture to increase the size)

I've only included part half of this advertisement. It is one awesome advertisement and there is a great deal for us to study.

The most important thing for you to see is that there are two advertisements combined together. The first advertisement is on the top. The second advertisement is underneath the thin line and has the headline "Free armored safes being doled out to public."

The newspaper has required this marketer to paste the words "Advertisement" along the top of the first advertisement in several places. In fact, I count the use of "Advertisement" in 5 different places. This would typically drive response down dramatically.

However, the top advertisement is really an article without any special offer. It includes a compelling photo and 7 safe places to save money when your worried about bank failures. The real advertisement is the second one offering the armored safe giveaway. It follows all of the rules of a great advertorial and includes a special free offer for readers.

The marketer used the top half of the advertisement to include a special article offering valuable content. This article was attached to the disclosure that this was an "Advertisement." This strategy allows the marketer to run their real advertorial without having having "Advertisement" plastered immediately above the advertisement. 

It's simply brilliant and it works.

I can safely say this strategy works because I've seen this advertisement many times. The marketer is tracking response to this advertisement through the use of a special "Free Claim Code."  They can tell exactly how many leads were generated from every single advertisement they run. When you see a marketer who tracks response run an advertisement multiple times, you'll know that the advertisement is profitable. They wouldn't re-run an advertisement that didn't work.

The strategy for you to consider would be to mimic this layout with your advertorial advertisements. Use the top part of the advertisement to include a short article featuring you as the author with your picture. This will help to solidify your expert positioning throughout the market. Or you can offer this space to a lender or another professional and have them help cover the cost of part of the advertisement.

Below this short article, feature your best pulling advertorial advertisement. I'll bet you'll see an increase in response.

One more thing...

There is also a very powerful indirect marketing lesson included in this advertorial. The lesson has a direct impact on you and your business. Can you find it?

Other Marketing Related Articles:

Myrna the Mermaid

How One Company Turned Adversity Into Opportunity

Is it possible to buy a new client?

Post by Rob Minton
Follow me on Twitter

This morning I took some time to review some notes from my real estate sales business. The notes I reviewed were lead generation totals. Remember, I no longer own my business. The notes I reviewed were prior to the sale of the business. While reviewing the notes, I thought of a big break through I had with my business, which was that you can buy new clients through marketing.

When I first got into real estate, I didn't fully grasp this concept. Sure, I realized that advertising generated leads. However, I didn't have an effective way to convert leads into clients. Because this conversion was missing from my business, I didn't "see" the ability to buy clients.

To show you what I mean, here are the notes I reviewed this morning which summarized one month of advertising:

                                                                                  Cost            Leads Generated

Advertorial Adv. in Larger Circulation Newspaper         $,2500                349

Advertorial Adv. in Smaller Circulation Newspaper        $550                    36

Marketing letter mailed to my attorney's database        $550                    35

Small Classified Adv. in Large Circulation Newspaper    $200                    3

Adv. in Local Investment Club Newsletter                     $125                    3

Advertorial Adv. in Free Newspaper                             $337                    32

Totals                                                                        $4,262                458

A question for you:

Would you invest $4,262 to generate 458 leads for your business?

Some of you would say "YES" in a heartbeat. Others might hesitate on making such a large investment. I've been in both camps.

Those of you who quickly answered "YES" must have systems within your businesses to convert leads into clients. Using their average lead conversion percentages, they can quickly calculate how many clients will come from the 458 leads. They probably can calculate how many home sales will come from these leads too.

Here are my lead conversion percentages for the leads generated above:

I received 46 client applications. I mailed a free report to each lead which included an application to become one of my clients. Approximately 10% of these leads applied to become one of my clients. My team signed 36 of these applicants to exclusive representation agreements and we sold 16 homes.

I split commissions with my agents, so let's say that the net commission to my business was $2,000 per sale after paying one of my buyer's agents. The $4,262 investment to buy leads turned into around $16,000 in net commissions back to the business.This is a 275% return on investment.

How many times a year would you like to invest $4,262 and get back around $16,000? Well, I did it 12 times a year through monthly marketing. You have this same ability in your business, if you can systematically convert prospects into clients.

The return on investment is great, but the lesson on buying clients is priceless. Can you see how I bought new clients? In fact, I paid $118 for each new client. ($4,262 divided by 36 clients)

What made this possible?

Having systems in place to convert leads into clients and clients into commissions.

A lead conversion system is the key to buying clients. If you don't have one, you shouldn't spend the $4,262 on marketing because you'll be wasting your money.

In my business, one of the lead conversion tools I used was "The Free Report". The free report I used was a sales letter that I wrote which compelled my target buyer to apply to become one of my clients. This sales letter became the goose that laid golden eggs. We then added several other lead conversion tools to the business which helped us convert more leads into clients.

The reason I was reviewing my notes is because I'm in the process of launching a new lead generation and lead conversion system that agents can use to systematically attract and convert leads into clients. This new program includes a compelling sales letter (Free Report) prompting the target buyer to apply to become your client. This program has been engineered around the recession by focusing on specific segment of the market. This program will be released in mid March. You can sign up to be on the pre-release notification list at: http://www.NotificationList.com.

Before we part ways on this blog post, go back and study each advertisement I ran and the number of leads generated. Can you spot the 80/20 principle in play? Which advertisements resulted in 80% of the leads generated? Some valuable information that you might be able to leverage in your business.

The "Free-Ride" Marketing Strategy

Post by Rob Minton. Follow me on Twitter!

Over the last few months, I've added "article" marketing into my business. For those of you who do not know what "article" marketing is, I'll explain it for you. The basic idea is that you write, or hire others to write, special articles directed toward your target prospect. These articles are then submitted to various article directory websites with you as the author. Each article includes a "resource box" where you can promote yourself and your business.

One benefit of this strategy is that other business owners can use your article in their website or in their customer newsletters giving you free exposure to their customers and prospects. As an example, let's assume that you submitted an article to one of these websites about how to sell a home in 7 days flat. I'm an insurance salesman and need content for my monthly client newsletter. I want an article that gives value to my readers. So I find your article and include it in my newsletter. You now get exposure to my entire database for free. This is important because your "resource box" must be included in the article or I am unable to use it. I call this the "Free-Ride" strategy because you get a free ride into someones database. Nice!

The second benefit is that these articles give you expert positioning in the marketplace. When a prospect reads your article, they automatically think of you as an expert. The same positioning occurs if you were to write your own book. Expert positioning is very important for real estate agents and should be part of your overall marketing game plan. It helps attract prospects to you. It helps you control your schedule and set higher commission rates.

The third and probably most powerful benefit of article marketing is that you can dramatically increase your search engine position. Search engines rank websites with many incoming links higher than websites without many incoming links. This means that you need to get other people linking to your website in order to increase your search engine positioning. Top search engine positioning is extremely valuable and will generate free lead after free lead. A top Google search engine position generates 6 times the traffic of a sponsored link on the same page. For this strategy to work, you need thousands of incoming links. On the surface, this sounds like an impossible feat. It's not. I'll show you how to do it!

I recently wrote a blog post showing real estate agents how to follow the money in their market by studying recent home sale activity. I turned this blog post into an article and submitted it to a special service which posts the article on hundreds of websites. Remember, each article has a resource box with links back to my website. I was able to generate hundreds of links to my website just by submitting one article to this service. Below is a screen shot of a Google search for my article. You'll be able to see how this article is now listed on many websites:

At the top of this screen shot notice that this article now appears on 246 websites. Remember this is only in Google. The service I used also posts this article throughout Yahoo too. Here is a screen shot of the Yahoo search:

You can see that this one article was found in 75 websites from the yahoo search. Combine this with the 246 from Google and you'll see that I now have over 300 links back to my website from just one article. Very powerful!

Now, if I submit one article a week for a month, I'll have over 1,200 links back to my website. Sooner or later, I'll have top positioning in Google and Yahoo! This will be a very valuable lead generation strategy. If funds are tight because of the slow real estate market, I strongly suggest you add this strategy to your marketing plan. Here is why:

1. Free traffic to your website.
2. Free leads to your business.
3. Instant expert positioning.

The service I used to submit one article to over 300 websites is: http://www.NewArticleSubmission.com

I simply turned a blog post into an article and will soon have free traffic and free leads. This is the best way to recycle your blog posts to help promote your business. Gotta run because I have to submit a new article today!

How to Use Lead Conversion % to Run Your Real Estate Business

Post written by Rob Minton
Follow me on Twitter.

When I first got into real estate sales, I copied other agents and simply hoped for the best. I figured that I would do the same things they were doing, but better. I would return calls faster. I would do a better job negotiating. I would give better client service. All of this, I thought, would lead me to more home sales. Maybe you've followed this same path in your business, too.

What I finally realized is that it is very hard to outwork your competition, if your doing the exact same things they are. Why? Because we have a lot of competition.

One day I decided to change. I didn't want to work harder. I wanted to work smarter. We've all heard the saying a million times, but we simply don't follow it in our lives.

I began to track everything I did in my business. For example:

• I tracked the number of leads I generated from each advertisement.
• I tracked the number of referrals I received from happy clients.
• I tracked the number of appointments I set with the leads generated and referrals received.
• I tracked how many of those appointments turned into home sales.
• I tracked the number of home sales that fell apart because of financing or inspection issues.
• As my business grew, I tracked these numbers for each of my agents, too.

Remember, I was trained as an accountant, so tracking numbers was in my skill set! I learned many things from tracking these numbers. First of all, I learned that what you measure, improves. Simply by tracking these numbers, I made progress in my business.

However, this tracking allowed me to quickly spot problems within my business. I was able to see when a drop off in home sales was about to occur. We've all been through the peaks and valleys in this business, haven't we? One great month, followed by a slow month. This happens because we stop generating new leads and referrals during our great month. We stop setting appointments with prospective new clients because were too busy. "Signing new clients can wait because I've got to close this sale..." A no, signing clients can't wait...

I could see the drop in home sales coming because the number of leads generated through a period of time dipped. This drop in leads resulted in a drop in sales.

This led me to see certain trends within my business. I'll share just one of these trends with you today. The trend was the % of leads that ultimately turned into home sales. Let's say that on average you generate 100 leads a month and you typically sell around 4 homes each month. This a trend that you can leverage going forward because you have a very good idea that you'll convert 4% of your leads into sales.

So if you want to increase your monthly home sales to 8, you would have to increase the number of leads you generated each month to 200. Or if you wanted to shoot for a massive transformation and sell 20 homes a month, you would need to generate 500 new leads, each and every month.

Using this information from my tracking, I slowly but surely began increasing the number of leads I generated each month. These new leads ultimately turned into home sales at the same percentages  previously established in my business. I simply continued this process until we were averaging between 25 and 30 home sales each month.

I finally learned that you could actually work smarter within your business. You work smarter by tracking every single detail within your business and using the information you accumulate to your advantage. In this example, the number of monthly leads seemed to be the driver of home sales. I leveraged this information big time in my business.

Before we wrap up this post, let me ask you two very important questions:

1. What are you tracking in your business? If your not tracking things consistently, you're making a very big mistake.

2. What % of your leads turn into home sales? Do you know?

You can learn more about other lessons I learned when growing my business in my book Renegade Millionaire Strategies for Real Estate Agents, which is available for free at: http://www.FreeRenegadeBook.com