How to Grow Your Real Estate Territory

Introduction: 

Dave: Hello and happy new year. Welcome to StateListingsInc. The home of MyStateMLS. Thank you for joining us for episode two of our three-part webinar series New Year, New Growth. Where all month long we're taking a look at how you can expand your business all within the new year.

Question And Answer:

Dave: So before we get started, I want to know If you've resolved to grow your business in 2021? Whether It's your entire firm, maybe you are the head of a real estate team, are you planning on growing that? Let us know how you plan to accomplish your goals of growing your business this year. So I'm looking now, Yvette has some great things that she's planning on doing. She's planning on doing some branding, some social media, mailers as well as referrals. So If you haven't been on one of our webinars in the past, be sure you head on over to mystateMLS.com and check out some of our past webinars as well because a lot of the stuff that we've been covering and will be covering this month in our New Year, New Growth series, we've also covered in different webinars and pieced together different training guides to walk you through the process of how you can go ahead and get even more business with the things that you can start applying today.

Dave: Today we're going to be talking about growing your territory and let's talk about it. So right now your a real estate professional, you work in your area, so what does that look like? Maybe that's you are within a 10, 15 maybe 20-mile radius of your home office and while you're gonna be the expert of your local area, there is a whole world of listings out there, there are some that may be just beyond your reach but in fact, you could actually be catering to those homes right now. So what we're talking about today is how expanding your territory and offering your services to brand new clients, brand new customers could lead to new sales, more money, more growth and just exponentially growing your business, and while you're thinking that might be a lot of work to go and branch out to these neighboring counties where I live, there are certainly some strategies and some very easy tweaks that you can do to start expanding your reach and expanding your territory when it comes to how you're handling your real estate business. 

Dave: So we're gonna do is, we're gonna break things down into a few different topics today. What we're gonna be talking about is, how you can work nationwide? You can work wherever you're licensed, you could also consider a Team merger and how using social media can expand your brand and give you more clients, more customers. So let's start things off and talk about working nationwide. We all know when we get licensed, that license allows us to do business in the state in which we reside. Some brokers, some agents may be licensed in multiple states, which is great but there are still 50 states in the US. We also have some territories and with a Nationwide platform like MyStateMLS, that allows you to work Nationwide and MyStateMLS being a Nationwide MLS and referral network, It's going to allow you as an agent to help those relocating customers. Maybe you're working with someone, you're selling their house but they're moving someplace else, they're moving out of state, or maybe just out of your service area. New York's a pretty large state, you can drive several hours in every direction, pretty much and still be in New York.

Dave: So maybe you've got someone moving to the other side of the state and you can't really help them look for houses there but what you can do is, you can take that client, that customer that you've worked with over the years of doing real estate, you can now refer them out to someone else. whether they're on the other side of the state or the other side of the country and what you could do is, you could potentially collect a referral fee by sending out a referral agreement to that listing agent, once you send your current clients, your current customers, over to them and what's great about referrals is, all you really have to do is you're just doing a couple searches with those customers, looking for homes that might interest them in the new area in which they're looking. After you do that, you hand the baton over to that agent in that area, and then you just wait for them to buy a house, and then you're going to be able to collect a referral fee, and really that's just a win-win situation right there. If we want to think a little bit smaller and not talk about the entire country, let's just talk about the state in which you're licensed.

Dave: So a couple minutes ago, I said when we're licensed by the state, that allows us to work anywhere in the state but the thing is, most local MLS's only cover a handful of towns or a handful of counties. So what will happen is, I kind of refer them to as invisible dog fences, whereas is If you're an agent and you join one of your local MLS's, you're only really going to be able to list properties within that system. Where I am in upstate New York, I am in the territory of a local MLS but about 20 minutes southeast, is a complete other territory by a completely different board of realtors by a completely different MLS. So If I were to do business in my home area, I would technically have to join two MLS's just to do my day-to-day business and those fees can certainly add up and what you can do is, find a system like MyStateMLS that's Statewide or Nationwide, that's still going to allow you to search and list homes wherever you're licensed. You know MyStateMLS, also beneficial because again, If you're a broker, you're an agent, you're licensed in two or three states, instead of having to join two or three different MLS's, you can just join one platform and utilize that system in all the states in which you're licensed. You can also use that platform to still look for properties across the entire country because again, you still may run across that instance where you've got a seller who's selling their home but they're moving somewhere else that you're not licensed but with a platform like MyStateMLS, you can still search for properties for them, you can still send out referrals and you can collect a payment based on those referrals that you're sending out.

Dave: With that said, you may want to consider an MLS consolidation. So as I said, where I am, I have two MLS's right in my immediate vicinity of my house. If I wanted to go branch out a little bit farther, I know there's another MLS about 45 minutes away. If I wanted to really grow my brand and really cover my entire area, I would have to join all of those MLS's but what you could do is consider an MLS Consolidation and what I mean by that is, go ahead and maybe just be part of one MLS that's your main home MLS. Like I said, my house right now where I'm at is I'm in one MLS coverage area but let's say I also want to do business in that MLS 20 minutes away and that area that's 45 minutes away. Instead of having to join those two other MLS's for whatever rate they're charging, I could just add in MyStateMLS to my local MLS and now have Statewide and Nationwide coverage.

Dave: So let's just do some math. Here's some sample numbers. Like I said, based on my example where I've got my local MLS, I've got the neighboring MLS, that's 20 minutes away and then I've got that other MLS 45 minutes away that I might use once in a while. If I were to join all three of those MLS's, my local one, a thousand bucks a year. The neighboring one, another thousand bucks a year. The one 45 minutes away, 750 bucks a year. We add all that up, that's $2750 a year that I'd have to pay two different MLS's just to do my business, to grow my business but we're talking about today is how you can expand your territory but not only just grow your business, expand your territory but how you can do it effectively and most importantly, affordably for you. 

Dave: So now let's take this same scenario and let's just talk about having our local MLS and the MyStateMLS instead. So we're going to use my local MLS for my immediate area, that's that coverage area that I'm always in and then I'm going to also add in MyStateMLS. What's that going to allow me to do? There's no barriers for MyStateMLS. You can list anywhere you're licensed. So I'm going to be able to go ahead and list properties that are 20 minutes away, that are typically covered by that other MLS. I could also shoot up North, go 45 minutes North, go to that other coverage area for that other MLS that I occasionally use, list and sell properties there and I'm going to be able to do all of that for just over $1300. Now If we go ahead and do that math, we're going to see that the 2700 that I was paying for the three MLS's, I can Consolidate that down to just 1300, which is going to give me almost a $1500 savings per year. So by thinking about doing that Consolidation and maybe not being part of so many MLS's, just adding MyStateMLS to the one main MLS that you work with, could certainly save you some money and what's the importance of that savings is, that's money that can go now be put towards Ad budgets or social media campaigns, online ads. Don't put that money in your pocket. If you're still gonna have that additional money, go ahead and put it back towards your business. Invest it back into your business and that's things that we've talked about a lot and we'll touch on social media in just a couple of slides.

Dave: While we're talking about Consolidation, you may want to consider a team merger. 2020 was a tough year for a lot of businesses. Every type of industry across the country. unfortunately affected by Covid-19. Real estate still continued moving forward, homes were still being bought, homes were still being sold but many teams still suffered financially because of lockdown, social distancing, people not wanting to buy homes in certain areas. Where a merger can now help consolidate those expenses as well as growing your business. So If you're a high-profile team with a big name on top, you've got big brand name recognition, you may want to consider a merger with another team in a neighboring area. So now what this is going to allow you to do is, grow that team even more. So now not only is you've got your local team where you've been doing your business, you've now partnered up with that team merger from maybe that other area 20 minutes away, that other area 45 minutes away. So now you've gone ahead and you've expanded your service area and you're raising your team's profile, without doing a lot of work and now you've got this huge team that covers this huge amount of area across your state, giving you that name recognition and people are going to see that, remember they'll be like, wow I've been seeing them everywhere and that could make it even easier to become a more productive team, grow that team even more because other agents are going to say, wow I've seen you guys everywhere. I want to get in on that. So that could really help not only just grow your territory, this is just going to grow your team as well. 

Dave: Next thing I just wanted to quickly touch on, is going social with your social media. This is one of the easiest ways and least expensive ways to expand your territory. We all know pretty much everyone has a Facebook page, most people have Instagram pages but what you can do is, you can actually create Facebook posts and you can boost them, turn them into Ads. So this is where I'm gonna talk about that extra $1400, that you saved by consolidating the number of MLS's that you're in. If you've got that extra money now, go ahead and put it into Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, boosted posts and what you can do is when you create that Ad, you're going to be able to go ahead and you can target specific regions where you want that Ad to be seen. It's going to be able to target specific people.

Dave: So instead of where you would normally do a Facebook Ad for a home that's for sale in your media area, why not do a post saying, I am the agent that you need to sell your next home and post that in the areas outside of your general area, where you already have your foot in the ground, where people already know who you are. Use some of that money to advertise in newer areas, outside of where you've always been doing business, and again, just one of the last tips I like to talk about for social media is, always making sure that you're keeping your social media up-to-date and having a schedule to keep your pages fresh and current because one of the downfalls of social media is, If you do not keep it active, it could give potential buyers, potential sellers the wrong idea about your business. So If your page is out of date, it may just look like you're no longer in business. So try to keep a constant schedule, funny picture Friday, new home Mondays, of just whatever you want to do and make sure that you're keeping your social media presence active and current, and in addition, make sure you're engaging with your audience. So If someone likes a photo or If they more importantly, If they comment on a photo, make sure you just like their comment or comment back, just so they know that oh, this person's at their computer, they're interacting with everyone. So that's it for what I want to do now. What I want to move over now is, talk about some of the stuff a little bit more in detail.

Dave: So we're going to do is, we're going to log on into MyStateMLS. If you haven't visited us at MyStateMLS, you can log on at mystatemls.com and one of the first things I wanted to talk about is that, when it comes to Consolidating your MLS's and joining MyStateMLS, in addition to your local platform, to grow your reach, have a statewide, nationwide presence. MyStateMLS is one of the easiest, If not the easiest MLS to join. As long as you're licensed to sell real estate, you could pretty much be signed up and using the system today. So as soon as this webinar finishes, If you want to start using this today, just log on to mystatemls.com, click on that sign-up button right at the center of the screen. What that's going to do is, that's going to take you right through the entire setup process, like I said, you can get started right away. MyStateMLS, so easy to get started. I know a lot of other MLS's you have to send copies of licenses, you have to send copies of test scores, you have to go through an entire massive contract that's got to be physically signed, mailed out, there's a lot of steps that need to go into joining a local MLS. I don't know of anyone's offhand that allow you to just quickly sign up online and start using right away. MyStateMLS, I know for certain. You can just go in, click on that sign-up button and you're going to be able to start using this Nationwide platform and all of its included tools, pretty much right away.

Dave: So once we've logged into the account. This is what we're looking at, this is my profile wall and this gives me access to all of the different tools within the MyStateMLS platform and one of the things that we talked about is, growing your territory, working Nationwide and Statewide through the use of referrals and how we can do that is by using a tool called Access Find. We can see that on the left-hand sidebar menu here. If I also click on my search drop-down at the top of my toolbar, all I have to do is click on Access Find and what that's going to do is, that's going to pull me up to a tool called Realtor.com professional search and what this is, is this is a great tool that's powered by Realtor.com but what it is, is it takes what people typically see on just the regular realtor.com site and combines it with a lot more information that you cannot typically get because a lot of people will look at this and they'll say, well I can just go to realtor.com. You could, but what professional search does is, this combines MLS data, with tax data, with historical record information and combines it into a much more powerful tool to be used by real estate professionals only. The only way you can get to this is through access from MyStateMLS or another participating MLS. You can't go to find.realtor.com, you can't go to professionalsearch.com. The only way you can get to this is through your MyStateMLS account. 

Dave: So let's say I was working with some sellers here in upstate New York. It was snowing out my window today, my seller said, we are done seeing the white stuff, we're going to move down be closer to the grandkids in Phoenix. Well instead of me just saying, well good luck couch hopping at your kid's house, while you look for a house. I can say, well tell you what? Why don't you come over to my office or If you want, we're still doing some social distancing, let's do a zoom call and I will show you some homes in Phoenix. So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to start doing my search for Phoenix, Arizona. Then just like using any other type of public search, we can do is we're going to break down our price range. So we're going to do 180,000-200,000, they want at least three beds just in case the grandkids want to have sleepovers or anything like that. If we want to add other filters, we can. Let's say we want a pool, so now we've broken down our listing.

Dave: So right now, we don't have, let's see If we can raise our price, If we get some more houses here available, perfect. So I say, well If you want to pull, we got to spend a little bit more and they say, all right, that's not a problem. So we've pulled up some properties in Phoenix, Arizona, at least three bedrooms, between 200 and 300,000, and have that pool. Again, I'm not part of the Arizona MLS, I'm here in New York. So what I can do is, we can start looking through. Like I said, we could either be at the conference room in my office, we could be doing a Zoom call and I could be doing a screen share. What we can do is, we can just start looking at all of these houses. We'll say, well this one looks really nice and we'll you know, just like on any other public site, we're going to be able to look at the property, we're going to be able to flip through the photos, we can scroll down, read all the information about the home and If my clients like it, what I can do is, we're going to see here, we can see that Kesley is the listing agent.

Dave: I can see her phone number there, I can see that she's from KW and If I want, I can just go ahead give her a call and say, hey Kesley, this is Dave. I'm in New York. I've got a couple up here, they are selling their home here and looking to move to Phoenix to be a little bit closer to family. I saw your home on North 40th drive and I was wondering If it was available and If I could send them your way? She's going to say, oh my goodness, absolutely. We'd love to have them and I'll say, all right. Can I get your email? What I'm going to do is, I'm going to send you a referral agreement, If you don't mind. She'll say, absolutely. So I'm going to take down her information. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to head back over to my MyStateMLS account, I'm going to go to my resources and forms, I'm going to click on agent referral agreement and that's going to pull up a pdf form that I can print out, If I want fill it out, If I want to use a digital documents form, I can fill it out electronically, send it to her that way and then what I'll do is, I'll send it over to her. She'll sign it, we'll notice at the bottom here, the most important part is the agreed-upon referral fee, is I can either do a flat fee, I can do a percentage, whatever It's going to be and she's going to sign that, I'm going to sign that, Kesley and I are now in a written agreement.

Dave: What I'm going to do is, I'm going to send her my client's information over to her. She's then going to start working with them, either they're going to buy this house, maybe it goes under contract before they are ready to move. So what she'll do is, she'll continue to work with them to find a home. Once she sells that home for them, she's going to collect her commission, I'm going to then get my check because again she and I had agreed upon a fee based on the commission and that's that win-win situation. All I had to do, was do some quick searches for my customers, right from the comfort of my home and I sent them out to the agent, out in that state, in that area that they were moving to. That agent did the heavy lifting for me, they had to do all the contracts, they had to do the closing and all I did was, I just waited for my check. So really cool how you can use referrals to start growing your business immediately. 

Dave: One of the last things I wanted to touch on today is, how we discussed using social media. So let's just go ahead, I'm going to just do a quick search for homes in Florida and one of the important things that we discussed is, how social media can be used to create targeted ads, to reach out to potential buyers, potential sellers in areas that are outside of your general service area. So what you can start doing is being part of this system, is If we wanted to pull up a listing, on all listings within the MLS. We've got social media share buttons along the right side of the screen. So what I can do is, I can go ahead and share this property right to Facebook. That's going to open up a little pop-up screen here, what that's going to allow me to do is, I'm going to be able to go ahead post it right to my Facebook page, If I have a group page that I want to share to or maybe a page that I manage. So right now If I wanted to share it to the MLS page, I could. If I have my agent page, maybe I've got a Dave the realtor page, I can go ahead and share it to that and what will happen is, when anyone clicks on that link through that social media share, they're going to see it as a client view. So they're going to see it branded with my name, my picture, my company name, my phone number.

Dave: So through that social media share, I'm going to be able to share this listing. If I wanted to, I could go ahead and boost this listing. Again, this is not my property but I would love to be able to find a seller for that, collect a commission on this nearly two million dollar home. Who wouldn't want to do that? So what I can do is, I can go ahead, post this to my social media site. Wait until you see the inside of this house on my Facebook page. Share it to my social media, I could boost that, send it to people in this area, maybe I want to send it to people that I know are up here in New York wanting to retire down to Sunny Florida, I can share that and again If people click on that link, they're going to see it branded with my information and If they click and fill out this request more information section, that's going to go ahead and send that email right to my inbox.

Wrap Up:

Dave: So without further ado, thank you so much for joining me today. If you have any questions about anything that we've covered today or anything about MyStateMLS, please let me know. If you'd like, you can send me an email at dave@mystatemls.com, you can also give me a call at 888-769-7657. Until then, have a great day and we'll see you again soon.