The Hyper-Local Farm II — My Ferrari Blows the Doors Off Your VW

Prologue: My initial post on this subject, was widely read, and seemed to generate responses on one side or the other, not many in the middle. That makes sense. One commenter came at me full throttle, remaining civil, detailing why, a hyper-local farm not only wouldn’t work, but wouldn’t be any more productive than what he’s doing now, offline.

We both, no doubt, think the other is partaking of herbs not meant for cooking. 🙂 In short, I think he’s a good guy, harboring an honest difference of opinion. The following is how we have disagreed.

I think I’d really like Spencer Barron. In fact, judging by our give and take in the comments of my most recent post, I like him and respect him. We have respectfully disagreed on the concept of the hyper-local farm site, but it’s been fun. He’s obviously a pretty smart guy.

Can you feel the butter, Spencer? 🙂

Spenser — The next time I’m in Denver, I’m buying. We gotta meet, cuz it’s always fun to talk with guys who disagree with me so much, yet so well, and stay so wrong. 🙂

Your VW just passed me? To extend the metaphor, you’re driving a VW because your approach can’t generate enough money to acquire a Ferrari. 🙂

Let’s count the ways you are, in my view, not only dead wrong, but worse, basing your thinking on absolutely false premises — a mistake that almost always proves fatal.

You said — Since you will be continuously marketing them to go to your blog, why don’t you just tell them why they should use you. You could try to appeal directly to the people your trying to reach, home sellers. Why all the coy games?

False Premise #1 — Wait a minute, let me write that one down. 🙂 You mean, I should actually tell them why I’m the best agent for them? Well I’ll be dogged.

I’ll be continuously marketing them to go to my blog. All that will be done in the infancy of the site (blog? website? hybrid? who cares?) because that’s what’ll make it go. Once they’re there, the site itself will bring them back. Sure, I might (while still in early stages) continue to touch them in traditional ways to keep them curious and interested, but once it’s been there awhile, that won’t be necessary. It’ll become viral inside the neighborhood, in fact predictably so.

Coy games? Come to my neighborhood site which is only about your neighborhood, is somehow coy?

Geez, Spencer, you talk like I’m driving by and batting my eyes alluringly. 🙂 How do I appeal to them if they aren’t yet at my site? There’s 2,000 homes or so per farm. I’d have no less than three farms. Tell me, are you knockin’ on that many doors? Using mental telepathy? Have one of those cool magnetic signs on your car doors? Have your picture on a bus bench?

You said — I mean, it seems like your already segmenting out your farm by attempting to determine what they’re interested in when the only thing you really need to know is that the people you want to meet want to sell a home (or buy).

False Premise #2 — You seem to have passed over my highly successful previous farming experience. With the few exceptions that tend to prove the rule, I know what they’re interested in. Segmenting? That’s silly on its face. Neighborhoods are segmented by definition, Spencer. Here are a few ‘segments’: homes with kids; homes without kids; under 50; over 50; church goers; with kids but aren’t that involved in schools (usually the MAJORITY); with kids and involved in schools; business owners; and that’s the short list. I’M not segmenting them because they’re already segmented – just like in real life. 🙂

You said — (paraphrased) I’m assuming the farms residents are internet savvy.

False Premise #3 — We agree on one thing here: It MUST be a neighborhood more likely than not to be computer users. That’s easily ascertained as you’re well aware. I’m of course, NOT assuming this to be a fact, as it could prove to be a fatal assumption, not to mention moronic to do so. 🙂

You said — You’re assuming that once you say that they can get this information, they’ll go to it.

False Premise #4 — THIS ISN’T A FALSE PREMISE AT ALL. 🙂 It’s my experience the vast majority will visit, if only because they’re curious. It’s the same as when I farmed back in the days of 50¢ gas. Once they got used to seeing me, and getting my schlocky little hot sheet, over 80% of them became pretty receptive, if not outright evangelists. Human behavior hasn’t changed much since then. The only difference is, after awhile I and my team won’t need to, as you might phrase it, waste our time constantly having to be physically in the neighborhood. This will be cuz, for the same reason you have a site and a blog, they’ll come to me instead of me always having to physically go to them.

Back in my original farm, I was down with the flu for about a week, and couldn’t deliver my Hot Sheet. I gave myself an extra week after recovering, so as not to relapse. As I was finally delivering the Hot Sheets to the farm’s residents, I was surprised to hear so many of them comment on its tardiness. Some of them actually pressed me for an explanation. It was eye opening. They were telling me the Hot Sheet was something they’d come to expect and anticipate. Very cool.

You said — You’re assuming that your entire farm of 2000 is interested in recent PTA activity or high school sports or whatever, personally I don’t think more than 20% of your farm will even care on anything more than a yearly basis.

False Premise #5 — Please point out exactly where I said that. (silence) I don’t assume anything of the sort, and furthermore, I don’t need to. That assumption would be absurd. When you and I read a newspaper (real paper or online), 🙂 it’s probably safe to ‘assume’ we would start with different ‘segments’ or, better stated, sections, of the paper. I go to sports, and you might go to travel, local news, or the front page. I then go to read the really silly stuff, usually located in the ‘Currents’ section. I also read a bunch on ‘My Yahoo’ daily. I then go to just plain Yahoo and read the finance section. Then I go to a handful of specific writers on various subjects of which I hold interest.

In other word, I don’t read what you do, but we both read the paper, or Yahoo, or whatever. That’s the point of having so many choices.

The point is this — Different homeowners in the farm will have different interests — duh. (Hello!? Captain Obvious, where are you?) 🙂 But they share their interests, overall, in what goes on in the neighborhood, and what affects it. I’m betting this might be why newspapers long ago decided maybe it was a better idea to combine all those interests in one product, instead of one for sports, one for politics, etc. 🙂

You said — You’re also assuming that people would embrace a commercial entity as the purveyor of their hyper-local information needs, when most successful forums of this sort tend to be non-commercial ventures. Short of an agent moving to the neighborhood, having a couple of kids, joining the PTA, then finding religion in the neighborhood, it seems like a stretch to be accepted. (italics added)

No real false premise here, but an assumption I simply don’t understand. What rationale is used to even bring up this question? What does commercial vs non-commercial have to do with anything when marketing real estate services?

Again, and with a light-hearted spirit — give me a freakin’ break. 🙂

How is it you can do all the things to generate business in your area, without the slightest worry your targets might, Heaven forbid, think you’re a commercial operation? Yet without taking a breath, you say I don’t operate under the same rules? Does gravity work differently in different zip codes? Of course not — and folks with a three digit IQ will assume I’m running a commercial operation, as otherwise I’d be the first (purposefully) non-profit real estate brokerage in history. Hey, maybe I could associate myself with the Red Cross! Yeah, that’s the ticket. 🙂

I didn’t live in my farm back in the day, and in today’s dollars, I would have made about $390,000 a year — in a farm only 20% the size I’m now advocating as a minimum. Can an agent knock on 2,000 doors a month every month, and deliver the incredible amount of in depth and varied content my site does?

Don’t answer — it’s a trick question. The agent, even if he knocked on 95 doors daily, Mon-Fri 52 weeks a year, (somewhat unlikely?) wouldn’t reach 20% of the homeowners. Why? Because they’re not home like they were 30+ years ago, as the wives who answered the door for me, are now at work when he knocks. Meanwhile, the agent’s home eating dinner that night, while the homeowners are coming to my site on their own. After viewing my site, by the way, how much value do you think they give the weak-ass flyer the other agent left on their screen door?

Flyer — Call me — I’m Mr. Bitchen Agent, and know everything there is to know about this neighborhood, and ah, I’m really, really good too. Here’s one I almost sold a few months ago.

You said — You’re assuming that you’ll become the 1st or 2nd choice in your farm within a year simply because you’re the neighborhood enthusiast that happens to also be a real estate agent when most people will pick their agent for other reasons. Reasons like who will sell my home for the most, or who can sell it the fastest. Some pick because of the marketing package and exposure their home gets and others pick the agent that is the cheapest. Worse yet, you might never get to be the top choice simply because the farm is busy using the teacher’s husband that happens to be an agent. See, they met them from going to those PTA meetings.

False Premise #6 AND the hands down winner for being absolutely devoid of any merit whatsoever — I’m not giving farm residents reasons to do business with me — specifically: To hire me to sell their home.

I wish I had a neon sign at this point in the conversation. 🙂 Did anyone actually think there wasn’t gonna be places all over the site demonstrating my expertise, experience, professionalism — and uh, my staggeringly superior results? Come on, are you serious? Does that even need to be said out loud?

For Heaven’s sake, that’s the only reason the dang site exists. Geez Louise Mytle. 🙂

My content gets them there and keeps them interested — and yes, due to different reasons for different homeowners. There’s all kinds of reasons to hire me, made clear on almost every page. It scares me this has to be mentioned, much less defended. All the info and local depth of scope is in addition to the marketing of me as their agent.

I’d market myself the same way I did over 30 years ago. They knew, after about 6-8 months, that Jeff Brown not only was selling the vast majority of homes in their neighborhood, but he was setting new records for price highs while doing it. They didn’t care much for the how at that point. They never do, unless it’s an afterthought. Once I was known as the Holly Hills guy, any debate was over before it ever began.

Spencer has mentioned branding in his comments. If the name of the neighborhood is The Village in La Mesa — my name will immediately be associated with that neighborhood in 6-12 months — maybe less. I will be La Mesa — The Village. Back in the day, I was Holly Hills, and it took about eight months.

Time out for a slight, but related digression.

What makes this especially entertaining for me, is remembering how so many brokers, back in the ’60’s, absolutely knew what the downfall of my dad’s business model would be. They said it was twofold.

1.) He refused to me a member of the MLS, as his company double-ended every single transaction for five consecutive years. (The only reason he wasn’t a board member was because they insisted he then join the MLS.) They reasoned, without their help, he couldn’t possibly succeed.

The truth? The entire MLS needed him — not (never) the other way around. In those five years, you could pick any 30 day period you wished, and his company would have more listings priced at or under the median price than the entire MLS.

2.) His firm never used ‘For Sale’ signs.

Those two factors are what put him at the top of the heap in San Diego real estate brokerage back then. Five years — 5,000+ sides. Do the math. 🙂 I got to watch it from the inside, as I was the company janitor/listing printer/listing delivery boy for half of those five years. I thought that’s how it was for real estate companies everywhere. As I got older, and realized how wrong I was, the numbers became even more staggering to me.

No ‘For Sale‘ signs? No matter how long it might have taken to sell a home, it always appeared to sell in a day. One day there was nothing, the next day there was his company’s ‘Sold‘ sign in the front yard. It was an advantage for which his competition had little or know answer.

I’m using some of his original advice, given to me when I told him about plans for my original farm. I asked him what he would do. He laughed, saying he wasn’t gonna tell me what I should do, because he knew the author of the book I was using, personally. He said there was something I should never do. When talking to a homeowner, in person or on the phone, I should never, ever, without exception, ask them if they were thinking of moving or selling. Upon seeing my confused 23 year old look, he explained.

“Folks will view that question as not only rude, but none of your damn business.” I thought he was nuts, but given his success in the biz, not to mention he was Dad, I just took it on faith he was right. Right? What an understatement.

As trivial as it may seem, it turned out to be one of the keys to my success in farming.

One of the most often repeated observations made by farm residents, as they were signing listing contracts with me, was that they appreciated the way I never pressed them for their personal plans, as the most other agents usually did. It was exactly like Dad said it would be. He said to ask instead, if they knew if any of their friends or neighbors had been thinking about selling or moving out. If they were thinking that themselves, and wanted me to know, they’d tell me. He said if I’d done my marketing well, they’d choose me whether I asked them or not — and he was right. Big time.

Questions: I know there have to be agents reading this who’ve farmed before, or are now. How many agents who’ve read this post, plus the first one, and are following the comments, have generated even a couple sides monthly from a lousy little 400 home farm? I know you’re out there. Now increase the size of that farm five times. How much labor are you willing to put in to do 50-100 sides a year? If you’re already doing that, imagine how you can leverage the holy crud (RE technical term) out of that success.

Which brings me to my final thoughts.

Ever wonder how it is one agent does so much more volume than another? If we stipulate they’re roughly equal in most ways, the answer will lie in what results they actually produce in the real world. I know — duh.

I’ve paid big money for marketing that wasn’t worth the stamp it took to get my check sent to them. I’ve cold called successfully — taught it for a few years. For nearly 20 years my targeted direct mail was also very successful. Blogging has produced more than I’d ever thought possible. Other brokers and agents have, for years, referred their investment clients to me. One or two a year ask me to advise them personally. And of course, clients refer people to me.

But none of those are the most important and by far the most productive marketing tool I’ve ever used.

The best marketing tool any of us will ever have is R-E-S-U-L-T-S.

If you’re already doing the volume of business you wish, there’s no reason to start a hyper-local farm site. If you’re already doing a deal a week or better, but would like to take your game up a notch or three, this might be something for you to consider. It’s surely not for everybody.

And you obviously don’t need to be doing a lot of business before you start, either.

Because you’re already consistently producing results for buyers/sellers, you have a head start from day one of your hyper-local farm site. You produce. There’s nothing like ending the conversation with a homeowner by being able to say, “They’re going to produce for you? I’ve been producing in this community for X years, and am doing it today. Do you want promises to produce results — or a results producer?”

In the last 15 months or so of my farming career, all but a couple listings required presentations which began and ended with, “sign and date here, please“. They liked the results they kept seeing in their neighborhood — my sold signs. My ‘Hot Sheet’ telling them about the new highest price just received by a neighbor.

Spenser, your fantasy of passing my Ferrari with your VW notwithstanding, I’m not saying here that my way is necessarily superior to whatever you’re doing to produce the stellar results I suspect you’re now producing. That is, unless we were to go head to head in a neutral neighborhood. 🙂

The only way you’d be able to keep up with my Ferrari with your reliable VW then, would be if I decided to stay in first gear.

Not likely. 🙂

Epilogue: I’ve made a new friend, and he’s very smart. All I’ll tell you about him is he’s a successful and experienced agent with a team in place. He’s gonna (I think) construct a hyper-local neighborhood web-presence — in the only part of his town in which he does little business. He’s tech savvy big time, and has a can-do attitude that’s viral. He’ll have his Ferrari up and running, possibly before the end of this year, maybe even before the holiday’s.

He knows where the bodies are buried in his area, as he’s lived there most of his life. He’s the perfect guy to take this on. In our first (of many I’m sure) conversation, his ideas were brilliant. He absolutely gets it. He’s also not a newbie, who hasn’t really done much yet, though those agents can succeed with this approach. He’s already doing more than a side every couple days as it is. He wants to dominate though. Gotta love a guy like that. It doesn’t hurt that he’s smarter than I am, that’s fer sure. 🙂

He’ll put the kybosh to the whole, ‘It’s way too much work, too intense, too many different things to do, blah blah blah’ chorus’, which is sung by the Realtor-Blogger Tabnernacle Choir. 🙂