Watch this interview with top title rep Ryan Lipsey , where we talk about the data your title rep can provide to help you get more listings, sell your listings faster, and hit your prospects from land, sea, and air.
Oliver Graf sits down with one of the top real estate title reps in the country to discuss just how much a title insurance rep can bring to the table when it comes to growing your real estate business.
Tapping into their resources and leveraging your relationship with your title rep is a key to building your real estate “Dream Team”.
Here’s the breakdown…
1:35 How to work with your title rep
2:20 How to handle unexpected title issues
3:18 The ways your title rep can help you with your business
4:17 Who they can help you target
5:00 What your title rep can (and can not) help you with
6:50 Meeting and planning with your title rep
8:15 All “The data” your title rep can get you
10:00 Hitting more prospects from land, sea and air
10:55 What are people winning with in today’s real estate market
12:40 Tips on converting
14:20 It’s a contact sport
15:15 HOT TIP: Circle Dialing!
16:40 HOT TIP: It’s all about the story
17:20 HOT TIP: Pre marketing campaigns and coming soon campaigns (hottest tip to sell your listings)
19:13 The BEST marketing strategy he has seen
22:30 The hottest new app in real estate
Transcription
How to Leverage Your Title Rep To Grow Your Real Estate Business – In The Know Featuring Ryan Lipsey
Intro: Welcome to another episode of In the Know. Today, we’re going to be talking to one the top title insurance reps in the country Ryan Lipsey about how you can leverage your title rep to grow your real estate business. We’re going to be talking about how they can help you get the data that you need, and find more prospects to continue your marketing efforts and hit people from land, sea and air. We’re also going to be going into the number one strategy for selling listings fast, even before they hit the market and we’re going to be talking about the number one hot new app in real estate. Looking forward to getting started.
Oliver Graf: Sitting here today in the office with a good friend and business associate Ryan Lipsey. We’re going to be getting into some really cool stuff on how you can leverage your title agent, to get more business. That’s the premise of the show. How you can exploit guys like Ryan Lipsey to further grow your business and he’s got a lot of really cool stuff that we’re going to dive into. We’re also enjoying a couple beers. I’ve got a Coronado Brewing Company Red Mermaid ale, I want to thank the guys over at seaside market in Cardiff for hooking that up for us, it’s really good and Ryan’s enjoying a double diet Pepsi on the rocks.
Ryan Lipsey: That’s my brand.
Oliver Graf: Why don’t we start going off the yellow notepad here, how can agents work with title people like yourself to expand and grow their business?
Ryan Lipsey: It’s a little bit of a tricky kind of service obviously for the consumer but even for agents, because it’s kind of innocuous and less accessible than most things in our space. So the obvious ones are helping make sure there is a clean title passed on a property, the nuts and bolts, making sure liens and judgments are handled that’s the role of title. As far a companies go, now one is as good as the other, it’s your representative that makes the difference. It’s your sales professional that you’re working with that will take great care of you can your clients. On a company level you want to make sure you have the basics…a great underwriter, a presence in the marketplace and a big company to take care of any issues that may come up in title… but the rest is, you know, a spade is a spade.
Oliver Graf: So what are some of those things that come up, right, because inevitably out there people are doing deals and things that are unexpectedly always come up especially when you’re dealing with title on a property. So like what are some things that you see and how do you guys overcome those to kind of deliver maximum value?
Ryan Lipsey: You know very common our judgments, liens, infringement and property liens, that type of stuff; we overcome those by clearing any obstacles to a clear title. The objective is when you buy a property to pass the buyer a clean bill of health when it comes to the title insurance. So that’s what we do on a day-in day-out basis and we’ll work with escrow companies to achieve that.
Oliver Graf: How can Agent leverage you to grow their business because there are certain things now. Back in the Wild West day is when title companies used to be able to throw their money around and Wine and Dine everybody. It was a much different animal back then right?
Ryan Lipsey: Yeah. [Laughs]
Oliver Graf: Now it’s more… it’s all about the service and it’s all about the data and it’s all about the ways that you can help real estate agents grow their business and so help connect the dots on how they can work with you to basically get more listings, to get more buyers?
Ryan Lipsey: I think we touched on title insurance as apples as apples, and I don’t do rents. This is my 16th year so I was around for some of those wild Wild West days and you’re right, when SB133 came out, it leveled the playing field and the way I approach it is I need to solve major problems and help agents overcome the obstacles in their business. So the question how do you use your title professional to maximize your growth and your real estate practice, it’s all about accountability, it’s all about outreach campaigns, it’s all about data. So how do we blend that all together to come up with an efficient business plan that you will execute, not just you know have it up in the theory world that actually have rubber meet the road. So you identify who, you identify what and then you identify how. So who is the segment of the population I’m trying to hit or my audience, what am I going to send them and then what’s the medium, right?
So many agents don’t have time because there’s inspections or escrows going sideways to sale and chart that all out. So I put a business plan together to help them chart out how to go after your sphere of influence, how to go after customized database, how to hit your farm area and hit them in multiple directions. Social media is such a pervasive new technology in our industry, we want to help them leverage that to get deals out of it and monetize it not just like restaurant on that but turn that into listings.
Oliver Graf: So then what are some things that they can ask you and what are some things that they shouldn’t ask you? Like don’t ask your title rep for help with marketing dollars, don’t ask your title rep to print your swag and all your stuff that you want to pass out. What are some of the things that they can ask for and things that you kind of provide as a title rep professional?
Ryan Lipsey: Don’t ask them to pay for your dry cleaning or pay your mortgage or anything like that. Those days are like probably gone in the 70s but you should ask, “hey what strategies do you have for me to get more repeat and referral business out of my database”, that’s a beautiful question because like on my team Alex and I, we go to Tom Ferry, Mike Ferry, Rick Ruby, Brian, Jostoph, Craig Proctor; were disciples of all those real estate coaches so then I have real estate answers right. It’s like we already established titles time, so then what separates you? How I can help you overcome your challenges, right? I mean whether it be recruiting, getting more listings out of my farm area, getting more referrals from my friends and family, executing a good Christmas party, what we can bring you is strategies that you may have not have considered. That’s why I make it my job to go learn all the best strategies because each personality is different right, some people want to lead into relationship selling, other people don’t want to mess their relationships, they want you all pull, so I have to have answers for all that.
Oliver Graf: Really cool, so you study all of these different methods with the intention of being able to support people in growing their business. How do you go about facilitating that, you’re not actually coaching these people right, what does that relationship look like? Are you meeting with them, helping them put a plan together or what does that look like in terms of working with these agents?
Ryan Lipsey: Well I initially start, say a new client consultation, I’ll sit with them and we first look backwards, so that we can understand what lies ahead. So what does that mean? It means we diagnose where their last 10 transactions came from? If eight out of ten came from their sphere of influence, we need to know that the fish are buying so let’s drop more hooks, right? And then where does their lie. If they love del cerro and allied gardens, let’s go after and get more business and get more outreach campaigns in the form of direct mail, email, call campaigns, bus benches, you name it. We put strategies together for them to get the brand out, you really want to be working. Other people they want to go after professionals, like the divorce attorneys, CPAs, business to business that’s one of my specialties. I have a three-step mechanism, a letter, a call and a pop-by so that they can get a certain number of professionals hit every week, so they can start getting a higher contact ratio and my goal is a year from the time when I meet with them, I want them to have at least five to ten channel accounts, meaning they have multiple pieces of business from one source.
Oliver Graf: One cool thing about working with an experienced title rep a guy like Ryan is, he’s really well-connected in the real estate space. So if you need something, if you need to talk to someone, if he doesn’t know the answer he probably knows the guy that knows the answer or gal that knows the answer and is more than happy to make those connections for people. So one thing that we hear a lot with title reps is that they can get you data, right. They can give you the data. So what exactly when people are asking you for data and looking for data, what are they looking for and what are the kind of do’s and don’ts in getting the data and marketing it?
Ryan Lipsey: Well I mean you get all kinds of different experience with agents obviously so, there are some that aren’t aware that we can get lists of names and addresses for people to live in any zip code or any given development, we can get you all ownership information with mailing, whether it be on-site mailing or if it’s a rental of theirs and they have their mailing address in Vegas or something or do non-owner occupied. We can slice and dice ownership data by a property characteristics, by type of owner, all that stuff. I’m the hub of information. So an agent doesn’t know where they’ll find, how do I get emails? We do know where to get it and then put them in touch with that vendor and they can connect directly, but–
Oliver Graf: There’s all sorts of great data resources out there, been verified to great source, Cole Research is a good source, tell me others that you recommend?
Ryan Lipsey: Yeah, talk to me, reach out to me, we have tons of people that can put you in touch with that but then not only getting the data, but executing on that campaign right. So having the information is one thing but how do I monetize that information, well you’re going to reach out to it and solicit it usually multiple times, right? So like taking a del Cerro Farm and uploading it to Facebook so that you can have an online presence and market to those people on Facebook and then building a community page and doing consistent mailing, calling and God forbid former markets in the area, right. You’re hitting them from all land, sea and air. You’re inescapable, wherever they go there you are. That’s how you want to be in real estate because you never know where the next deal is coming from.
Oliver Graf: Very good, that’s some really good insight because there’s no way you’re going to throw out a couple postcards and get business, but when you have a long-term strategy in place and you have the data, like I want you to think about what you just said because a lot of the more experienced agents already know this but for some of the newer people, he’s got connections to get you all the data you need to get all the business you could possibly handle. So you can, like he was saying, you can pick a neighborhood or pick a niche, right, short sales. You want to go after NODs, you want to go after tax stuff, probates. There’s all sorts of different things and he’s got access to all of that data. It doesn’t cost you (or your clients) anything. All he asks is that you work with him on your transactions and I’d say that’s probably pretty fair. What are you seeing people winning with right now?
Ryan Lipsey: So like let’s say that you’re targeting a thousand homes in La Mesa and you’re dripping on them once a month, evidence of success, schedule, something warm, something to develop the relationship side, something to have a production side where they know you’re doing business. That’s great, but I always like to take what I call the farm within the farm. So you have this database of a thousand homes that you’ve been hitting repeatedly, there’s usually about five to ten percent that fall into a default or an expired or for sale by owner or a divorce or probate or tax default or mortgage late scenario, okay. So these are all categories that qualify them as higher likelihood listing candidates. So that’s the farm within the farm, right. You have the ones you’re branding on because there’s things you can’t account for in data. Like they got pregnant and they need a bigger house, you can’t find that data, right? So you need to drip on them so you are top of mind, but you can go and pull divorce leads and eighty percent of divorces list their home. So is that a good real estate? Absolutely. Now you can’t knock and say hey congratulations on the divorce, right, eighty percent sells, I am here to list your house. Let’s do this.
Oliver Graf: It’s all the presentation, we talk about that a lot.
Ryan Lipsey: Yeah but you want to be hitting them with greater frequency and different then you’re hitting your regular phone people right. Because if we’ve identified them as the highest likelihood candidate to list their home then we need to be hitting them up to get that right now business. So I’m seeing a lot of wins with that and get with me on letters or templates or scripting because it’s important, it’s a delicate scenario but it is the business of death and divorce. So we have to be able to grapple with that and it makes sense.
Oliver Graf: And a lot of those gurus in Real Estate also teach further expansion on all those different niches. And now that we’ve got our plan together, about our plan on paper we’ve got the data that we need, what are the tips on how to make the conversions? How do they approach, how do they convert and how they turn it into business?
Ryan Lipsey: So now that we have the data, we’ve identified the who, we have to identify the outreach campaigns, how we’re going to get our message to that audience. I mean the phone, the voice to voice is the best way to land a face-to-face right and consistency is the word that I would harp on the most because, you can throw out 20,000 postcards and maybe get a piece of business maybe you don’t. But if I’d rather see you throw out a thousand cards for 20 months because eventually something’s going to hit and you have branded yourself right. I don’t want you to run out and call 200 people a day for a week and burn yourself out. Call 20 people, three times a week for 52 weeks, because it allows yourself, it gives yourself the opportunity to implement consistently and do activities that move the deal on a consistent basis then it can waterfall, and all that effort can turn into results.
But a lot of people make the mistake of going to a real estate seminar and they walk out fired up for like six month, may be 3 months, may be 6 weeks and then they just drop everything and you find them in the same place they were before the seminar. So tip is call, voice to voice, face-to-face, direct mail, have a great online footprint because these days everybody goes and searches you online. You know what is Oliver up to, what’s he doing. Oh he’s got a family, he looks like a good data, he’s a surfer, he’s an artist, there’s more depth to Oliver that means the guy and so that people are looking you up whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not. So have a good online footprint but it’s a contact sport, so whether you make those contacts on the phone or you make those contacts at the door or you go to small businesses in your firm, or you go to local professionals in your firm from that can refer you people, you gotta contact people. What I always recommend is have different categories, assign numbers to those categories and then make the metrics in your business and just hit your metrics because it takes the emotion and the brain out of it. I just have to hit my numbers and I’m done. Then I go golfing. I have to hit my numbers and I go surfing, right. It just kind of dumbs it down and just check boxes, that’s what I recommend.
Oliver Graf: So most of the people that are winning with the data that they’re getting, are they pounding the phones, are they knocking the doors, are they doing the mailings or is it yes to everything?
Ryan Lipsey: Well I mean obviously, we really have 24 hours in a day and for those of you with families, you want to spend time with loved ones right? So we’ve got to be efficient with our time. First thing is kill the noise. Get out of the Monday morning quarterback game and all the social media because everybody’s been sucked into that Facebook vortex, right. I try to delegate as much stuff that is possible to my assistant, when you’re working for an hour, you haven’t worked until you’ve talked to potential money-making clients, okay. All you’ve done is shuffle papers or fiddle with your email inbox, you need to talk to people about real estate to make money in real estate. So if you’re talking about nailing down one thing, there’s so many things that you can do to make money in real estate. I guess the hot tip that we were going to get to is circled island. I tell people every piece sold or listing that you did in 2016, let’s call 50 neighbors around to do business in 2017. It establishes further and where we’ve already done business and you have a story to tell. If I sold the Anderson home four doors down, I can tell that story to 50 people in direct proximity of that home and I’ve got something to talk about because I lived through that transaction, right? And that’s what conveys people that we are all humans, we enjoy human stories. Tell the story of the transaction and I promise you, if the timings right, people will hit you up to sell their homes as well.
Oliver Graf: That’s a really great piece of advice especially the going back to your previous transactions that was actually the next question on my list here. How do they… tips for marketing their listings but what you just said is kind of a tip for marketing their listings and for going back to previous transactions because it is all about having that story to tell right, so now you’re not just some person that’s calling, you’re the guy that’s calling with the story about the house that they’ve probably walked by a hundred times, driven by a hundred times. They might know the people that live there. So how would you say that they can leverage that further to market their current listing. How can they leverage a title rep in that scenario to help them sell it faster, get referrals, things like that?
Ryan Lipsey: That’s a great question and I look at it as a pre marketing opportunity. So about 60% of my clients have worked with me long enough to know that they call me two weeks before the listing goes live, but they’ve got it signed right. So we can premarket it, coming soon campaigns and here’s a free tip for you; coming soon is by far the most successful campaign to getting listing and appointments. So you talk about, hey Oliver you know this is Ryan at BigBlock realty and we have one coming up in your area and as a service to my seller, I really like to reach out to the neighbors to see if you know of anybody who want to buy our upcoming listing. And it is going to be the newest listing, so we know what the market is doing here, what’s your timetable for selling and if you did that times a 100 people around the coming soon, you think you might run into a lead? Absolutely. And you’re benefiting the seller because you might get a buyer before it even goes live, right? You’re not gonna have to settle for all those low bids by all the investors around which we love, we love of course. And you never know because it’s about timing and sometimes you’re just the right guy at the right time, but you don’t get to be lucky like that unless you put yourself into position to be lucky and making that phone call is what I’m talking about.
Oliver Graf: That was really good. Really really good and your closing question was beautiful, can you give that to me one more time? What’s your timeline for closing?
Ryan Lipsey: What’s your timetable for selling your home?
Oliver Graf: What’s your timetable for selling your home? What a perfect question to end with; very non-threatening and you’re probably going to get a pretty realistic answer.
Ryan Lipsey: Yeah and if the job transfer is coming up in the springtime, they’re gonna let you know, or if they’re gonna die in the house, they’re gonna tell you that too, right? And you just wish them luck and then you know.
Oliver Graf: Okay so you’re giving away some really good stuff so far and I gotta ask you because I know that you work with a ton of realtors all over San Diego and beyond. What’s the best marketing strategy that you’ve seen kind of working right now?
Ryan Lipsey: Just sold or open house promotion, coming soon just happens to be the hot button for whatever reason. I think it’s a glimpse into like insider info, so it kind of stirs something in the human animal that wants to ask questions.
Oliver Graf: Curiosity.
Ryan Lipsey: Curiosity factor, but if you do the coming soon campaign and then add to it a radius boost on Facebook, those two seem to work really well hand in hand because again, we’re all on Facebook and when you’re hitting them on the phone, you get that voice to voice, you never know when you’re going to hit them right at the right time. Somebody just unfortunately passed away or a baby’s on the way or a job transfer is coming through, or they’re being transferred in the military. It’s impossible to tabulate all those scenarios. So you just have to do your part consistently and hope you ride into them.
Oliver Graf: That Facebook strategy is actually working for us really well right now. We’re probably gonna do another show on that here pretty soon, but just to kind of… since you brought it up, what’s kind of the 30-second overview on how they go about doing that?
Ryan Lipsey: Well you can get a professional business page on Facebook and any post you put on your wall, on your business page it gives you the option to boost that. So if I have a coming soon, I may not put it on the MLS yet but I would premarket the heck out of it with a mailer and then doing the calls like we talked about. I have ways to help you do voicemail blasting to cell phones, things like that. And accompany those efforts with a radius boost on your Facebook page. It’s like 10 bucks or so. It’s really really reasonable and it just gets more eyeballs on your pre marketing.
Oliver Graf: And your seller will love it, because you can show them the impressions that it has gotten, you can show them any engagement it has gotten, so that’s just kind of another way to separate yourself.
Ryan Lipsey: Absolutely, and you’re talking about Ryan how do I get more listings and then how do I convert when I’m in the listing appointment. Well, all the stuff that we just touched on, they should be right there on your marketing plan when you’re sitting at the listing appointment. I call your own neighborhood and looking for buyers, right. Everybody does three P’s, they put the sign in the yard, they put it on the MLS, and they pray somebody comes and sells it. Well let’s not do that. Let’s actively go and call them. Let’s put things on doors, let’s go to local businesses and let them know about the listing, let’s go to CPAs that work in the same region as your listing is and hit them up to see if they have a buyer. Let’s reverse prospector Paragon and see who’s clicked on it or who has it in the Gateway search and call that agent back and say hey, you still have that buyer interested in Lamesa, right? We have the property still going.
So things like that can really separate you when you’re taking a listing from the next guy that doesn’t have those things lined up on bullet points on how they’re going to actively market the property.
Oliver Graf: So some really great strategies that Ryan’s shared with us today and just kind of further proof on how your title rep is a really important part of your team, making sure that you’ve got someone that really is providing value. They’re not just selling you title insurance and kind of not doing anything for you, these guys are really out there doing some great things. You want to talk to a good professional, a guy like Ryan is going to take really good care of you and he’s going to help you grow your business, that’s really the name of the game for them now, because the more successful you get, the more business he’s going to get. It’s a perfect win-win situation.
One last thing I want to end out with is the app that Ryan just launched. You want to kind of touch on what that is and where they can get it?
Ryan Lipsey: Yeah, you know you see all these just sold or coming soon on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn, so it’s an app that allows you to do that type of digital marketing in minutes and once you upload your photo and your logo, it auto populates to every template in the database. So you just go to that coming soon that you like, put in the bullets and the address and off it goes to Facebook. So we want your wall and your posts to be done in minutes and easy, so you can be waiting in line somewhere get it done. That’s the whole spirit of the app and —
Oliver Graf: And they look really good, they’re super high quality, really professional and they’re super easy to use which makes it nice. You just, like you said, upload the picture and you can post it on your social media in no time at all. It’s a really practical thing for realtors to have at their fingertips and it’s called realtor pro studio.
Ryan Lipsey: Yeah Realtor Pro Studio.
Oliver Graf: Get it in the iTunes App. Cool man, I really appreciate it Ryan, it’s always a pleasure. All the stuff that he kind of laid out today is the perfect way that you can use title professional to grow your business, get more listings, get more referrals and sell your properties faster. So we hope you enjoyed everything that we had to say and now you’re In the Know.
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Want more tips on how to grow your real estate business?
Take a look at some of these other posts:
“How To Win More Listings With Direct Mail” featuring Jim McCord:
https://realestateagenttrainers.com/2017/07/11/how-to-win-more-listings-with-direct-mail
“How To Become A Real Estate MEGA Entrepreneur” featuring Scott Duffy:
https://realestateagenttrainers.com/2017/09/01/how-to-become-a-mega-producing-real-estate-entrepreneur
To your success,
Oliver Graf
Co-Founder/President Big Block Realty & Real Estate Agent Trainers
Inc. 500 Entrepreneur