Prospecting, Social Media Secrets and Mastering Your Mindset - The Art of the CMA Part 3

An insider’s guide, Part Three by Greg Robertson and Charles Warnock. See Part One and Part Two if you need to catch up! The book is available now in print and Kindle ebook versions. 

If you’ve been here before, you know that Comparative Market Analysis reports (CMAs) have evolved from a single-use presentation tool to a platform that helps real estate brokers and agents compete offline and online. If you’re not using CMAs to put your prospecting on autopilot and stay connected with past customers, you’re missing a huge opportunity. 

In addition, Your CMA can also help you turn potential challenges from Zestimates and iBuyer models to your advantage. We also talk about how to create a powerful combination of CMAs and social media and the mindset of mastery that’s required to create powerful growth in an uncertain future. Ready? Let’s get to work. 

“The best way to sell something? Don’t sell anything. Earn the awareness, respect, & trust of those who might buy.”– Rand Fishkin, author and entrepreneur

Chapter 8: Using CMAs for Prospecting and Staying Connected

How do we turn our CMA from a tool that helps agents WIN listing presentations to a tool that helps them GET more listing presentations? At W+R studios, we have worked for years to evolve our own CMA platform to include more features and complementary tools that are geared towards lead generation. As a result, we:

• Enabled agents to capture leads automatically, by generating CMAs from an email or a website form-fill.
  
  
• Added a series of simple but effective lead capture landing pages that agents could easily share on their social media accounts.
  
  
• Enabled our CMA software to interact with other real estate programs so agents could easily integrate CMAs into their marketing campaigns.
  
  

Since your sphere of influence is your best source of high-quality leads, it makes sense to use content from your CMA to stay in touch. As of this writing, our customers have generated more than 600,000 leads with our products, and that number continues to grow. Lead generation is now a huge part of our CMA’s value proposition. We learned a lot in the course of adding prospecting tools and enhancements to our CMA. We knew many real estate agents were already using CMAs in their prospecting efforts, and we were beginning to see ways to automate and streamline those efforts to generate even more leads.

What’s the Current Market Value of Your Home?

That simple question is probably the most powerful call to action (or CTA) in real estate history. Think about it. That question is also basically what gave birth to the Zestimate and changed the course of our industry. It brought millions of nosy neighbors to Zillow’s website to check the estimated value of their home, along with the homes of friends and neighbors. 

All real estate agents know about farming, but many don’t do it as much as they should. You can become the most highly visible agent in your community using a focused, consistent outreach to a particular neighborhood or town by:

• Providing current, value-added market information for homeowners in your chosen farm.
  
  
• Creating market snapshots, personalized CMAs, and community information.
  
  
• Sharing this information through direct mail and online channels.
  
  

Using CMAs and Social Media to Win Business

One of the highlights of Chapter 8, is a list of creative ways to combine CMAs with social channels to grow your business provided by social media expert Katie Lance.

For example, since about 75% of sellers interview just one agent before deciding who to work with, if you’ve already established yourself as a highly visible local expert on social media channels like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn, you have a good chance of representing those sellers without any competition. Check out the video with Greg Robertson and Katie Lance below:

You don’t need to wait until there’s a listing presentation to leverage the wealth of local information available in your CMA. You can begin sharing relevant local information on social media long before the listing presentation.

Most agents and brokers have dipped a toe in the social media waters, but many fail to see results. The bad news is that you’ve got to get a social media plan together that

outlines your strategy and goals. The good news is that if you’ve already got prospecting and lead generation plans in place, you can build off those plans to help you get productive with social media. 

 By connecting the rich local information that’s in your CMAs and MLS to the power of social media platforms, you can build a powerful competitive advantage most agents don’t leverage. One of the biggest opportunities you have is to leverage content from your CMAs and listing presentations and share it via social media. High-quality content that’s shared consistently on the right channels leads to high-quality leads.

 In Chapter 8, real estate agents will learn:

• Five fast-and-foolproof methods to prospect with CMAs. (Page 171)
  
  

• The coffee house hack for free real estate leads. (Page 178)

• Lead generation, and why the sphere makes your career. (Page 186)

• How to use CMAs and social media to win business, with social media expert Katie Lance.  (Page 188)

 
Chapter 9: : Using Your CMAs to Win with iBuyers

“It’s better to change and adapt than to complain and remain.” – Rob Liano

Ready or not, the iBuyer trend is here.

The iBuyer model continues to evolve and improve, and it had gained surprising momentum until the real estate world was shocked by COVID-19 in early 2020. The iBuyer wave may have

been slowed for a while, but it has by no means been stopped. It would be naive to think that this emerging business model won’t be a gamechanger for residential real estate.

 A serious question: Would you walk into someone’s home to do a listing presentation without knowing the property’s Zestimate? Of course not. You don’t want to be blindsided. You don’t want to appear that you haven’t done your research, and surely knowing the Zestimate would be the bare minimum, right? Similarly, it’s wise to start adjusting your thinking about iBuyers.

 iBuyers offers are becoming similar to Zestimates because homeowners increasingly are visiting iBuying sites to learn what they might expect from an instant offer versus selling their home in a traditional way. In Chapter 9, we dispel five myths about working with iBuyers and the benefits of bringing an iBuyer offer to your next presentation. 

Nothing but net (sheet)

We also cover a powerful strategy shared with us from Brad Nix of Path & Post Real Estate on how to quickly understand seller motivations, as well as a Net Sheet he uses to show sellers exactly what outcomes they can expect from their home sale. This net sheet example below helps Brad tell a powerful story and provides a great example of how agents can go the extra mile to help educate clients and help them achieve their desired outcomes. 

Chapter 9 Summary: 

• Why bring an iBuyer offer to your next presentation? (Page 202)
  
  
• Playing cards with prospects for fun and profit. (Page 203)
  
  
• Nothing but net, with Brad Nix: Quickly show sellers their bottom-line proceeds. (Page 205)

Chapter 10: Real Estate Dreams Do Come True

In challenging times, it can be tough to stay focused on your grand goals and aspirations. And without a positive mindset, it’s easy to dismiss the hacks, tips, scripts, and tricks I’ve shared in

this book—even knowing they have produced game-changing results for some of real estate’s super agents. But here’s the unvarnished truth:

Real estate enables you to make as much money as you want, doing the work you love.

 I’ve talked a lot in this book about being the top agent in your community, and how you can become one. But what does being a top agent really mean? You can look at it from an earnings

standpoint. The median annual wage for US real estate agents was $48,930 in 2019, while the top 10% of agents earned more than $111,800.

So top agents make about 131% more than average agents.

It’s true that a CMA is a presentation tool, and much more. But it’s still a tool. You are the artist who brings it to life. Think of your CMA presentation as a piece of sheet music. All the notes

are there, but you are the one who will create the music, build emotional connections, and add the nuances and the artistry that makes for a truly memorable experience. Nine out of 10 agents won’t take the time to craft such a customer experience. But you will. You’re the 10th agent.

A career in real estate can be an amazing journey, full of excitement and surprises, victories and setbacks. It’s not for the faint of heart. With that, I leave you with these thoughts:

Don’t give up

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

– Calvin Coolidge

This quote has been taped to my door or mounted on my wall for years.

Focus

Another piece of advice I have taken to heart comes from Ross Simmonds, a speaker and entrepreneur. When I first read it, I thought it was kind of funny, but it stuck in my head so much I printed it out and taped it to my computer monitor. I also created a slide with it and now I close all my live presentations with it. I know it resonates with the audience. To close this blog post, I’ll share one last thing for your real estate career: 

Try not to go it alone.

Find a business partner, have a support system. I could not have done anything without the ongoing support of my co-founder Dan Woolley, and a tribe of family & friends. There’s an old Turkish proverb that sums it up pretty well:

“No road is long with good company.”

Chapter 10 Summary: 

• How top agents make 131% more than average agents. (Page 212)
  
  
• Change your mind and change your bottom line. (Page 214)
  
  
• Evergreen real estate skills to master for powerful growth. (Page 215)

The Art of the CMA book is available now in print and Kindle ebook versions.