934: Get HUNDREDS of Real Estate Referrals Annually with CC Underwood

Paul: Real Estate Rockstars, I am absolutely delighted to have CC Underwood with me, and we had the chance to meet doing another webinar that I did for my offices and for our regions. CC Underwood is, I would say, fair to say famous, certainly inside of our company and elsewhere. Instead of me giving your bio, why don’t you just tell us about yourself for starters?

CC: I’m married. I will be 40 this year, so a big 40 coming in hot. I’m from Jacksonville, Florida born and raised here, I probably will never leave. I don’t fly. Interesting little fact. I will drive everywhere. Even if it’s 16 hours, I’m there and back. I have a team here in Jacksonville. Currently, there’s 14 of us. We have 5 admin, 1 ISA, and 8 agents including myself. I’m very, very limited in sales, maybe about one a month. Currently, so far, we’re at 219 close for the year. We’re just over 64 million.

Paul: I am furiously writing that stuff down because they’re astronomical numbers. I’ll ask you to repeat some of it because I’m writing, and I find it so interesting. There’s how many on your team?

CC: 14.

Paul: 14, 5 admin, 1 ISA, and– tell me the rest again.

CC: 8 agents, that includes me.

Paul: 8 agents including you, and then you told me that you do how many sales yourself?

CC: Not to more than 10 a year, so I get yelled at a lot if I do.

Paul: Who yells at you?

CC: My director of operations, Katie.

Paul: Okay, good. All right. With 219 closed– I’ll just start the interview right off by asking you what’s different during COVID? What are you doing differently? In that, we’ll get some of the rest of how you do your business.

CC: For sure. COVID was a big hit for us. We started out really strong year super goals. COVID happened, and then in May, which is now known on our team as the main massacre. We had 7 people leave in about 45 days. We had this huge exodus, some mental, some they needed to work from home, their dynamics changed, their needs changed. That was probably the biggest turnover that I’ve ever seen for us. We’re used to a couple a year. We’ve always had low, and that changed everything. We, at one point, had 19 on the team when we started this year, and so we’ve lost and we’re rebuilding.

Paul: Let me ask you this. I’m a realtor. I’m doing pretty good on my own. Why in the world would I want to come work for you just for starters?

CC: For starters, our team, we have it made right now where our agents, we can prove that we’re able to generate two to three times more referrals than they would on their own. We communicate with their database over 100 times a year. We know that when an agent is top of mind, that they’re able to get more referrals. We do that better than anyone in this town is stay in touch with our current and past customers. We love on them. If you’re looking for a team to take all that leverage off of you, handle all of your marketing, and increase your referrals, we’re that team.

Paul: I’m sold, by the way. Now, one of the things is that I really, in my work with realtors, and I have 3,000 realtors working in the offices that I own. Closer to 9,000 agents in the regions that I supervise, which include the 3,000. Our price point’s a little different, admittedly. Our price point’s higher, but I find lots of agents who are really good at doing the deals. In other words, if you give them a house to sell, or you give them a buyer to service, there are so many that actually do a great job, and yet they don’t have a great business. That’s the bridge you’re helping them cross?

CC: Yes, I think that’s a hard one. I saw that my own business as a single agent, and then you get in this trap of lead crack that you have to find the next one, and you have no time. It’s not that you don’t want or care about the people that you service. You literally have no time because you’re just struggling to keep it all together. You’re wondering where the next deal was going to come from, and that is your focus. It’s to stay in business to make money. Nothing wrong with that. There’s only one of you. You have to choose. Go get new business, or hang out with the old and until you’re able to hire leverage enough to create those systems.

I always tell people, “It’s not like you’re not hiring a realtor for me to get your home under contract right now. You’re hiring me for the experience.” That 13 years to figure all this crap out, to test it to thousands and thousands of dollars on CRMs and lead sources, to find what works for us so that you can just hop on. That whole benefit, really we’re absorbing you into our world. We’re taking care of you. You don’t have to stop what you’re doing.

Paul: Can I ask what your split is with the agents that work with you?

CC: Absolutely. Whenever we’re hiring, when we bring agents on, typically we will wait until the very last minute to discuss splits. Typically we will have that conversation upfront, it is we want them to be all-in. You can’t just dip your toe in a team and say, “I think I’m going to try this out.” You have to be all-in. If you’re all-in, that means you believe in us the team that we’re going to help you get what you want. We don’t go over splits until you’re signing the contract. When we go through our hiring process, that’s what it is. Overall, we do have a different split.

If it’s a team listing, all of our agents can work with buyers and sellers. If it’s a team listing, meaning we have provided it by an ISA, my sphere, agent referral, they’re receiving 25% leads they generate for sellers, they receive 35%. We do have a little bit different if it is an experienced realtor, and they are bringing us their book of business, their past customers, they’ll get a little bump on that because again, we spent no money to generate that business, they do. Then if it’s buyers it’s pretty much flat across the board, it’s they get 45%. Selling four or more in a month, it bumps to 50. We’re all in sales, you want more, sell more.

Paul: Got it? I’m an agent. Part of the reason why I ask is because I’m always thinking about what does our audience want to hear? Our audience is made up of lots of realtors that are on their own. They’re also lots of very experienced teams. First of all, I want to get as much for our audience as we can but I also want to cater to your strengths and the things that you’re good at. I do find it fascinating. I think if you’re a single agent, and you’re listening to this, there’s a lot you can learn, even if you’ve never want to join a team because the idea of “Well, why would I want to join this team?”

We have reasons and discussion points, this thing, it can help you move your business to a more purposeful one or more leveraged one, because again, what I see a lot of is, I see people, they’re very busy. Then they drop their lead generation activities, because like you said, they don’t have time to do everything. Then they complete the business. They’re, “Oh! What’s going to happen?” Then they start lead generating until they get more deals. Look, do your business how you want to, but it’s not in my view a great way to have a career and a living and that ups and downs.

CC: You look how long it takes to get there. We use the term, “Rockstars” in our industry. Well, my first year in real estate, I sold seven homes, the second year was 14, I wasn’t a rockstar by any sense of that word, nor was I the third year when I finally went full time. When you’re looking at a team, usually it splits right where there’s value of our time and where we spend it and how much money we make really needs to be a part of that conversation. There’s no way I would have continued to make it on my own had I not gone full time cut the cord and just continued to push forward.

Most agents, if they sold five or seven homes in their first year, that’s still good. It’s not sufficient for an income though. On a team if you’re looking at it, “All right, well, I can make $40,000 to $50,000 in my first year, $70,000 the second and six-plus figures in the third,” and there’s that opportunity. I don’t have to get stuck in the busy work. I remember how much time I spent when Facebook came along, “Oh, I got to get a Facebook group.” I had to learn all the time spent learning how to be a techie, do I need a website? I even paid somebody like freelance, I think five grand for a website once. I thought I had to have my own cool thing. No, so wrong. Don’t need it.

Paul: Absolutely. Tell me what’s your average sale price just so we can calibrate this for our audience?

CC: We’re right around 270, we’re 270 on the listing side, 290 on the buy-side right now.

Paul: Got it. Great. A flagship office that I own is the Beverly Hills Office and our average sale price is over 1,400,000 but also, I have an office in Bakersfield, California. That’s a lot more like the price points that you’re talking about. That’s one of the reasons why we look at units a lot of times, “1,300,000, If I did seven houses–” You’re talking about some real money, yet the beauty of this is you can apply all these systems and models to get that. I know you’re heavy in contacting your sphere of influence. Are you buying any leads? Are you buying leads anywhere? Are you generating your own leads outside of your sphere?

CC: We are. We actually just started that a little bit last year. For Zillow, basically, we paid the bare minimum, I think $315 a month to be premier. We found the cheapest zip code that we can find for that purpose. We do get some leads from that. We do have pay-per-click through our website. Our newest venture is a company called House Gather and there’s a bunch of agent referral, lead sources that will pay them, we get leads on a referral basis.

Paul: When agents talk to me about increasing their business, one of the first things I do is say, “Who are you going out? Who are you meeting? Who are you adding to your database? That sort of thing. I’ll often tell them, “Don’t go to the Board of Realtors because it’s all realtors. Go to other events that you can add people to your database.” The last time I spoke to you, you’re getting a lot of agent referrals.

CC: Yes.

Paul: Talk to me about that. How are you getting the agent referrals? Why is that and how is that an important part of your business?

CC: I think as agents as professionals, it’s always looking at raising the bar and this old school mentality of, I don’t want to work with another realtor like you said. It’s just what you’ve been taught, but I feel especially within Keller Williams it’s celebrated to do that agent to agent. We don’t need a third party, we’re not going through relocation. We are the relocation. We are each other’s biggest advocates across the nation, different states. Anytime I’ve ever gone to a training, I’ve always made sure that it was in another location, specifically, a feeder location.

You can be very purposeful, even with agent referral lead generation, adding value, always being a giver of your own stuff. We’re open book. Someone says “Hey, how do you do that?” Let me share that with you dancing on TikTok, there’s a whole agent community. We’ve gotten agent referrals from TikTok, it’s just finding that common ground and building those relationships. Currently, we’ve closed 52 homes strictly from agent referrals and a few of those have been local.

Paul: Wow! Think about that, 52 transactions year-to-date?

CC: Year to date.

Paul: Wow! 52 transactions year-to-date from agent referrals. One of the things and I’m just going to pull out some of the highlights here so we can hit it. One of the things you said is feeder location. If you’re in Jacksonville, how are you determining what’s a feeder location? I’m in LA, maybe somebody else is in New Jersey or in Michigan. How do I find a feeder location?

CC: I think we just look for that common where we receive the agent referrals from. In our CRM, we do tag them, the city, and state. That’s still a work in progress as far as super tracking all of this stuff now that we’re becoming purposeful and we’re aware. The Carolinas are big here. Of course, military bases are very big here. San Diego’s a nice feeder for us actually. We do get a little bit of Los Angeles, or just from California to here, Texas is a feeder, Atlanta and then New York, New Jersey. Those are great feeders, but even within Florida, Miami and Orlando, they’ll come up to Jacksonville.

Paul: Now I have figured out what is the feeder for me, how do I get the agent referrals from there? I’m in LA, let’s just say, geez, I found obviously big cities New York, Chicago, wherever I found that. I did see some people coming from Nashville because there’s the entertainment community there back and forth between Nashville. Now, I’m like, geez Nashville might be a great feeder community from a smaller city for me. How do I get the agent referrals from Nashville?

CC: You could always go direct. We’ve got a great network. It’s pretty easy to go on any brokerage website, click down, it says our agents. You could do it from a nonrelational start because this is good for any brokerage and you can just find it. You could pick multiple brokers. How many endies don’t have a referral network that could benefit from something and adding that referral income that we could all use together? You could call them up and just say, “You know what, I’ve noticed I’ve had a buyer that’s moving to Jacksonville from your area so I was curious, do you guys have a Jackson referral partner for your brokerage, for yourself?” You could call every single agent and really have that conversation. Don’t just spam them with an e-mail like, “Look at all my properties in Jacksonville.”

We get enough agent e-mails, as far as that concerned, or you start relational. You go, you find a city, find a class that is specific for realtors and you go attend it and you network there. Now, you can serve that collection, your database. Follow up, “Hey, we met here. I went here. I wanted to meet you. If you ever have a buyer or seller in Jacksonville, I’d love to be your referral partner.” Just add value that way.

Paul: I’m just thinking on the fly, I wonder if it would make sense, for example, to use that example of Nashville or whatever. Rather than cold calling through a roster of agents, what if I cold-called the manager? Said, “Hey, it’s Paul Morris from such and such agency in Beverly Hills. I noticed that we’ve had quite a few referrals from Nashville. You are the biggest firm in Nashville. I selected you because you have a great this, that. The other thing, I’d like to establish a referral partnership between your firm and my team where I’d like to serve whatever and then any referrals that I get from my Los Angeles network that want to go to Nashville, I’ll keep you guys top of mind.”

Is that a good–

CC: For sure. Even things like this. Calling up, say, “Hey, with this virtual atmosphere that we’re in, I’d love to add value. Here’s my strengths. Do you ever have a broker meeting where I could come in and I could add value to your agents?” That’s the biggest thing. Just teach. Go teach. You can be the person in front of everyone. You have to be in the middle. Go teach and differ. People are hungry for little nuggets of information how they’re building in business and that can apply in different markets. They don’t even have to go anywhere. “Hey, zoom me in. I’d love to teach you about this. Who wants it?”

Paul: I love it. One of the things you said, and you said so many great things, I was writing furiously, was that with your database, you’re touching people a hundred times a year. One of the things, even the really purposeful millionaire real estate agent book were really talking about 33 touches. Tell me why you think hitting a database twice a week makes any sort of sense. What’s your messaging to that database that you’re hitting so often?

CC: That is always changing also because we are so heavy for referrals. Out of 219, right now, we’re at 59 that is strictly from referrals in our sphere. 52 were agent referrals and 40 are our past customer repeats. The majority of our closed sales are coming from these sources. That’s why we want to stay in touch if it’s top of inbox, top of mind but also not everyone’s in their e-mail. We communicate with people through Facebook, through video. We’re starting to integrate a little more BombBomb a little more video into our messaging and events.

It’s giveaways, a rewards club. Every time we are sending out, “Hey, we’re giving away Apple Watch,” or, “Here’s our Mother’s Day giveaway.” We’re having our virtual– we just had a virtual cooking class.”

Paul: Wow. I remember you telling me about that. One of the things I’m always talking to people about is find their superpower. If you love gardening or whatever, it’s really your passion. Even if you’re not the teacher, you go and you find the local expert and interview them. That then becomes great content. You’re fired up about it but it doesn’t need to be gardening. It doesn’t need to be cooking. Find the things that you’re really interested in and you’re really passionate about. Then it’s that outgoing message. I guess I’ll ask it again. If you have a hundred outgoing messages, a lot of things that I see are, “Hey, we just listed this.”

I look at people’s Instagram and it’s all just listed or just sold and I’m just like, “Nobody wants to see that.” As a realtor owning a real estate company, boy, that’s exciting to me. Let me show myself how much I have sold. Boy, that’s exciting but unless it’s a house next door to mine, I’m not really interested.

CC: Yes. You need people to know that you’re relevant as a realtor. That’s fantastic. You’re looking at this from different angles. There’s your public-facing. People need to know that you’re an expert. Are you educating them? Yes, they do want to know that you sell homes too. Are you fun? Are you relatable and are you an expert or are you giving advice? Your database– Yes, there are times to ask for referrals. I honestly can’t think of maybe once or twice a year where we’re actually asking for a referral. Very, very little. A lot of those are in correlation with if we’re having a contest.

We’re having an internal contest and we’re reaching out to the database and we’re like, “Hey, we really need your help. This is going to be fun. We’re all competing against each other. We’d love your support. In a stellar, this is what we’re looking for.” Every single month, every October, we have a team retreat, team advance, however, you want to call it where we plan what we’re going to do for the following year and that is all-encompassing for public and our rewards club. Those are the giveaways, the touches, the text messages. “Hey, you want to win an Apple Watch? We’d love to see you win. We’re having a contest. We’re having trivia nights.”

When you combin our generic weekly database e-mails with all of the events, with all of the giveaways, it is over 100 touches a year. We’re calling them. We’re texting them. We’re following up. We’ve got photos. There’s so much engagement going on and they don’t overlap. We never start one until we’ve finished another. It’s just constant.

Paul: You said generic weekly. That’s going to be 52. What’s your generic weekly outreach look like? Is it a newsletter that you’re e-mailing out?

CC: I’t’s what’s going with our team. Yes, it’s our open houses, new listings. We’re looking to change that up with a message from me or something cool that’s going to be relevant about the market. New programs that we offer. We just started a “Rent Now, Pay Later” program. We want to make sure that our database knows if someone has an older home and they need to sell their home and they don’t have the cash, it’s all wrapped in equity. We got a program for you. I’ll be educating them on cash offer programs. Again, I would say that’s probably the least, that’s not our strength part. That’s when we’re going to start into BombBomb.

Paul: That’s the baseline?

CC: That’s our baseline.

Paul: I love it.

CC: Every single week, no matter what.

Paul: That’s your baseline and I love it because I think what that can do is if my baseline is– I’m on the receiving end. Your baseline is, “We’re going to send Paul 52 newsletters.” One of the things about that is unless it’s really annoying to me, I’m going to look at that and I’m going to go, “It’s the thing from CC. Next.” Even if I do that, it does keep you top of mind. Then if you’re peppering on top of that, things that are interesting, that captures my attention. I can see how that works very well together. Whereas, for example, just a 52-week generic alone is going to have a lot less effectiveness, right?

CC: Yes. It does. That’s why you have to change it up because everyone communicates a little bit differently. There are those that they like it. They love e-mails. They want to see what we’re doing. We have handwritten notes that go well or still writing thinking-of-you cards that go out to our rewards club, birthday cards that go out for their birthday month. They’re getting touched socially on the phone, through print, and through e-mail. They’re going to engage with us. In some way, we are top of mind.

Paul: That’s your 52, and tell me more about the rewards club or how you figure out who gets what, how does that work?

CC: Our rewards club, this is for our sphere and our past customers that’s how you can enter and there is giveaways. Every single month we have a giveaway. It could be “post a picture and we’ll choose”. We budget $300 every single month so that we’re giving something away and we’re having fun. Again, some of our database is connecting with us a little more socially. It’s a private group so we can add them, we can remove them, and a lot of times they can even give us referrals. We can message them directly whenever we want to just say, “Hey, thank you for RSVPing, we’re going to do the invites.”

Part of that 100 Touch program it is they’re getting the giveaways so we’re posting in there. For the giveaways, we got at least once a month when we’re doing giveaways all of our events. We had 10 major events that were scheduled this year. Of course, we’re having to make those virtual but we’ve got a touch plan that goes out to them for the events.

Every single touch plan, they’re getting four to five additional touches for each event. They’re getting a text message, a phone call like a Slybroadcast that we’ll use for the voicemail.

Then the actual event itself where they’re coming which is really, really nice. Our virtual events between the mailers now and the e-mails, you can see how it quickly goes over 100 [chuckles] for everyone.

Paul: One of the things you mentioned, I heard you mention Sly and I know what that is but that reminds me, a lot of our listeners and folks watching this would want to know what are the systems that you’re using, what’s the technology you’re using? When you say Sly, you’re talking about Slydial, right?

CC: Yes

Paul: That’s a way to leave direct voicemails right?

CC: Yes

Paul: I could do a voicemail to 100 people without calling 100 times and then maybe they pick up and then I have a conversation that maybe I don’t want to have. What message are you leaving on a Slydial and is it they really think you’re leaving a voicemail?

CC: They do because even though the initial number doesn’t come through, it just drops as a voicemail. It’ll recognize that number as a voicemail. If it is from their agent or it’s from the team if they got it saved, they’ll see it. What happens again, people don’t listen to voicemails anymore. They see it and someway they text you back. [crosstalk] [laughs] It’s a nice way to engage and it’s just, “Hey, we just wanted to invite you we’ve got another family night coming up. We have another trivia, another bingo night just want to make sure you know you are invited and we hope to see you there.” Very simple.

Paul: I love it, I love it and it’s giving me ideas right now because one of the things that am interested in doing too, is getting people to a big event that we have, a mega camp and I don’t have time to call the hundreds of people that I would like to invite, so great idea. I have an event, so one of the things is getting an event. Maybe it doesn’t have to be your event. What about that, what if you go out and you find cool events you didn’t have to put the event on? Now I’m leaving to my sphere, let’s say, 500 people.

I’m just leaving a Slydial, it’s like, “Hey, it’s Paul Morris. CC, I was thinking about you, there is this great event which is the da-da-da-da-ra it’s on Zoom or there is a social distancing event here in Santa Monica and I would love to see you there,” or at least what’s going on in the neighborhood. Great move, right?

CC: You just never know how someone is going to respond. Instead of like “Hey, how would you like your preferred contact method.” You don’t really know that on the masses. It’s like any other lead generation, call them, leave them a voicemail, follow up with a text, send them an e-mail.

Paul: Call them, leave them a voicemail, follow up with a text, send them an e-mail. I definitely find in my own lead generation is that calling– I don’t really use Slydial. I know what it is. I have it, I have used it before. I am going to use it after this, after our conversation so appreciate that. When I call and it goes to– and I’m usually dealing what I would call high-dollar calls so I’m not just randomly calling all these people. I’m calling somebody that’s important for me to connect with and it’ll go to voicemail often and when I follow up, I leave a voicemail but when I follow that up with a text, it’s tremendously powerful versus not.

CC: Yes.

Paul: The difference is just massive. That’ll be step two. I’m going to send all these Slydials now that we’ve had our conversation and then after I do that, I’m going to type out a somewhat generic message I can certainly customize it a bit and then I am going to hit send on a text message. “Hey CC just dropped you a voicemail.” The voicemail will be a bit more generic because I don’t want to say your name because am sending it to 300 people. It’ll be like “Hey I was thinking about you, I’ve got this fabulous event in Santa Monica. It’s social distancing, would love to see you there or at least let you know I’m thinking about you da-da-da-da-da-ra. Great.” Afterwards, then I’ve got a text message that says, “Hey CC–” That’s the only thing I might customize, and then drop the rest of it which is that generic message. I think that’ll have a big impact.

CC: It does and as a receiver of so many voicemails, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate someone just saying,”Hey, guess what my voicemail was about.” I’m like, “Oh thank God,” and then I can determine if I want to have a conversation with them, if it actually requires me to have a conversation with them. I find that as respectful. Just text me what you want [chuckles] I’ll make the decision if it’s important for conversation or was just really an FYI and we don’t need to talk.

Paul: I love it, I really recommend doing the things– Back in the day when we used to be being to do it, a lot of people hated the door knock, so don’t door knock but find the thing that you really love to do and make sure you do it because this is still a contact spot for sure.

CC: For sure.

Paul: Sorry, Slydial. I got a little distracted. What other technology are you using?

CC: We talked about BombBomb a little bit. I’ve had it for years, we’re really going to mark out a consistent video content calendar something that could be easily utilized. Even for educational purposes, you can post that at your database, they like to be educated too. We use BombBomb for that.-

Paul: Can I ask one question about BombBomb. It’s a video interface. I know BombBomb, I have used that quite a bit. You can customize a little bit, that’s cool. On your BombBomb, when you say you’re going to do a content calendar, you’re going to push it out of the BombBomb, you’re not doing an individual BombBomb, you’re doing a BombBomb that you’re going to send out to how many people?

CC: For our database of our rewards club it’s

under 500.

Paul: You’re making one video and then you’re sending it out to 500.

CC: My favorite thing to do with video is I prepare several topics and then I will come in, I will record them. I could knock out anywhere from five to 10 videos super fast. Then the girls, they tell me what topics that they want or give me an idea. I’ll shoot the videos and then send it over to marketing. They can edit it and then they can schedule out those posts, whether that be for social media. I’ll upload them to BombBomb, after they get edited then we can reuse this for YouTube. It’s multi-purpose.

Paul: I got to dig deeper. I love it because these are great. These are amazing nuggets. Five to 10 topics, give me two or three examples of what a BombBomb is going to be about for you.

CC: It could be an expired video, it could be like, for instance, our new Reno. Our Reno Now, Pay Later program. It could be a quick overview about. It could be education on new construction. We’re on a video series on new construction right now, the lumber prices have increased. It could just be informative like that. It could be around, “Hey, you’ve received a cash offer from Zillow.” Or another iBuyer program. What do you do? What does that mean? How does that compare? Strictly for educational purposes.

It could be our little commercial, “Hey, we want to invite you to Bingo.” This past one, I did a video to invite them to the cooking class, which was chicken cacciatore. We were cooking and I just did a little 30-second “I can’t wait to see you guys there.” and we’re cooking Italian.

Paul: I love it. For that particular video, did you have a professional chef do the cacciatore?

CC: Yes.

Paul: It’s not CC cooking?

CC: No, you would not want CC to cook.

Paul: Then you get a professional chef. How do you get the professional chef to do it?

CC: I want to say he had done it before, that was one of his little pivots, and I knew him. He used to run be the chef of a local restaurant. We reached Johnsey. I knew he made meals and so we went to him we’re like, “Hey, we would love to have–” At first we were thinking it would be a date night. Now, we’re not calling it date night, it’s just called a virtual cooking class. It goes over much better. What we’re finding is we do get a lot of people that will RSVP. Then, we typically have around anywhere from five to 10 people that show up, actually show up. That they buy their ingredients.

It’s your own cooking class so he’s at his house in his kitchen, we’re all at our house at our kitchens and we have the ingredients. He’s interactive. He’s like, “You’re going to cut it like this.” He’s asking people, he’s like, “Show me your dish. What do you have?” questions. It’s very engaging. If someone wants to ask questions separate from the dish, that are just cooking questions, “Hey, I want to cook something like this. What would you suggest? I can’t get this right.”

Paul: Wow, you’re giving me great ideas already. Here’s another taste of reality that I’m not sure I would have thought to ask you. I’m so glad you said it. That is, you’re doing all this outreach, you’re sending this video out, you’re creating a BombBomb and it’s like, “Hey, I’m thinking about you. We’re going to have our chef.” There’s this guy, I was thinking Chef Bobby because it’s a guy I know, or Chef Jeffrey, Jeffrey Saad, is a guy I interviewed for this Real Estate Rockstars. He’s a fabulous realtor also.

It’s like, “Hey, we’re having a virtual cooking class with Chef Jeffrey Saad.” You’re doing all this outreach and guess what– You’ve got a machine that has done 219 closed units here today, and you’re working with eight or nine people that show up. I’m going to be honest, if I do that class, and I didn’t hear this podcast, and I didn’t hear it from you, and I did all that stuff, and then I get there, and now, it’s my first one. If you have nine, I’m going to have three or four. I’m like, “Geez, I got Jeffrey Saad here cooking.” I ran out and bought the ingredients, I’m going to cook with him, and I got four people, this is a waste of time. That’s what I’d be afraid of.

Now, it’s amazing to hear you say you’re crushing it and you’re getting eight or nine. Talk to me about that.

CC: It’s not about who shows up. It’s never about who shows up. It’s never about the event itself. You’re offering people an opportunity to connect with you. As we talk about, it’s all about the connections. This is a contact sport. We’re reaching out three to four times promoting the events. Then the ones that show up, we get really great engagement. They’re happy, they’re relaxed, they’re in their home. Really, we just want to connect with them on something that they like to do.

It might be a different set of people. It might be a different set of 10 people that show up for Bingo and a different set of 10 people that show up for Trivia. As you’re finding out what your database likes– We did a sports theme. We’re trying to change it up. It’s just reinvent it every single time, change it up. I say this all the time, there’s no substitute for a face-to-face, no substitute. If you don’t like the door knock then get those people on Zoom, get them engaging.

You could pick anything you want. It could be a craft class, it could be, learn to use a dang cricket machine. “Hey, you want to be crafty at your home and you have a cricket, we’re going to have a cricket expert.” It’s one of those lasers. You could truly find little niches within your database to have little fun classes like this. You know what, people bring their kids on too. They play Bingo with us. The kids are in the kitchen. It’s really cool, just creating that family environment, and watching everyone do something as a family together. [chuckles]

Paul: Boy oh, boy. Seriously, I’m so glad that I caught on to that because my takeaway, and I’ve written it down, and I’m sure I’ll put it in our Instagram blast for this show, was it’s never about who shows up, it’s about giving the opportunity to connect or giving your audience the opportunity to connect. Here’s the cool thing, again, think about yourself as the receiving end of this. I’m like, “I get the 52 newsletters from CC, okay, that’s cool. Now, I get a personal invite, maybe, it’s a slide dial followed up with a text or whatever. It’s saying, “Hey, I’m having a cooking class with this really cool chef on Saturday night. Here’s the ingredient list. Go around and buy this stuff. We’ll see you Saturday night.”

Now, I look at that and I go, “No, not doing it.” I might not even text back and say, “Thanks for thinking of me.” but I do think in my heart, “Thanks for thinking of me.” I really do. I’m just talking about me, you could send me 10, 15 of those. I may never even say, “Thanks,” but I’m like, “You know what? She’s cool. That’s cool. I’m not into Bingo. I’m not going to cook. I’m going to go out with my girlfriend on Saturday night, da da da da.” but I’m like, “That is cool.” How many events are you doing?

CC: We had 10. We had 10 scheduled, we had to change every single event, post-COVID.

Paul: 10 events a year?

CC: Yes. I think we had maybe seven or eight last year so we had 10 planned. Once COVID hit that was again, that’s all part of real estate, something happens, you have to change what you do, figure it out. We went virtual. Everything we’ve been doing, the ones that got canceled, baseball games, we typically do baseball games, that got canceled. That’s where virtual has taken the place. We have fall family photos that are coming up. We’re still doing the pie giveaway. Then we actually do a ‘Huge Cookies with Santa’ event every single year and we have over 300 people that show up. That one actually, it’s for our customers and our community. That’s the two-part farming event that we do.

Of course, we can’t have 300 people in a tiny little space with Santa [laughs] so our team came up with the idea of having a Christmas movie. It’s a golf cart community so a drive-in Christmas show where we’re going to give them popcorn and little tiny Santa bags, and we’re going to watch a Christmas movie, all outside, distance.

Paul: Oh, wow. I love it. Now, these aren’t in-person events, just a question, do you think moving that number from 10 up to let’s say 24 makes sense? So that now, I’m curating an event and you can do it a little less hands-on because I understand your cooking class, you’re actually going out, you’re buying the ingredients, you’re there at your house, the chef is cooking alongside of you. That’s super cool. I’m going to try that. I’m going to give that tip to Jeffrey Saad, who’s my famous chef friend who’s a great realtor in LA. Now, I would want to push this to once every two weeks because people are really looking for things to do. Do you think that makes sense or is that just too much or?

CC: I think if you were so great with your database that it was segmented that you were able to start to tag and filter people with what they wanted, we are nowhere close to that. I think with the amount of touches where I say we don’t want them to overlap, we need time to market and touch, then set up the Eventbrite links, get the registration, send it. For our process, we’re doing about two things a month however, they’re not two events. It’s a giveaway for the rewards club and then a virtual event. We’ve got a giveaway a virtual event. There’s that constant communication but again, we’re not sure what’s too much. At this point, they are engaging, and we are getting referrals, that’s where we are right now.

Paul: We’ve talked a lot about the virtual event, talk to me, because another big part of what you’re doing is the giveaway, tell me more about the giveaway. How do I do it? What does that look like? Who am I giving stuff away to? How are they qualifying? How are you figuring out who wins the Apple watch? That sounds expensive.

CC: Not really I think the Apple watch was $500 or something.

Female Speaker 3: No.

CC: What was it?

Female Speaker 3: I think

Paul: Sure.

CC: 250. Okay sorry, I don’t buy that–

Paul: from the invisible.

CC: Yes. In fact the main woman, director of operations, she won’t let me spend $500 on that. I don’t know what I was thinking. We had one that was that Apple watch, we also gave away a Roomba. When you’re thinking about giveaways and it’s always fun to know the disasters from giveaways. We did a call-in to win and the Apple watch, I don’t wear watches, so I didn’t know how much people like them. We had people that were dialing one after the other, after the other, we had like 3000 calls coming into a Google Voice number in a couple of hours, it was insanity. That one did not have the desired effect of us wanting to talk to 100 people and ask them for referrals though that was the goal.

We now know next time we give away an Apple watch, their little behinds are going to fill out an entry form. You want to fill it out 3000 times, be my guest, we want an entry form for that. For database, we gave away a Roomba and that’s really what it is. You can design it however you want. Every state has different laws when it comes for giveaways and referral. Say you want to manage that here in Florida, you cannot be “Entered to win” it has to be a, I forget the word, but it can’t be a lottery. Here technically you can’t do a lottery. It’s very skill-based, is the word I was looking for. They have to answer your question correctly, they have to be the 100th caller, something like that. Be the 100th entry.

That’s how we’re able to stay within our guidelines and rules for the giveaways. They don’t have to give a referral to win something. We’re very, very clear, and we actually have program guidelines. We have a playbook that is written out specifically with pictures, here’s what you can say, here’s what you cannot say. Anyone in the marketing role can follow that rulebook and know what they can do, but the whole purpose of we call the reverse 100 is the goal to get 100 people to call us. We would to call us.

Paul: Wow,

CC: We do that, our goal is twice a year, no less than twice a year. Ideally, quarterly and then monthly– Those are just random giveaways. We’ve got a budget of $300 a month that maybe we’ll give away TPC tickets. We will do movie tickets, we’ll give away Orlando Disney ride or Adventure Landing. We’re giving people things that they can use to create an experience. It’s not like, “Here, we’re going to give you a gift card.” No, what we’re giving away is something that you can actually use, and you’re going to remember.

Paul: I love it. Wow. What I can learn from this is amazing. I need to do more and more of these interviews with more people like you because I get smarter every time I do one of these, this is great, thank you. One of the things you said was if you did the Apple watch thing again you would do an entry form because then you’re capturing data. I understand that. What would the entry form ask for? It would say name, it would say address, or phone number, email, how do you prefer to be contacted and what else? What, if anything else?

CC: Not addresses. We’ll probably just do; name, phone number, email, do you have a real estate need? Done. Very, very simple.

Paul: All right. I love it. You want to get a hundred callers to call in, so how are you advertising? How are you getting a hundred callers to call in?

CC: I would say your gift matters, your giveaway matters, know, your audience know that. big is better or you have to think, what would somebody want that they wouldn’t buy for themselves for the most part? Technology things are always really cool, and let’s say Roombas are expensive, those little robot things and everybody wants one. We advertise on Facebook, we do live broadcasts, leave a voicemail, we send a text message, they get the email, it’s in our weekly emails, “Hey, we’re doing a giveaway,” and if it’s a public giveaway you will run a Facebook ad for it, just for that extra boost, when we’re doing it for the public.

Paul: How many of these are just to your database, your sphere, and how many are to the public?

CC: We do a lot to our database. We have once a month, minimum of 12 giveaways for our database, and we did one call-in to win which was the Roomba. We will likely do another one before the end of the year or entry.

Paul: When you do the call-in to win, you might have just said this, but when you do the call-in to win is that to your database or is that to the public or it could be either?

CC: It would be both. Preferably if it’s your database, you do want your database to call you, but again, you need people to man the phones, you’ve got logistics to think about there. The timeframe you could, “Hey, call in between 12:00 and 4:00.”

Paul: What are they saying when they call in, when you have the people answering the phone?

CC: “Hey, thanks for calling blah blah blah,” and they’ll say your normal intro script and all right, get your name, they verify, it’s the same thing that would be in the entry form. What is your name?

Paul: What’s your intro script?

CC: I’ve got it written, I’ve written it down.

Paul: I love it. You’re a phenom at this, you’re amazing, and when I asked you for your intro script you say, “Hey let me check it out, let me read it.” I love that because I love how real you are and the amount of businesses you do and the experience and you’re saying, “Hey we got this wrong,” or “Oh you want my simple basic script? Hang on I have to actually get it so I can read it.” That’s cool, I love it.

CC: It is really simple, I can tell you. It’s probably something like– We know, we have a tracking number so if they’re calling, we know why they’re calling. That’s really important, that’s how we knew we had 3000 people in a very little time. It was tracked. Better Voice was the system that we were using to track to get those numbers. You definitely want to have multiple people on there. “Hey, it’s a great day,” you can use your regular intro scripts, “It’s a great day to sell on the CC team. CC, how may I help you? “Hey, I’m calling about the Apple watch.” “Oh, great, fantastic let me get your information. What’s your name, what’s your email, your best email, or your phone number?”

If it’s for your database and you are on a team, one question I would ask was, “Who is your agent?” Then, “Great we’ve got you down. Thanks so much for entering. Oh, by the way, our team has a massive goal to sell homes, who do you know that’s looking to buy or sell real estate that we could talk to?That’s how we casually, I always say, say it casual with purpose is, “Oh by the way our team has a really big goal, who do you know is looking to buy or sell?”

Those are the very few times when we would ask. We’re giving them something and a lot of times agents are like, “I don’t want to ask because I feel like I’m using them. I’m just calling to ask for a referral.” No, now you’re giving something of value to them, it’s much easier to get off the phone and say, “Oh by the way, who do you know?” If they say yes or no– The idea is to have purposeful conversations, and after they say yes or no or give the name, “Thank you so much. I hope you win. Have a great day.”

Paul: You pick the winner randomly or you pick the people you like the most?

CC: Depending on your state, again, it does need to be skill-based, so for us if we’re saying you need to be the 100th caller and unique, we learned that was a purposeful word, 100th unique caller so they don’t call again, or we’re looking for the 100th entry. You could enter the script, “Hey, you’re entry number 54.” Whoever is calling you want to make sure they’re keeping a tally on which number they truly are.

Paul: Got it. These are amazing notes I’m getting. Is there any other technology that you haven’t mentioned that you use, that you find very useful? You said Home Voice, again, that one, I don’t know-

CC: Better Voice.

Paul: -Home Voice. What does that do for you?

CC: Better Voice, it’s like a Google Voice number. You can choose your area code and it will help choose a phone number for you.

Paul: Okay. I got a text message from you because you’re so great, after the last time we did a webinar and it had a LA number.

CC: [chuckles] LA number?

Paul: Yes. You texted me from an LA number. I was like, “Wow, what’s this?” Okay. That’ll remain a curiosity, but okay.

CC: I like

Paul: Understood. What’s one issue that you’re currently dealing with? What’s one problem that if we’re able to solve it, it would make your business a lot better or easier or more fun? What’s a pain point?

CC: Pain point for us right now, of course, less things. I think, like a lot of people right now, the shortage of inventory. Being creative, we’re mailing out love letters to neighborhoods for buyers that we can’t find homes, really just pulling out all the stops, having ISAs, doing whatever we can. Have, people call old expireds, for the buyers that we currently need homes from, “Hey, you never sold your home, but we actually have a buyer looking in your price point and your neighborhood. Would you still want to sell to them directly?”

The mailers have actually gotten us a couple of listings or we’ve directly put buyers under contract with home. A lot of off-market sales are going on right now, listings. You know someone that needs to sell their home in Amelia Island or Jacksonville.

Paul: I love it. What’s one thing that if you could do a redo on as a realtor getting from your first year of seven houses sold to right now, what’s something in that 13 years that you would do as a redo?

CC: We haven’t missed [crosstalk] I would say probably my most important lesson, and I say this, I would stop comparing. I wouldn’t have compared myself. I wouldn’t have looked at everyone else’s business and thought, “Hey, I need to do that.” I really didn’t know who I was as a realtor. I was like, “Oh, I need to be like them. I need to buy this CRM and pay $3,000 a month and get a 1000 leads that I had no business.” I was never going to be able to call those people, just, “Hey, I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it.” It was awful knowing I was not going to be that person.

I’ve always been a marketer. If I would have, like you said, find your passion, find your strengths. If I was true to that in the very beginning, be in a different place, much faster.

Paul: Interesting. Staying true to who you are, I just call that being in your superpower, figuring out what is your superpower and staying with that, instead of trying to be– Look around and I see people that do one thing great, or another thing great, sure, we can take lessons from them however, knowing what you’re really good at versus what somebody else is good at, makes all the difference in the world.

CC: It’s very different and I’ve found even growing a team, when I got to that point where I could finally grow a team through the ways other people were growing a team, I was miserable, they were miserable. You could just tell no one wanted to do it that way.

Paul: Another way to do it, and maybe you’ve answered this, really is, what advice would you give yourself as a rookie agent, but maybe it’s, stay true to yourself, or do you have another answer to that?

CC: Yes, definitely, stay true to yourself. It’s good advice, know who you are. You don’t have to laugh about or you don’t have to be the professional realtor, right? You need to be you, just be authentic, be smart. Go educate yourself. Be the best that you can at what you want to do.

Paul: Being a phenomenal realtor alone does not get you the business that you need to do, that you need to have. That’s why when I do these interviews, I’m so on it in terms of how do you get your business? How can we learn? What can we learn more to get more business? No matter how many tips you give, by the way, I always give my tips out publicly because so few people actually do it. You could get more agent referral business by doing a podcast like this, sharing all of your secrets than you will, creating some sort of competitive issue. I love your willingness on that, for sure. Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you feel is good information to a very broad Real Estate Rockstar audience?

CC: I think the one thing that has been my business mantra is, “Where people flee, I will go.” and I use that a lot. It is when the majority has an opinion, I am going to be the first person to interrogate it and figure out why, and is there a way that I can gain some leverage from that. It’s a smaller space. The same thing happens with COVID, when the business changes, okay, well, everyone at that point, just stopped. Everyone did nothing. When the majority is like, “Okay, well, I have to do something. Not doing anything, it’s just not an option.”

We even had that conversation with our team. This isn’t an option. We need to change our events. We have to do something and move forward for peace of mind, for sanity, to keep us focused on moving forward. Even if it’s something tiny, change your business. Our model has changed every couple of years and it’ll continue to change.

Paul: I love it. Why don’t I just ask you what’s a way our audience can get in touch with you? Maybe your Instagram, social media, that sort of thing, because I’d love to follow you and learn more about what you’re doing day-to-day? What’s a good venue for that?

CC: I would say connect with me on Facebook. My personal Facebook, CC Underwood, it does have little dots in there, but there’s really no dots in my name. Connect with me on Facebook. It would be the absolute best, or certainly, you guys can email me at CC, which is Charlie Charlie@sellingwithcc.com. Those are the two best places. I’m actually a very private person so you’re not going to get a whole lot from seeing, but definitely connect with me and I’m happy to share and just do what I can to help your business.

Paul: Sure. I love it. So gracious, for somebody that does the amount of business that you do, really cool. You can find me at Paul Mark Morris, which is M-A-R-K, Morris, M-O-R-R-I-S. You can find me on Facebook, on Instagram where I’m spending more and more time. I’m going to figure out, TikTok. Yes, I’ll get on the TikTok dance club, I guess. Of course, Real Estate Rockstars Podcast YouTube channel, and Instagram. We’re going to post all of that stuff. Our editor will go in and help me out with all that stuff as well. We ask everybody to give a free gift, which I saw that you sent in, but I didn’t have time to click on it and figure out what is it. You’ll tell us what’s the free gift.

CC: It’s going to be our touch plan that we talked about today. You can see exactly how we budget and allocate what those gifts were for our giveaways. You’re going to be able to see everything, our events, and the giveaway. We’re going to send that out to everyone.

Paul: Wow. That is massively generous of you to do, and really, really appreciate it because it’s really lifting up the realtors and our audience, really, really useful. We’ll post that as well in our giveaway section. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

CC: Thank you.

Paul: Real Estate Rockstars another great interview. I just think that you can’t go wrong listening to CC Underwood and incorporating some of these things. If you have any referrals and in Jacksonville, I know where I’m going to send mine. There you go. I love it. Thank you very much.

CC: Bye.