[00:00:00] All right, we are back on. I'm going to bring our next guest on here shortly, which is Marilyn Wilson with the Wave Group that has I had a conversation with Marilyn the other day, and it was one of the most insightful conversations I've had in a while. As far as just general market. They do a ton of research on the market and we're going to talk about creating and selling a value proposition to your agents. Marilyn, you're on. How's it going?
[00:00:27] It's going great. How are you doing that?
[00:00:29] Doing so good. I've been really excited. It's funny. A couple of the conversations we are having earlier sessions, I think, man, I can't wait to get to Marilyn's because it ties in so much with what you and I want to talk about, which is a lot of times brokerages and teams have amazing technology. They've put so much work in all these different things and they forget to go out and actively sell that to their agents. Right. So we'll get into that. Marilyn, maybe you could just introduce yourself a little bit and tell us who you are, what background you come from.
[00:01:03] Sure. So can you hear me up there for you? Yep, we're here now. All right.
[00:01:12] So after graduating from Cornell University, which is a lot harder to get into these days, I just found out my daughter at cirrhotics. I've worked in consumer packaged goods and marketing and product development pretty much my whole career. And I've been in real estate now for, I don't know. Way too long, 20 plus years. And basically, our job is to help brokerage's technology companies figure out how to get to the next step and how we call it creating positive waves of change. What is it that you need? So sometimes it's research, sometimes the strategic planning, sometimes it's an amazing new leader. It's all of those things. So that's what Wave Group does, is we basically help you succeed in a variety of different ways and, you know, kind of stirred up a little bit here. And they're trying to let people see things a little differently than they may. So that's kind of what consultants do right now. We our technology, which is a site and by the way, if anybody on the call wants it, just put your email in and I'll grab a free subscription to it. It's usually two hundred dollars a year, but it's up site to go learn about technology on a daily basis. And it has probably the biggest directory of technologies available. Real easy to find all in one place. So we do agent articles, broker articles, team articles, MLS and association articles. If anybody cares about that on this call, I don't know. So all different types of stuff, but it's really to help each of us with little snippets every single day to just keep moving forward. So that's what I do.
[00:02:35] I love it. That's awesome. So you talk about and you work across the board, you work with agents, brokerages, teams, and you've mentioned that there are things a lot of times that little shifts and thinking that you're able to bring in as a consultant. What are some of those things typically that you're finding you can add the most value?
[00:02:56] Well, you know, again, I think a lot of it is sometimes we take what we do. Even if we do it super well, we take it for granted. We just assume everyone knows what we do on that. We're amazing. And that starts even at the agent level of when you when you meet with a client or a potential client, do you really tell them all the things you do as an agent? I had a great conversation with an agent that said she was she got some feedback on a performance rating system and it wasn't so great. And they said, why? Because, well, it didn't look like you did anything of the truth was she's just so good. She just did it. And it was kind of the duck swimming like this under the water. It's really come on the top. And they didn't think she did anything just because she was doing it so well. So it never hurts, even if everything's going fine to mention, hey, we're just trying to let you know I did this and this and this for you today. Right. Not in a braggadocios kind of way, but just as a way to keep transparency in what's going on. And that's at the agent level. The broker level. There's a whole bunch of different things which I think we're going to get into technology companies, the same thing.
[00:03:57] One of the things that and this is for everybody in the industry, from MLSE to vendors to brokers, we have a tendency, I think, to speak more about the features of the technology and not the benefits of the technology. So most agents I mean, there's some that are super tech savvy and they're probably friends with the U.S., but most of them are tech. I would call them tech interested, but not necessarily tech savvy. Right. They don't get up in the morning. Go. Oh, let me learn about a new API. It's just not who they are. Right. But if you can teach them about why this technology is going to help them and do it in a context, that makes sense. So how can this help me get more leads? How can it help me nurture more relationships? How can it help me stay in touch with my clients after the fact? How can I close a deal faster so I can get my commission checked faster? These are all basic things that are so important to every one of our agents. And we forget sometimes we get like, oh, it's so pretty, it's so exciting, it's so glittery. But we don't talk about what it means in tangible terms.
[00:05:00] Yeah. And that's that's assuming you're talking about this in the sense of I'm a team leader or I'm a broker. And I went out and got this piece of technology, let's say I got Sisu and it's the best piece of technology ever. But a lot of times you just take it for granted that they're going to automatically see the value in this new tool that that you're buying. Is that kind of along the lines of what you're saying?
[00:05:22] Exactly. And I mean, I've seen many times I've seen recruiting presentations for it from a brokerage and will have this list of all these pretty names and some logos. Right. And there's no explanation or no even some no organization of there was some logic as to what of each of these tools that were purchased and why. Right. But it doesn't necessarily look like a system. And it doesn't it doesn't necessarily look to a new agent about, OK, I don't have enough leads. How can my brokerage help me do that? Every brokerage probably has three things that can help them with that. But it's not organized like that. Right? It doesn't like it's almost like a Q&A. If I looked at like a cell phone. What are. Tools they have to generate leads for, right? What are all the tools I have in the middle that are going to warm up? We were just talking about content, right? What are the kinds of things you can do to engage consumers and help them understand what you love and and help you understand what they love? Right. What is it what does it really mean to do an amazing listening presentation? And how what tools do we have to to populate that for you? Not to mention an amazing listening presentation itself. Right. So you go down every single part of the funnel and look at all the tools that you offer and organize them in a way that an agent can go, oh, I get it.
[00:06:36] I mean, I've heard from more than one agent said, well, I left X, Y, Z brokerage because it didn't offer whatever it was. Sometimes the sad part was the brokerage did offer it and the agent. Oh, but sometimes it's because whatever the agent the brokerage was selling or was offering, they weren't pitching the value of it. And I don't mean just like amazing. We spent a bunch of money that agents don't care. And why should they what what they care about is what are you doing to help me sell more real estate? Period. The end. Right. And so are we selling that regularly? Usually when I talk to brokerages about their marketing departments, they're focused exclusively on selling properties and selling the brand and selling the website. All of those things are absolutely critical and you have to do all of that. But there's really very little time carved out for selling the brokerage, selling its value, selling the brand power. Right. There's so many real estate brokerages that have amazing brand recognition in the local market. Are we taking credit for that? Right. There's a lot of different ways to look at it, but it's basically carving out if you've got a hundred minutes in a day for your marketing team to take 20, 20 minutes of that one hundred minutes and say, make it about me. Meanin in the brokerage, not me, the broker. Sometimes it's about the broker. To some, brokers are so charismatic and exciting. In fact, I have a good story about that.
[00:08:03] You may know Mark McGlocklin, who civic union now with part of Compass. He has a great philosophy. And this is another way to sell your value proposition. He doesn't have an office. He's got probably I don't even know now lots of offices, let's say 30 offices. Right. He just goes from office to office to office and in Round-Robin that the people in the office never know exactly when he's going to be there, which is also a good thing. Right. It keeps them on their toes, but more importantly, it gets him close to the action. So he's talking to agents all day long. What's working, what isn't, what struggling. He and he can ask them, hey, what do you think of the X, Y, Z technology? Well, I don't even know what that is. Oh, well, that's that's a problem. Right. And that's what we hear, too. A lot of times agents don't even know what a brokerage offers, never mind what it does for them. Right. So it's like you got to pay attention to selling, being proud of what you do and making sure that your agents consistently understand it. And then, of course, it has to have great training that backs that up. So when you get them excited about it, you can say, hey, come to this class, you know, take it thirty minutes and I'll teach you these two, three things that are awesome. Like, you got to learn how to do that.
[00:09:13] And is that I mean, it's so so in this sense, it's it's it's selling that value proposition. Is that, is it communication, is it creating cool marketing. I mean, what, what are some of the tactical things, I guess that that are being done to actually do that? We're talking about it.
[00:09:31] I'm not I think there's a lot of different things. One of the things that that I see and frankly, I've see very few brokers do this is again, mostly there's a laundry list. Right? We give you twenty five tools. Isn't that amazing? But what people aren't doing is they're not organizing them and making them easy to access based on what the agents struggling with. Right. So a new agent, what do they need. They need a lot of things right. But they need Legian, they need to understand how to build an amazing listening presentation. They need to know what's in an amazing listening presentation. They need to understand how to attract buyers. Right. And so instead of just giving them a laundry list, you can say like almost like like a Q&A, literally, like. So are you looking for more leads? Try X, Y, Z. And here's training that's available for you on Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday. Right. Whatever. Making up examples. Right. But do that for every core sales process. Right. So generating leads, nurturing leads, generating potential listing presentations, figuring out how you can be an amazing buyer's agent, all the different things that an agent needs to do. How does your technology support that? Because if it's just a laundry list, they don't know. I'll give you an MLS example. And this is relevant, but I think it is for some brokerages, too. So if you go into most MLS today, there's a big dashboard. It's got all these tiles and all these different logos on them. And I've asked so many of my friends, like, have you ever clicked on any of those tiles are like now? And in the meantime, a friend of mine was like, I don't have any leads and I need a.
[00:11:09] I'm like, OK, so I'm not suggesting everyone should with work with their MLS just as an example. Right. So there's something right there. Click on it. That's usera. It is like. Yeah, it is. But there's nothing there that tells you it's a Siara. It's just a pretty loga. I mean we have beautiful logos. That's OK. But that's not enough to get an agent who is not dying to get into technology on a daily basis. Let's face it, it's none of our none of us do. You've got to sell them on how you understand each component of the sales process and how each component you have supported something with a thoughtful purchase. Sometimes it's one entire system. Sometimes it's individual thing. Sometimes it's a combination. But on a daily basis, say, what are you struggling with? Leads. OK, maybe you do an office building, something about Legia next month, all about Reconversion. The next one is all about getting a listing. The next one's up, right? You could just be you centered around what agents care about as opposed to the cool features of the technology. We tend to do that. We're like, oh, it's so sexy. It has ehi ages are like, I don't know what it is that I don't know how that's going to help me sell the property next week. Treki the dots between the two. So what it's technically to answer your question, I would say the first thing would be would be a marketing plan.
[00:12:25] Right.
[00:12:25] What are we trying to sell after we've organized what we think are the right, taking the technologies we have, put them in this list of what's good for each one of those shelf components. Right. Then outline content just like you do for regular content strategies. Right. That you'd be pushing to your agents on a regular basis about a new tool. Hey, are you struggling with leads? Hey, did you are you are you out of inventory like everyone in the world is right now? What can I do to help you with that? Right. You tie it back to what they care about and then present communications and content. And by the way, lots of technology companies, I'm sure, Zach, I'm sure you guys do this. You have technology content that you would share with brokers if they want to use it right. You'd be happy to have them help promote the option, because if they adopt your tool, the more likely you're going to stay with you for the long haul. Right. And tell more other tell other people about it. So that's what I would say is it's content marketing. It's definitely, like I say, the broker and the managers, depending on the size of the office. Right. Should all be completely in tune. That's another one of my pet peeves. Sorry, I get off tucked up for a minute. But so many times managers don't understand the technology. Dhan aren't even interested in the technology. And so how when an agent comes to them and says, I'm struggling with something, they're not familiar with the technology, how are they going to help them? Right. And, you know, people say, well, I can't force I like usually there's some level of the component of managers that are paid staff. They're employees. Right. They're not a we have issues with independent contractors, but many times they're not independent contractors. So teach them get them excited so they can become advocates for this stuff. Right. It's like the more people that get excited about what you do and understand how powerful this stuff is, the better it's going to be for everyone. Yep.
[00:14:16] And it all kind of ties back to that. What you were saying at the beginning is you think people know the value that you provide as an agent, as a team leader, as a broker, as a tech vendor. They just don't you live and breathe it. So of course, you think that. Right. But you're right, biased. And a lot of times you probably mis underestimate what you actually are providing.
[00:14:37] Yeah. I mean, it's great stuff, but if people don't know about it and again, it's not that they don't know about it, they may again, they may know the name of it. They may know some top line level of it, but they don't necessarily know on a tangible daily basis which button should I push to be able to get more leads? Which button should I be able to try to attract more buyers? Right. It's like it connects back to training, but you got to get them excited about it first. If they don't know is there, they're like, whatever, I'll just keep going on. And my broker, one of the things that always scares me the most is when I hear my broker has no value. What, because guess what, there's other people out there. We all know who they are, other technology companies every single day telling them about their value because they're great at marketing their value proposition. A broker's got to match them, if not beat them. Right. Or she's never going to be able to stand out.
[00:15:30] Yeah, Marilyn, I have to take this one as an example to what's a pitch to get my sales team excited to use our system, which for those of you that aren't familiar, Sisu is a it's a sales analytics tracking. It does a lot of around the data. And the goal is for a sales team to go. My pitch typically to get your team excited, using SESAR to get anyone excited using Sisu is if any of your agents were to go out and let's say they were going to pay a thousand bucks a month, get a McVerry Tom Feria personal coach, that's really going to kick their butt and keep them excited and and help them hit their goals. The number one thing that that coach is going to do is they're going to provide some kind of system and a lot of them do it on spreadsheets to track those numbers so that when this thousand dollar month coach gets on a call with them, they know exactly where they're at as far as numbers go and they know exactly how to help them. That's something that same type of system that I would go pay a thousand bucks a month for with with a one on one coach. I can get that as part of your team, your brokerage. And it's provided to me just by just by joining. So the funny thing is, is if you take that with X, Y, Z system, like I love that T, just ask me that. But if I'm another if I'm using a different tool and I want to go ask that vendor how I should sell it to my agents, how to create that value prop, we'll have one hundred answers for you. Right.
[00:16:54] So exactly how do you go about a good friend of mine.
[00:16:57] Love him the other day on a on a pretty impressive leaderboard, so. Well, good for you guys. So, OK, Marilyns, shifting gears a little bit here. OK, we've talked about selling that value proposition. And when you and I were talking the other day, there were some creative ways that you talked about to actually create more value as a team brokerage, as that type of organization. Maybe we could go into a few things you're seeing there.
[00:17:27] Yeah, and there's a lot of things that people can do, you know, some of the things that are a little external but can kind of come back to you. I think about things like PR and research because we do a lot of that with some of our clients. So PR is, I think, an underutilized tool, especially at the local level. So we have I think we're brokerages are doing a pretty good job of content marketing and PR and content marketing are slivers away from one another. Right. But there are great things that you're doing. It isn't always just about sells except sales success. Right. That that sounds a little braggadocio sometimes, but right now, especially during covid, there are so many things that brokerages and agents are doing and there's some really fun ideas of things you can do to get your brand out there that gets your free. There's a great example of a brokerage that actually this was a top producing agent that did this, but a brokerage could do it, too. They they found a restaurant right near one of the hospitals that were serving covid patients. They put five hundred dollars down, which in the scheme of things for advertising is not a lot. Right. And promoted through their all their social media channels that anybody that's doing the hard work to support all of us during covid-19 go to this particular restaurant, use a little catchword that they had, and we'll give you free lunch.
[00:18:48] They got so much press coverage over that and it was five hundred dollars. I know. I mean, it could be more in a bigger city, whatever. But the point is there's ways to demonstrate because one of the things I love about real estate is that we have a lot of really, really great people as humans. Right. With big hearts that genuinely love their customers. That's why they do real estate. They love them. They love commissions, obviously, but they really love the process of helping families. And so you use your creativity about what is it that gets you inspired to help a family? Because there's so many different ways we can help these days and use that through social media. As you know, Jack, Facebook and all those places now are much less expensive than they were because so many of the big advertisers have dropped lately. You can get some great exposure for twenty dollars a day, not much. And it can really do some great things for you. Here's another one that we do. And this may be reserved more for a larger brokerage, but something to think about anyway. We've created consumer research panels. So what that basically means is we go out and we recruit people that have gotten home or are in process just looking at a particular market and.
[00:20:01] Get them in a database and then we ask the variety of questions.
[00:20:05] Oh, we did a survey about how do you feel about it? How is the process of changing where you might live? How is it what's it doing about the house? Are your kids driving you crazy to buy your house because you can't have them all in one room with every five people on them at once? Right. That was just an example. Right. But what you can do is if you have interesting questions about what you think is going on in the marketplace, you can recruit consumers to tell you the answer and then you can again, using PR and just your own content marketing tools, promote the answers that you find. So what does that doing? Number one, it's helping you as the brokerage and agents get closer. It's helping your agents feel like they have a leg up because they've got information that other brokerages don't. And it can be used as brand promotion and potentially a great way to build opportunities with your local newspaper because you're providing insight. Right now, they're desperate for stories, right? Certainly stories about covid, but even stories that aren't really any of it.
[00:21:07] So that's a great way to to get to some things that really may help you stand out, that don't cost you really a whole lot of money. But we'll just give you a different way of looking at it. Like, in other words, you're very in tune and very concerned about what consumers want because we know that changes on a regular basis. When you keep asking him these questions, you're going to know the answer. First one, your agent's going to know what number with you and then you can share that information. So that's a whole other way. There's lots of different things to do. For me, it's kind of like kind of call it grassroots or guerilla marketing. Right. What are some things that I can do that I think are true to my brand or true to my personality, not stuff that's just copy from someone else. It doesn't matter that truly demonstrate how much you love and care about your community and your customers. They don't have to be super expensive. They just have to be creative and kind and fun.
[00:22:02] I love it all my ideas. And I think, you know, the team brokerage, you can take a lot of those principles and apply them right. For sure. We'll cover some good stuff. Marilyn here. What else I mean, just in general, from what you're seeing, is there anything else you'd like to share with us, stories or ideas or just advice in general on this on this topic of creating and selling a massive value property to your agents?
[00:22:31] Well, here's one really dumb one about it. OK, I would guess everyone on this call is in an MLS somewhere, right? That's not that's kind of a basic thing. Everyone does it. I'll tell you a story about in Sarasota, Florida, an agent lost a 30 million dollar listing. Nobody wants to lose a 30 million dollar. Everybody wants to just even try to get one of those. It's exciting. And so she called the the consumer and just had to know. Right. Because she thought it was down to two and it was so she said, you know, I thought we had great report. I thought you were really happy with the marketing program we brought you, et cetera, et cetera. And the the owner said, oh, we absolutely words. She said, well, why did you give to the other agent? The other agent said, well, I'm going to put it in the MLS and it's going to get exposed to like thirty five thousand agents because we're part of my Florida regional. It's all over the state. So she mentioned that it was in the MLS and got the deal. Well, like, do you even think that's exactly the kind of thing we were talking about, the fact that we assume that people know what we do and they assume the value of that and they don't. So that's just one example. But other other things like that. Right. Like if you use a transaction management system.
[00:23:49] Well, you know what? We're going to be doing this online together. And so any time you have a question about what's happening, our concern, you know what? You can text me right through that system and I'll get back to you right away. Or even better, what I know that this is the first time or even the second or third time. But you're not a professional at doing this, right? That's why you hired us. Any time there's going to be a next step coming in the transaction. I'll just give you a little heads up and I'll send you the document, let you know in advance there's no issues with that. Just want you to see what it's. And what's it about? Why do you have to sign it? Just little little touch points like that again. What does that do? It drives home the fact you're doing a lot of things to my point earlier. Right. But it also shows someone that, OK, I don't have to worry. My agents are going to be there for me 24/7 if I need them. And if I have any information, there's transparency. I can go look it up myself because some people would rather do it themselves. Right. So it's like little things like that when you think about every step that you work on in the process. And you can you can package this, by the way, too.
[00:24:50] I would if it were me if I was doing a listing presentation, I would package all those up, not necessarily even have them written down, but remember them and work them through as you're talking through the presentation. Right. But, you know, you're not going to have to worry because I'm going to do X, Y and Z or here's another thing. And I do a series called The Coffee Chats. And people on it were like, stop saying this morning. We've heard you say it a million times. But it's true. The MLS is a very underutilized tool. And just because everyone has it doesn't mean everyone's using it. Right. Think was dismissive. Just because everyone has it doesn't mean they're not using it. They're using it effectively. Just because everyone's got the same thing doesn't mean you can't differentiate yourself. And people forget that even within their own office, like, OK, well, I'm using Sisu years and Sisu, but here's the unique things I'm doing with it and I'm going to take credit for that. And even if, by the way, you're not the only one doing it, consumers don't know that. Right. If you take credit for it, they think you're doing it. They don't necessarily know know what everyone else is doing it. So never take for granted the great work and all the different components of what you do in the process.
[00:25:59] I think a good if you're going to take an action item from this, going through everything you do as a team brokerage agent, really outlining that value proposition and a part of a wave group does correct me if I'm wrong. Maryland is actually putting some outside eyes on that because sometimes you're blind to it. Yes, part of it for so long. Right.
[00:26:19] Well, we'll see. Like I say, we'll see that laundry list of marketing tools. And I'm like, OK, why? Like what? This one. Why do you have this one? And the dangerous thing is sometimes brokerage's. Don't know why they have. That's a different conversation because somebody told them they had to have it at some point, that literally we had a brokerage, it took them three months to even figure out everything they were offering. You got to hit them all in one piece of paper first. Right now we can we can talk to you about and, you know, this is a great example where you have all in one system, sometimes you're buying technology. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. That added, I'm going to make up some numbers for examples. Right. That cost you one hundred dollars a month and Sisu might cost you twenty. I know these aren't real numbers. I'm just saying argument's sake, right. Sometimes all inclusive packages, no one are easier to use because the all of the different tools connect to one another. The data flows so easily from one piece to another. And then the other thing is that it's just you not buying over and over and over and over. Sometimes you're buying seven tools and about twenty five percent of each of those tools overlaps with one another. So you're buying really like ten tools when you really need one or two, right? That's yeah. We look at that a lot. Again, we also talk to people about how are their agents feeling. I can tell you that we've done surveys for brokers with their agents and found out that agents were very unclear about what their broker offered. And we're really not sold on the fact that these tools were really meaningful.
[00:27:49] They didn't even know what they were. They didn't know why they matter.
[00:27:52] So, yeah, there's a lot of different ways to get a handle on it if you need a third party to take a look at all of it.
[00:27:58] Well, that's awesome insight, Marilyn. Thank you for hopping on. One last thing I want to throw out, doing this exercise will be good for selling your internal value.
[00:28:07] And it would also be an amazing exercise to dial in your recruiting efforts and your recruiting plan because you're hit, you're going to hit two birds with one stone in that cell. Exactly. Recruiting retention are so closely linked.
[00:28:20] Yep. All right, Marilyn. Well, we're going to. We're going to. Let you go now. Thank you for hopping on, it's been very insightful. If I want to get in touch with wave group, where do I go?
[00:28:30] If I wanted to look at working with you guys closer, you could just email me at Marillyn MRI, Elyon at, say, Wave Group, but it's actually Web group dot com. Or you can just go to Web group Dotcom and sign up for our newsletter and you can start to see the types of things that we do. Or you can give me a call if you'd like, at eight zero five seven four eight nine one one eight.
