Whether you’re a real estate agent or not, this LMScast will open your eyes to a world of possibilities. Joshua Millage and Chris Badgett are both licensed real estate professionals who know real estate from the inside. They will tell you how real estate brokers and agency owners can get more leads and sales through online courses, and you can get going with it right away.
The best way to attract new buyers and sellers to your agency is to differentiate yourself in your marketplace and position yourself as a real estate expert people can get to know, like, and trust. Creating online courses that provide real value to customers will help you generate more leads by becoming a friendly, familiar face and answering those questions all real estate clients have. By freely sharing information they can use, you become less of a salesman and more of an advisor.
As a positioning tool, online courses are progressive, responsive, and immediate. They place you on a higher level than old-school signboards, billboards, and print advertising. It’s a good idea to hire professional audio and video production to ensure you present well as an authority who is likeable, trustworthy, and familiar. You can then balance that cost by using a course development platform like LifterLMS that allows you to affordably create attractive, professional, and engaging courses that customers will benefit from, enjoy, and share with their friends.
You can create courses like a first time buyer’s course, or teach sellers how to get the highest price for their home. Think about the kinds of questions and concerns you address with every new customer and build courses around those common topics. Not only will you address those needs for customers, you will also increase your productivity by freeing up more time that you won’t have to spend answering those redundant questions.
Monitoring your courses to see how people are progressing lets you time phone calls, initiate contacts and offer timely, personalized help. Plus, establishing rapport with customers through your courses means they are more likely to choose you as their agent, and will refer you and your courses to others.
Learning how real estate broker and agency owners can get more leads and sales through online courses is a real opportunity to position yourself as an exceptional real estate agent that people will want to work with. To get started, check out Chris’s 6 suggested real estate courses at the LifterLMS website. Boost development services are available if you want us to handle the technology for you. Try a demo of LifterLMS as well to see how our course development platform can get you started right away.
Post comments and subscribe to our newsletter for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. Thank you for joining us.
And if you’re an already successful expert, teacher or entrepreneur looking to grow, check out the LifterLMS team’s signature service called Boost. It’s a complete done for you set up service where your learning platform goes live in just 5 days.
Episode Transcript
Joshua: Hello, Everyone. Welcome back to another episode of LMScast. My name is Joshua Millage. I’m joined today, with Christopher Badgett, all the way from Whitefish, Montana. Are you staying warm up there, Man?
Christopher: I am. Yeah, we got some snow, but I’m doing good.
Joshua: All right. I need to come see you, and ski. Anyways, today we are talking about how real estate brokers and agency owners can get more leads in sales through online courses. I love this topic. My father has been a real estate agent and broker for 25 years in Fishers, Indiana, and I’ve always told him, “Dad, you need to use the web to get more leads in sales.” So, Chris, you’ve got the magic formula, on how we can do this today. I’m going to leave it to you. Walk us through this. Where do we start?
Christopher: Absolutely. Well the first thing I just want to say, is if you’re not in the real estate industry, or caring about real estate, still you can get a lot of value out of this episode, because you can apply to different niches and different economies. The big point is that the information age is over. We’re entering the Curation Age, which means it’s not just about slapping up a bunch of videos or random pieces of content. People are overloaded, so if you look at the real estate industry specifically, and you’re the owner of a business, you’re a broker or agency owner, and you’re looking to position yourself as the expert in this space, we’re going to talk about how to create online courses to get more buying and selling clients attracted to your business. It’s not that the courses are a way to make even more money as a real estate professional. We’re talking about using online courses for lead generation.
We did an episode with Kim Albee a little while back about how to use online courses to support after a purchase, where they can then use the courses to onboard into a software, and get the most out of the software. This is kind of like that, but different. We’re going to use it before the sale, to get people to know, like, and trust you, build authority, build value in the market place before we start. It’s really a positioning tool, and it’s also a way to leverage the social web, to attract people to create content that other people are going to share. I’m going to start, and just get into the positioning aspect.
Joshua: Real quick too, you and I go back and forth, and talk about this, I think probably every other episode at this point, where people forget that people do business with people they know, like and trust. This is ubiquitous knowledge, that applies to every single industry under the sun. Especially with real estate agents, and brokers, who I think often times, are in some sort of uphill battle, just given the nature of their job. I’ve heard some people, “Oh well, I don’t like being a real estate agent, because people know that they need to hire me, and they don’t want to pay my fee,” and all of this stuff, right? This is a great way to just cut right through that, and provide more value that, that value can scale to, because once you create a course, it’s done, and it can help 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 people, alleviate some sort of fear, or help them answer some sort of question.
That positions you, not only as an expert, but through your personality, and who you are, they will know, like and trust you. It’s just something that real estate agency owners should enact and embody immediately. Right now, we’re recording this in December, this is a great goal, to say, by the end of Q1, or the end of Q2, we’re going to have 2-3 of these courses out there, so that we can send new leads too, so they can start this process of knowing us, liking us, and trusting us. Anyways, I won’t digress too far, but I get really excited when I see opportunities, and I think this is a really ripe opportunity for real estate agency owners and brokers.
Christopher: That issue of scale, one time, set it and forget it, it’s totally there. It’s not another sign, to pound in the ground, it’s not another billboard, or ad spot to buy, or whatever other kind of advertising thing. You set it up once, and you just get it out there, and you add value to your market place, so that the people know, like, and trust you. To give you a little more specific example, if you’re a real estate specific agent, you’re going to either represent the buyer, or the seller, or you’ll be in some other niche, like commercial, or I’m just going to use a residential example. If your company represents buyers, or both sides of the deal, that’s fine, you can make a lot of different kinds of courses, but if you make a course on the, first time home buyers guide, you’re doing a couple things. You’re positioning yourself as the expert.
You’re educating your marketplace. You’re helping people see the value, especially when there’s kind of an innate distrust for sales professionals. You’re actually explaining what it is you do, and you’re coaching someone, especially at the beginning. When they’re done with that, what are the odds they’re going to go with you? You didn’t even try to sell them anything, you just educated them on the process, the things to look out for, you created the first time home buyers course.
Joshua: The fee that you charge, becomes a non-issue, because of all the value, and expertise you’ve given over ahead of time. A lot of people have said, in the real estate space, that I’ve picked up on, is like, “You need to write a book to do this.” Well now it’s easier than a book, because you can do an online course, that has the same effect. I think the other thing is, you kind of touched on it there Chris, you’re going to answer the same sets of questions, depending on where a buyer or seller is at, in their relationship with you, so why not send them to a really concise, easy to go through course, to have those questions answered, so you don’t have to answer them on the phone.
Christopher: Now you’ve had a huge productivity boost, your time.
Joshua: Boom, yeah. This isn’t a get rich quick, or magic bullet. We’re talking about, what are the 20% of things that you can make courses around, having to do with questions, or objections, or fear, send your leads through that, so you don’t have to do it, so you can have an 80% increase in productivity, by not focusing on all that stuff.
Christopher: Absolutely.
Joshua: The sky is the limit. First time home buyers, that’s a great course. I’m sure that conversation, or series of conversations or meetings, it’s probably the exact same thing, over, and over, and over again.
Christopher: Yeah, most of the time. Right, and make it engaging, make it informative. Like you’re saying Josh, the boost in efficiency, you also create a referral asset, which further compounds your efficiency. If I’m in a group of friends, and I’ve already bought my first house, and my friend comes to me, and is like, “Hey, I’m thinking about buying my first house. Who should I go with,” or, “What was it like,” to do X. Now, you might get the referral, but you might also get a referral to your online course. Like, “Oh, you have got to check out this course. I’m so glad I took this, before I entered the process.”
Joshua: Right, and then the thing is too, that actually becomes a lead capture for them. You can make the front end of that, a lead capture, and then you can just watch, because the technology allows you to, where they’re at in the education process, so you know that hey, they just finished lesson 2, I’m going to call them now.
Christopher: Yeah. You might find that sweet spot. Like, “Oh, people get really engaged on this particular lesson, about this subject matter,” like home inspections, or how to get the seller to reduce the price, and things like that.
Joshua: What have you, yeah. Brilliant.
Christopher: Just to come at it from the other side, if you’re representing the sales side, of course you could make is, how to maximize your house to get the most profit on the sale price. How to get the highest possible sale price for your house. That’s what the seller is thinking about. All the same rules apply. If you do a good job, somebody in a group of friends, is going to be like, “Hey, I saw you just sold your house, how’d you do?” “Oh, I did awesome, you should try this agent, and by the way you should take their course, because there were some things in here, that I’m glad I knew about, that I could do 3 months before I even put my house on the market, to maximize the sale price, and so on.”
Joshua: Right. That’s brilliant too. The whole scalability here is just amazing. I think Dan Kennedy says it really well. He says, “When you enter into a market that’s established, that doesn’t have a lot of volatility, or change, from a technological standpoint.” Real estate’s a great example of that. There’s a lot of people who are doing stuff on paper still. He said, “You got to show up like no one else. You have to come into the party, looking a little bit different, speaking a little bit different, acting a little bit different,” and an online course, is a great way to do that, because again, the scalability, and these repetitive conversations you have, I would say, don’t skimp on investing in high quality audio and visual. Don’t try and cheap out, and do it all off an iPhone. I mean, you could, if you want to move quickly, but hire someone for 1,000 bucks, 2,000 bucks, or whatever, and get it done right. It’ll pay off.
I mean, come on. Commissions in the real estate industry are awesome. Especially here in California. You sell a house, or a couple houses, you’ve got a massive ROI on your audio and visual investment. I’ve also noticed that that’s another thing, real estate agents don’t like to spend money on things. This is something, I say, invest into it, and it’ll pay back huge dividends.
Christopher: Building a marketing asset is, I think real estate companies, especially, do invest in their marketing, but like you said, how do you do it in today’s world? How do you show up differently?
Joshua: It’s all the same ads, it’s all the same. What if you saw an ad in the newspaper that said, “First time home buyers, take our course, learn everything you need.” Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That’s showing up. That’s taking offline media, pumping it into your online sales process, and then as they take the course, you follow up with them, and talk through what their objections or issues are, in parallel with your course. You’re going to have such a massive increase in your stick rate, with leads, it’s going to be crazy.
Christopher: Yeah, and you’re giving people an opportunity to take you for a test drive, without any real social commitment. You’re not saying, “Come to my office, I’m doing a seminar, on first time home buyers guide,” you’re making it easy. You’re like, “Hey, just open up your phone, and come on in, and see what I got.”
Joshua: For those viewers who are like Josh, that’s great, but you’re kind of a Charleton, because you’re not actually an agent, or a broker or anything. I will be. In less than a month, I’m taking the California Real Estate License exam. I’m going to kind of be in line with my father’s footsteps, you know, taking over his estate that he’s run for 25 years, and my brother’s joining me, so I’m going to be in this, doing these exact things, very, very soon. With the people I’ve worked with in Santa Cruz, I can already see that the more great information they give away, the better they do. This is just another way of doing that, so it’s really exciting.
Christopher: Just to piggy back on what you were saying. I got into this whole internet thing myself, through real estate. Many of you know, I used to run sled dogs in Alaska, and I didn’t do much on the web, but I had to sell some property in Alaska. I built my first website for some land I had, and I started doing video marketing, and creating videos about a property. I ended up selling that property in 2 years, for double what I bought for it, at the bottom of the real estate market, through video marketing. That’s actually how I got into the internet.
Joshua: That’s cool.
Christopher: I also got my real estate license in Maine, and learned how to sell online, and I started building websites for subdivisions and brokerages, and my clients, and things like that, and what I realized, is exactly what you’re saying Josh. When you show up to the party, and you’re doing video marketing, and you’re really standing out, and doing things differently in your marketplace, and acknowledging the realities of the social internet, smartphone landscape, people start coming to you as, “Oh, I’m going with the new school.”
Joshua: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’m excited, because Chris, you’ve got a massive bonus today, for people.
Christopher: I do.
Joshua: We’ve shared 2 different courses, but how many do you have to share in total?
Christopher: I’m going to give you 6 courses. I’m just going to go ahead and lay it out for you. Just make these 6. Like you said, hire a professional, if you don’t have the funds for the professional, do it on your iPhone, just make it happen. We have some, done for you services, we call them Boost, at lifterlms.com, where we can take the technology part, of actually setting up the website, and the learning management system, the courses for free there. We can take that all away, and do it for you. You can check that out at lifterlms.com, or if you already have a web professional, you should check out our software at LifterLMS, and you can quickly get your online courses up on word press website quickly, but yeah, we’ve got your back. I’d encourage you to download my guide, on the exact 6 courses you should make, and you could literally make all these in just a weekend.
Joshua: Yeah. I would be surprised if in 6 months, you didn’t have some sort of massive increase. Either in your time and productivity, or just your sales, your sales conversion. We want to know about that. Leave us a comment under this video, or you can hit us up over at lmscast.com, in the comments below that video too. You can find that bonus on the blog post at lms.com, or you can just head over to lifterlms.com/realestate, and there’ll be a landing page there, where you can enter in your email, and we’ll send it directly to your email. It’ll just be like a PDF, right, Chris?
Christopher: Yeah, that’s right. I’m just going to hook you up with a checklist. Like, boom, boom, boom, make these, and see what happens.
Joshua: Yup, and we’re always here to help. We would love to help you get these courses online. You can check the Boost services out on the website. We’ve got a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff. I’ll keep it short, and concise, but thank you so much for watching this video. We love making these videos for you, so let us know how we can help in the future. Until next time, we’ll see you soon.
