00;00;07;08 - 00;00;35;28
Unknown
Welcome back to the 7 Figure Flipping Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Whitney, the CEO of 7 Figure Flipping and Blackjack Real estate. And I have an amazing guest I've been friends with for some years, so close that we spent time once in a sauna and a cold plunge for an hour, and it was an epic experience, and I wanted to bring him on because he is a part of one of the leading digital marketing companies in the country.
00;00;36;00 - 00;01;04;00
Unknown
Their company generates tens of thousands of leads across the entire United States, and works with all of the best investors in the country who are doing meaningful deals and have meaningful businesses today. That person is going to break down what is working today. Why? Why things are winning, why they're not winning, and how you win in your business.
00;01;04;03 - 00;01;28;20
Unknown
And I'd like to welcome my guest today, James Harkness from Property leads.com. Yo man thank you so much. What an intro. We appreciate it. So pumped so pumped to have you lots of really really interesting things are happening in the real estate space today. The market's a little tighter and you have to be really dialed in and be a pro at what you're doing to win at an elite level.
00;01;28;23 - 00;01;51;24
Unknown
You guys have provided this great service of generating digital inbound leads. What's new in the landscape of digital inbound leads? What's property leads? What are you guys up to? Tell me that story a little bit. Yeah, you're spot on. So much has changed over the last few years. We were talking a little bit about it before the recording started.
00;01;51;26 - 00;02;16;16
Unknown
It's definitely tighter today. A well-oiled machine in terms of in, you know, your sales processes is absolutely necessary. Getting the properties at the right price, which is probably a deeper discount than what you've had to get them at in the past. I'm not sure if you guys have experienced any of that at home in your home buying business.
00;02;16;21 - 00;02;41;14
Unknown
Absolutely. That's definitely some of the feedback we've received. You know, the sellers are still thinking that, you know, the prices are they're going to get the prices from 2 or 3 years ago. And, you know, the the, the seller's expectations hasn't quite caught up with the market. So that's been really interesting. We're you know, we're working on a lot of new things internally just to help people close more deals.
00;02;41;16 - 00;03;11;04
Unknown
I'd say the coolest one is, is probably live transfer to begin to talk about that at some point. Home seller experience. That's another really fun thing that just helps people close more deals. We received some feedback last year. A really high level operator who both you and I know said, you know, you guys do a great job of taking care of your clients, but you don't necessarily treat the seller like a client.
00;03;11;06 - 00;03;32;20
Unknown
So the handoff from you to us is yucky, and it takes more touch points than my sales team likes to close your deals. Like, sure, we get A5X or A4X, but it takes 14 touch points versus my my personal leads that are, you know, 3 to 4 touch points. And we were like, oh, that's a great point. We just never thought of it.
00;03;32;22 - 00;03;50;02
Unknown
We can we can help there. So we're we're making the handoff a little bit, you know, a little bit cleaner. You know, the thank you page pops up, it says like, hey, you know Adam from from blackjack. They're going to be reaching out to you. That's who we connected you with. So they actually see on the thank you page who's going to be reaching out before before you actually reach out.
00;03;50;02 - 00;04;12;16
Unknown
So it makes it all the nicer. Does anybody else doing this? Not to my knowledge and not not at scale like us. Definitely not live transfers, that's for sure. And that's just a like the first question people ask me as well. How much is it like it's probably super expensive and it's free. It's just just included because we care about you.
00;04;12;16 - 00;04;35;07
Unknown
We want you to do more deals. So yeah, because if they do more deals and they're more successful, you're successful. All right. So property leads. You and Andy have been a mainstay in the industry with, property leads and then considered one of the highest quality paper lead providers. But you didn't start there. How how did how long this property leads been around?
00;04;35;08 - 00;04;55;17
Unknown
How did this start? And talk to me a little bit just about the evolution of this business. I think that backstory is really helpful. Yeah. Great question. So we launched Property Lease in 2022. We did sort of a beta test at the beginning of the year, just to kind of make sure there'd be enough demand for what we were looking to do.
00;04;55;19 - 00;05;23;21
Unknown
And then it sort of evolved, you know, of over the years, we actually started off as just like purely organic SEO leads. We had a lot of organic SEO leads, and we were thinking quality over quantity would be the pitch. And what we learned that we didn't expect was that volume is as important as quality. And it's funny, I actually think you and I, when we've talked, you ran into that at one point.
00;05;23;21 - 00;05;39;08
Unknown
We couldn't early on, like the early days, like the beginning, we couldn't get you enough leads in your market. And you were like, the leads are okay, but like, I'm not getting enough, and, you know, so so we that was a lesson that we, you know, one of those things that sort of unexpectedly pop up in your business and you didn't plan for it.
00;05;39;08 - 00;06;01;13
Unknown
We were like, oh, shoot. Like, okay, so, so quantity is as important as quality. So then the game is how do we scale quality without, quantity? Excuse me? Without sacrificing quality. And that that took some time. We really got that dialed in at the beginning of last year in terms of the early days. It's kind of a funny story in terms of how Andy and I met.
00;06;01;16 - 00;06;20;27
Unknown
I heard Andy on a podcast, and I was he was talking about how this is at the time where he was just doing his own, his own deals locally in the in the DC, Virginia area. And he was talking about how he's getting like 80 SEO leads a month or 60 SEO leads a month. And I was like, dang, like I would do some weird stuff to get 60 SEO these in my own market.
00;06;20;29 - 00;06;45;21
Unknown
And for those who don't know, Andy, what, like because he's a technical guy, went to Virginia Tech like give his background a little bit. This is why this is so interesting to me. Yeah. So Andy worked previous to launch and property leads. He worked for, the Navy as a civilian, like, programmer, software developer, and, you know, sort of had aspirations to get into real estate.
00;06;45;21 - 00;07;03;17
Unknown
Wasn't really sure how he wanted to do it. Started spending some money on some ads, spend a whole bunch of money, lost a whole bunch of money, you know, did some cold calling. Can you imagine? You know, Andy, imagine Andy did some cold calling. They did some driving for dollars. And, you know, he was kind of like, this isn't.
00;07;03;20 - 00;07;25;09
Unknown
This isn't like Andy's like, technical. He's what you would imagine. An engineer is probably not the guy you want on your phone selling deals. So I'm just imagining Andy needing to generate his own deals. This is what made. This is what made property lead so beautiful. When you guys were so focused on quality. Because Andy is the is the guy receiving them in his mind.
00;07;25;12 - 00;07;41;14
Unknown
He's like, I don't want to talk to anybody unless they're just ready to sell me their house because he's not going to. Do you know, he doesn't love to do sales, and he was probably looking to relieve some of his own pain to make it easy. You know, that's a great perspective. I've never actually heard it explain that way.
00;07;41;14 - 00;08;04;22
Unknown
But you're I mean, you're spot on. And, everybody at property leads previous to property leads has been burned by somebody in the real estate space. They're all, like, very sensitive of that. And the product that we put out, like it matters to us. The people, when we have a lot of internal meetings and discussions just centered around our people winning yes or no?
00;08;04;29 - 00;08;28;17
Unknown
If they are, how do we do more of that? If they're not? Like, how do we get our act together fast? So, it's really, really important to us when, it's important to us that that folks are winning. I was kind of joke, like, we're all too sensitive to not put out a good product because, like, if we see a post on Facebook or somebody is like, oh, the leaves are terrible, we get sad and we're just we're too sensitive for that.
00;08;28;17 - 00;09;06;14
Unknown
So we just try to avoid it. Yeah, non-confrontational company, I love it. And I'll tell you, like the just kind of fact is, no matter who I talk to across the industry, property leads is often referred to as the highest quality paid people provider. And for those who don't know, PBL is pay per lead. So what what happened was this part of the industry was born where marketers who could do digital marketing well saw this need for these dumb real estate investors like me, like who aren't tech savvy, like I can barely run my own SEO.
00;09;06;14 - 00;09;29;02
Unknown
I certainly I'm not going to get into meta and start targeting Facebook ads and goodness gracious, PPC is complicated. But they had that skill set. So that skill set got married to real estate investors. And what they did was instead of running an agency model where they come in and do it for you, they basically said, let's see if we can do this across all markets, and then we'll just sell the leads.
00;09;29;02 - 00;09;59;21
Unknown
And the reason that that works better, both for us as the investor and them as a client is because when you run digital marketing in a much broader sense of geographics, you can bring the lead cost for everybody down. So it's a win across the board. And that's kind of how this whole thing started. And then what it evolved into is my ability as an investor to go sign up with property leads and get into their platform and say, I want to buy leads in this county.
00;09;59;28 - 00;10;17;07
Unknown
And it has a it's a a lot of them as to include proper leads, unless this is change are like a bid system. So it's a fair way that all investors in that county who want to use the service can go in there and say, hey, the current top bid is 200 bucks, I'm willing to pay 200 bucks.
00;10;17;07 - 00;10;35;27
Unknown
Now we're tied, and it's up to us as the investors to either stay tied or to start into each other up, or just to stay below and you know, their strategies and stuff, how you can be efficient. But at the end of the day, it's a bid system where you're buying the leads at a price. You decide, by the way, as the investor, you decide what you buy the leads for.
00;10;35;27 - 00;11;00;05
Unknown
Now, if you come to my county and I'm bidding $800 and I have an unlimited budget, you'll never get a lead. But not everybody, nobody very, very, very few people have an unlimited budget. And I don't even know if you have this data by because what's the average budget nationwide for your investor? It probably today it sits right around like 3800.
00;11;00;09 - 00;11;16;26
Unknown
You know, we have folks that are just five grand. Yeah. We have some folks that are newer that sit right at 1500, right. They're newer. They're it's not like when you're a new investor, right? And you're coming in and somebody is telling you have to spend 1500 bucks a month and you're like, dude, that's my rent. Like, I don't understand.
00;11;16;29 - 00;11;32;10
Unknown
You know, it's a new thing. So, you know, we have we have some, some folks like that. And then we also have some folks that you mentioned that run property, these with literally no limit like built. They literally take as many leads as we can send them because they do really well. They're amazing operators. So yeah. Yeah.
00;11;32;10 - 00;11;49;22
Unknown
So you have people you, you load up this budget 3800 bucks for grand, we'll call it, which I think I would have guessed five. So yeah, that makes sense. So the person in front of you, let's say you're a new investor and the bid for the lead is 200 bucks. And the maybe the minimum bid is like 175 or something.
00;11;49;24 - 00;12;12;11
Unknown
So let's say you want to you're trying to be as efficient as possibly still trying to get your legs under. You need to bring revenue in the door. So you stay at 175. The person in front of you is going to run out of budget. So therefore grand gets spent. And then those leads start to come to you at $175 per lead, which by the way, is a great the economics in this industry work at $175 a lead for sure.
00;12;12;11 - 00;12;33;01
Unknown
Easy. They really work up to 250. And some markets they work more. It's very market dependent if you're profits in your market, if you're in San Francisco and you're making six figures on every deal, you can pay more to get the deal. So it wouldn't be abnormal to pay 4 or 500 bucks for a lead in that case, if you're in a midwest market, you can't be spending $500 a lead.
00;12;33;01 - 00;12;51;00
Unknown
You're going to get your lunch. And so use some of your critical thought. If you're listening to this about how the economics work around lead cost, cost per lead in the conversions, how well are you good at sales? Are you not good at sales? If you're not going to sales, you need to pay less until you get good at sales.
00;12;51;02 - 00;13;14;11
Unknown
So all those things combined. But I love the system people brought this great, you guys brought this great kind of tool to the industry where we could just. I can focus on what I'm good at, which is running a real estate business and closing deals. And you guys focus what you're brilliant at. Which, by the way, I can literally never be as good as you at digital marketing because you're doing it at a scale that I can't even imagine.
00;13;14;13 - 00;13;42;12
Unknown
And I would never do that because I only need my deals in my market. So that's a huge benefit that they have that they bring to the marketplace. Now, Andy, with that, the bid system, a lot of investors, especially the more experienced investors, and in the beginning, they love PBL. And then demand started to increase and increase and then there became suspicion.
00;13;42;13 - 00;14;08;21
Unknown
So all the people providers were digital marketing for sure is what they all marketed. And, you know, some of them were just SEO, some of them were PPC and SEO. And early on there wasn't a lot of meta ads or Facebook ads. And then I think those started to get added in. And each by the way, each one of these platforms produces a little different kind of lead, a little different quality of lead.
00;14;08;24 - 00;14;26;28
Unknown
And then what happened was two investors would be in a market, Andi and I would get a lead, and a friend of mine in the market would get a lead. And this wasn't a property lead lead, by the way, but it was a lead from another provider. And we're like, hey, we just got the same lead and we would be communicating.
00;14;26;28 - 00;14;39;27
Unknown
And by the way, because we're, we're, we're we're playing the game on the bid system because we want to be fair. We know what we're professionals. We know what the economics are. It's like, dude, how much can you pay for a lead? I can't, I mean, I'm pretty sure we can both only pay 250 bucks for a lead.
00;14;39;27 - 00;14;58;26
Unknown
Let's just. We're the top two guys in our market. Let's just keep it there. And, you know, we played a fair game. But then we would talk and we'd get a lead. And it's like, you got the same lead as me. That's interesting. I thought these were exclusive. So you started to lose some trust. Sure. And then you would get people on the phone from a digital inbound lead or what you thought was a digital inbound.
00;14;58;29 - 00;15;18;03
Unknown
And they said, yeah, somebody called me. So there's a lot of ambiguity around this for a lot of investors, like James. And I think you could maybe pull back the curtain and help people understand how this works in your side of the industry and how you guys do it specifically. And property leads. Totally. I love this topic.
00;15;18;05 - 00;15;35;28
Unknown
I agree, people could do a better job being transparent. We we always try to be really transparent with everything we do so that people know the rules, and then they can decide whether or not it works for what they're looking to do. I also want to come back to some on the previous thing, some bidding tips and tricks that folks can use.
00;15;35;28 - 00;16;02;00
Unknown
So let's let's circle back that after this. In terms of lead exclusivity, okay. Because this is a hot topic, how property leads defines and exclusive lead is exclusive to them. Okay. So what that means is on Monday, if somebody fills out a web form right on one of our branded sites, Adam buys lead, starts work the lead.
00;16;02;00 - 00;16;31;03
Unknown
For whatever reason, seller and him can't agree on a deal. Thursday, same seller fills out another web form from a different branded site, but both owned by property leads. We are going to sell that lead again. We consider those leads to exclusive leads, even though it's the same person's name address because they filled out two web forms. What I can tell you for sure is that will never take the same form that that Monday form fill and sell that, because that is super annoying.
00;16;31;06 - 00;16;51;14
Unknown
It's funny, I ask people how they define lead exclusivity and I get a lot of different answers. Well, you should only be able to generate it once forever. It should have a 60 month cap. It should be ten years. So everybody has sort of a different definition of what exclusivity is. So we just take a different approach.
00;16;51;15 - 00;17;20;03
Unknown
We just have a definition in place. When people ask us how we define it, we tell them the truth. If they are okay with it, they sign up, they make a bunch of money because lives are good, and if they just can't get over it, then we say we're not a good fit and that's okay too. The missing maybe there's one piece that I think some folks miss is sellers are going to fill out 2 to 3 web forms, no matter what.
00;17;20;05 - 00;17;50;14
Unknown
If they thought two of our web forms and we restrict the second one, they're still going to go out and fill out two more because they're trying to get multiple offers. And that's where that that dialed in sales process, the ability to build rapport, maybe do belly to belly getting out to the appointment really benefits you. If you're the type of person that can get them on the phone fast and keep them on the phone for an hour while everybody else is calling, I promise you're going to win more deals just by doing that.
00;17;50;17 - 00;18;23;23
Unknown
Yeah, I think that's, Well, James, thank you. Honestly, because just that transparency and that clear understanding just prevents so many unnecessary conversations. And I think that's totally fair. And you're right. And I use this example, we were just talking about sales and seven figure flipping the other night. And I use this example. I was at my, I was at a flip that I was turning into an Airbnb because a flip went poorly, and it's the first time I'd ever been to the proper had owned it for months.
00;18;23;23 - 00;18;43;20
Unknown
We flipped it. It wasn't going to sell. So eventually I just got my wife and I go. They were like, let's turn this thing into an Airbnb. And my wife's walking around and she's testing everything, the faucets, and she's on the outside of the house, and she turns the water spigot on outside and it breaks, and it's shooting water 20ft in the air, dude.
00;18;43;22 - 00;19;07;05
Unknown
And I'm. And she starts to yell, and I run out there. Like I said, she got hurt and she's like, no, I broke this. What do I do? I'm not the help to call for that because I have zero man skills. James, by the way, I don't want my house. There's no way that there none. I'm no construction skills that did not get that did not get transferred to me from my dad, who was actually handy in my house.
00;19;07;05 - 00;19;20;18
Unknown
My wife calls a handyman when we need little things fix. She's she doesn't want to. And it's not that I couldn't do it and figure it out. She she doesn't want to wait for me to do it and figure it out and be. She's like, I would rather you just go out and run your businesses and then we'll just have somebody do this.
00;19;20;20 - 00;19;41;19
Unknown
So anyways, it's not water. I get on to Google, YouTube, try to YouTube, and I'm like, this is going to take too long. I spent waste five minutes on YouTube realizing I don't know anything. I don't even know the right questions to ask. So then I google plumber and the city and the search results pop up and you know, it gives you the business, the Google my business profiles.
00;19;41;19 - 00;19;57;27
Unknown
So I call the first one. They don't answer. I immediately called, the second one they don't answer. I call the third one. They answer, I say, I don't care the cost. I need you out here right now. They come out the first one calls me back. I said, you know what? I'm good. I already got somebody on the way.
00;19;57;27 - 00;20;24;07
Unknown
Thank you. And that is a microcosm of how important it is to get to these leads. It won't matter if they fill out three forms. If you actually call them as soon as they come in. Yeah. That's great. It take them off the market. Yeah. Great advice. I'd like to share a similar story. Similar lesson. Different setting.
00;20;24;07 - 00;20;43;20
Unknown
So a couple years ago we saw this, like old Toyota Corolla, and the key broke. We had one key. The used car had one key. So I needed to get, like, a mobile locksmith out. And I did the thing online where I fill out one of the web forms. And as soon as I did, my phone started ringing off the hook.
00;20;43;20 - 00;21;05;20
Unknown
I got like a bunch of calls. Now, at the time I was in Massachusetts, somebody calls me from a Florida number, right? So now it's like stranger danger. So I answer like, hello, like hello. And the guy's like, oh, I'm such and such. You know, you fill out a web form online and it's fine. I gave him all the same sales objections that like sellers give us that, like we get annoyed by as salespeople.
00;21;05;22 - 00;21;21;27
Unknown
I was like, well, I need to think about it. I need to talk to my wife. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do. And this guy crushed it. He goes, he goes, hey, James. He goes, can I can I ask you a question? I was like, yeah. He was like, I called you. He's like, well, I called you from this Florida number.
00;21;21;27 - 00;21;39;01
Unknown
You're probably wondering, like, who the heck is this guy calling me? He's like, you seem guarded, I get it, I'm a stranger. He's like, what if we do this? He goes, what if I just come to your house? I'll take a look at it. I'll get your price. If you want to do it, I'll. I'll do it if not, man, I'll just leave.
00;21;39;03 - 00;22;05;11
Unknown
I was like, oh my gosh, this guy, he crush it. I was like, yes, come on over man. And I bought it. I overpaid, I paid more for his service than I probably could have if I'd waited and play the game. But I had a I had a takeaway there for, for me, I realized that, the seller filling out the web form is just nervous and scared, and they need somebody to sort of, like, make them feel safe.
00;22;05;11 - 00;22;25;22
Unknown
And the way that he approached it and like, I'm a sales guy, I know all the tactics and I still use the same stuff that like, I have to overcome on a daily basis. And, it was a realization for me that, you know, having a really good sales process, which he had, and making the person on the other end of the phone feel comfortable is really, really important in this game.
00;22;25;24 - 00;22;49;03
Unknown
And if you're the type of person that does really well at that, you have, you have a skill set advantage over the folks who, don't do that or they're impatient or they're not willing to spend the time that it takes to build rapport. Yeah, it's it's so there's there's some components of that too, that like when he overcame those objections, he called out the thing he knew you were already thinking.
00;22;49;03 - 00;23;07;04
Unknown
And then he did the most important thing, which was get in person in front of you crushed. And we don't have to talk about this. And we can maybe circle back at the end, but we just had the sales call in some or flipping literally two days ago. And what we were talking about was.
00;23;07;06 - 00;23;32;18
Unknown
Covid shifted almost 80% of the businesses to virtual over the phone to include us. By the way, we were in 3 or 4 markets with 30 US employees belly to belly sales. My lead in taking my sales person in market were in person, obviously lead and takes answering the phone, sending the sales person out. And that changed during Covid when the market called for a different strategy.
00;23;32;20 - 00;23;56;04
Unknown
And today what we talk about is everything matters today. You have to be so efficient. And I would just ask the listeners and anybody who's who's listening to this one question, and the question is about trust. Will you trust somebody you're face to face with more than you'll trust somebody. You're over the phone with it. The answer is yes.
00;23;56;07 - 00;24;18;12
Unknown
Then the answer of whether or not phone sales or in-person is more effective should be clear to you. Now, look, I'm actually still virtual, and I'm telling you that in-person is more effective. There are models that make sense for virtual office. If you're not investing in your backyard, virtual gives you volume. I can do 30 sales appointments in the day, in person, you might do 4 or 5.
00;24;18;14 - 00;24;40;03
Unknown
So you play a different game. You're playing your different rules. But let's circle back to what you were talking about before, and you said circle back to it. I think this is a good time to transition to that. Yeah. So tips and tricks, you were sort of talking about the newer investor needing to maximize dollars. How do I get leads in a market where you know, there's the big guns in there?
00;24;40;03 - 00;24;57;20
Unknown
You know, if you're in your market, right, and you're new, how do you compete with like an atom? Right. You guys are just very skilled. There's a couple of really cool things you can do. First thing is don't pause your account overnight. That's the big one that people pause at 5 p.m. when they log off for the day.
00;24;57;22 - 00;25;22;19
Unknown
So keep your account on pause overnight. A really interesting stat is the leads that come in overnight are 30 ish percent more like to sell their house. So just from the perspective of a high, higher propensity to sell, the leads to come in overnight are more likely to sell. There is a catch, though. There's a downside. The speed to lead piece comes into play because you're you know, you're obviously not going to call lead at 2:00 in the morning.
00;25;22;21 - 00;25;35;27
Unknown
They're going to be harder to get on the phone. So I want to I want to be really transparent about that. You're going to have to be really slick with your follow up, because they're going to be harder to get on the phone. But if you're looking for cheaper leads that are more likely to sell, the overnight leads are a great start.
00;25;35;27 - 00;25;59;21
Unknown
Weekend leads as well. A lot of the bigger companies pause on Friday at 5:00 when they log off for the day. Keep your account unpaused during the hours where all the big dogs are buying leads. Because now you're up. Now you're in the mix. You might be able to get leads in your county at 125 or 150, while you know the big dogs are paying to 225 250 during the week.
00;25;59;23 - 00;26;17;09
Unknown
I also want to highlight something that you said that I've found over the years to be really, really true. The better you get at sales, the more you can pay for the lead. So you mentioned not over bidding or overpaying for a lead based on where your skill sets at, when you're brand new, if you have no sales background, I'm not sure if you run into this.
00;26;17;09 - 00;26;31;26
Unknown
I've noticed real estate seems to be the space where a lot of people from a non sales background come into it because they want to, you know, get out of the rat race or whatever their their motivation is. And they're coming from a non sales background. So they have to learn how to sell. And they have to learn how to run a real estate business.
00;26;31;26 - 00;27;00;02
Unknown
So it's a really you're you're kind of you're climbing these two, you know big mountains at the same time. You just take the time to get good at sales. And there's a skill set left. You just have to do it more. So getting those leads at the right price for you is, is really, really important. So bidding the least amount that you can during those off hours will call them off hours compared to like the, you know, the bigger companies that have, you know, 5 to 10 salespeople that need leads throughout the day, that's a great way for you to get lead.
00;27;00;02 - 00;27;21;13
Unknown
So don't pause in the evenings and then, make sure that you're available during the weekends, on the weekends to take those deals. So good. Dude, that's so good. Such great advice. And I can actually validate that, 80% of our leads that we close come in in the evenings and on the walls. That's insane. It's a lot.
00;27;21;14 - 00;27;42;29
Unknown
It's like we know in our company that those are just hotter leads. Think about this and we talk about this. And honestly, a lot of this information is anecdotal. You can collect some data, but the reality is, is you can't get enough data significance to go for sure. These people, when I look at a lot of these people especially, they have jobs, they're struggling, they've got some kind of distress.
00;27;42;29 - 00;28;08;16
Unknown
Either property distress, personal distress, personal side circumstantial or some type of financial distress, and they are going to work during the day. Most of the time, if you think about the normal kind of middle to lower middle class and lower, person in the United States, they're working a hourly shift job. What does an hourly shift job include?
00;28;08;16 - 00;28;34;29
Unknown
It's like early morning to afternoon. It's mid-morning to late afternoon, and then it's night. Okay, so you look at the time that those overlap where they would have potential freedom to call you. And you can clearly see that they're calling you late at night after or before a late night shift starts. Almost always. And that's because that's just when they are available.
00;28;34;29 - 00;28;54;07
Unknown
Because guess what? Your business hours don't matter to the seller. They're irrelevant. And you have to put yourself in the seller shoes. And understanding that, James, that we we would totally agree with you on that data point. I bet you guys could look at the leads that came in and what clothes and what time they came in. You probably actually have good data on that.
00;28;54;09 - 00;29;17;23
Unknown
It's crazy man. I totally agree with you on that point. Yeah, another just sort of like weird interesting stat. 20% of the leads that we refund for no response end up transferring title over the next 12 months. What that tells me, as somebody looking at the data, is that like these people actually need to sell. There's just something going on in their life.
00;29;17;23 - 00;29;33;01
Unknown
The things you just mentioned, they work a lot of hours. They're trying to keep it all together. They're under a tremendous amount of pressure and stress, and the ones that are the most persistent with the follow up and just never give up are the ones that get the deal. These are people who sell at some point, right. So is it going to be yours?
00;29;33;01 - 00;29;50;26
Unknown
Are going to be somebody else. So so the long term follow ups is also really important. So important I was you know, we ask we try to ask a lot of questions when we're talking to people. And there are people on our platform that follow up for two weeks and never follow up again. It's crazy to me.
00;29;50;28 - 00;30;12;14
Unknown
Well, our biggest deals. So like, we don't have like any kind of Hall of Fame type numbers, but we've had we've closed some a good grip of meaningful wholesale deals. Right. So we flip, we wholesale, we do creative, we do all that stuff. But in the last couple of years, we've closed, an $80,000 wholesale fee and $90,000 wholesale for a $70,000 wholesale.
00;30;12;14 - 00;30;32;28
Unknown
If you actually think at least one of those was from proper leads, by the way. Yeah. And, all of those deals. But the biggest spreads were over 90 day follow ups. And I'm not talking about, like, I called you once a month. I'm talking about I hit you with the hammer the first seven days. We call it the hammer in our community.
00;30;33;00 - 00;30;55;26
Unknown
That's seven days of relentless three times a day over two modalities of marketing call and text, and then some email of us doing everything we can possibly do and then skip tracing them again to see if we can find another number, and then going on to skip Gina and trying to find a relative, like we would go to the end of the earth to talk to this person, because we know what's on the other end of that.
00;30;55;28 - 00;31;18;27
Unknown
And then after the first seven days, we start to space it out, you know, twice a week, once a week, once every two weeks, once a month, until something happens, a trigger event like it sells, the person dies. Like, I mean, you spend so much money just getting that contact info and then you don't do the work to contact them.
00;31;18;27 - 00;31;39;18
Unknown
Like, how can that those two things can't be true at the same time and you win. Agreed. I you one of the things I would love for the listeners to hear as you tell everybody what you guys do internally is these guys just do a little bit more than everybody else. That's it. Which is which is why you guys get so many deals.
00;31;39;20 - 00;31;53;18
Unknown
And when you're trying to figure out, like what your follow up should look like, you should be thinking like, well, if I got to if I want to win this deal, I at least bare minimum have to do more than what I was doing just to have a shot, because that I'm going to stay in the pocket. I call staying in the pocket.
00;31;53;20 - 00;32;09;19
Unknown
You know, it's funny, we had, we had a fellow working for us a while back on the sales team who was a wholesaler for ten years, and we were on our morning huddle and he was like, James, he goes, I'm going to be honest. He's like, If I'm paying 300 bucks for a lean, I shouldn't have to Dornoch.
00;32;09;21 - 00;32;35;21
Unknown
I shouldn't have to do the extra things. And I was like, you know what, dude? I, I agree with you. I agree that if you pay 300 bucks, in theory, you shouldn't have to Dornoch. But if it's you versus me, I'm going to Dornoch because that's just my style. So you have a choice. You can either Dornoch twice to stay ahead of me, or you can Dornoch in face time to stay ahead of me.
00;32;35;23 - 00;32;49;26
Unknown
Or you can just say, well, I paid 300 bucks for the lead in the lead. Think I'm going to cancel my account and you're stuck where you're at forever. You have two choices. You to do more than somebody else, or you can stay stuck. So which one are you going to choose? And it's not about the lead. I.
00;32;50;02 - 00;33;11;12
Unknown
This is Mike. My I'll die on this hill. People always ask what's more important marketing or sales? I think it's sales personally. And we have a rule. And in my companies that there are no bad leads, there are only bad salespeople. Now there are leads that get refunded for obvious reasons, but that's not really a lead, right? That's the whole point of having that part of the system.
00;33;11;15 - 00;33;39;04
Unknown
And I tell people this all the time, there are people in the country doing eight figures in a wholesale or flipping business of gross profit, multiple people. They literally have nothing different than you as a brand new investor other than some money, because we can all buy the same leads. By the way, if I go run meta ads myself, I'm buying the same leads as everybody else running meta ads.
00;33;39;06 - 00;33;57;21
Unknown
I might get a little bit better, a little bit more efficient on the margin, but it's minuscule. I can go by the same people leads that everybody else can buy. I can go hire the same PPC company that everybody else can hire. Like we I can send the same direct mail that everybody else can send. Nobody has a real competitive advantage in marketing.
00;33;57;24 - 00;34;16;17
Unknown
The only competitive advantage in marketing when you have a company at scale, is when they bring the marketing in-house and sell the marketing to other people like Phil Green, who's in our community and others, and they bring their marketing in-house and they they reduce their marketing costs in the real estate business by making it an agency and having other people use it totally.
00;34;16;19 - 00;34;39;07
Unknown
That's the only competitive advantage. It's not the leads. It's not the special secret list. It's not the who's running the like. It is literally we it's the sales process. It's what you're willing to do to close the deal. And you're right like that. In that scenario, it's not about the $300 lead. It's about what you're willing to do to close it.
00;34;39;07 - 00;35;00;11
Unknown
Because by the way, it's going to close. Somebody is going to close it. The only question is, is that somebody going to be you? Yeah. And I think that's that that's great advice James I want to transition. And because I'm really, really excited about the changes you guys made that you had briefly mentioned, I want to go into those, while we're on this podcast.
00;35;00;11 - 00;35;22;21
Unknown
So the market got tight as we all know, speed to lead is, is a problem. You guys are so client focused that you're looking at your people who are struggling, who are winning, and you're saying, what's the difference? And you go for speedily. It's important. How can we help our clients has to be the lead. What if we just transferred the concept so they don't have a choice but to get on that call immediately?
00;35;22;23 - 00;35;38;19
Unknown
So talk to me about that mechanism and how that works inside the system and what you're what you guys are seeing right now with that. Like, are people winning? What kind of feedback are you getting? Amazing. Yeah, I love this feature so much. Shout out to Andy for you know, sort of forecasting that this is something we need.
00;35;38;21 - 00;36;02;20
Unknown
We do live transfers. So if we can get the seller to call in just a straight phone call, call in to one of our sites or our paid ads, or from the thank you page, right. Thank you page pops up after they submit the web form. We will live transfer that lead right to you. We saw a pattern where a lot of leads were getting submitted for no response, and these were people we had on the phone.
00;36;02;27 - 00;36;25;06
Unknown
So like they called in, we answered, took their info, hung up the phone and said, like, Adam is going to call you. Adam did everything we asked him to do in terms of like touch points. You know, that is seven days of, you know, just power outages, the hammer and still couldn't get him on the phone. And we were like, oh, well, we're actually creating friction in the sales process by hanging up.
00;36;25;06 - 00;36;49;06
Unknown
Why don't we just transfer him? So we rolled out live transfer. So now if we can get somebody to call in, we're going to dial you or your sales team all at the same time. Whoever gets the call first and presses one to answer gets connected to the seller right away. Currently I want to say 25 ish, 20 to 25%, maybe a little higher in certain markets are calling in and we're live transferring them.
00;36;49;09 - 00;37;12;05
Unknown
We definitely need more people to answer the calls. There are some folks that just aren't answering the calls. So but we're working on it. It's a new thing. We're, you know, trying to educate on why why it's important. Some people have requested to not utilize live transfers like they don't even want it. I, you know, there's a training component there where we can help them with that.
00;37;12;05 - 00;37;27;01
Unknown
They like to have the the lead info in front of them. It's a comfort thing, right? If somebody calls me and I don't have their address, I'm just like, hey Adam, dude, I'm walking my dog. Like, can you send me your address while we're talking to you? So I just look it up while we're while we're on a walk.
00;37;27;04 - 00;37;53;21
Unknown
But not everybody has experienced, like, the kind of blind, you know. So we've we've worked on ways to get the lead delivered before the live transfer happens so that the handoff is a little nicer, but that we talk about that for one second, though, because I think people get this wrong. People think that initial phone calls for a qualification, in reality, that initial phone calls to take them off the market, it's so that they don't make the next form till.
00;37;53;28 - 00;38;25;28
Unknown
And so they don't call the next investor. It's still that they're in my world. And once I get them into my world, then I can take them through my process. Whatever your sales process is, you got big league qualification and all that great. But if you if you're like, I don't want to get on the phone yet because I don't have the county record data in front of me or the seller situation, your job as a salesperson is to uncover it, regardless of what that says anyways, because we all know that initial input is a smokescreen to what's really going on.
00;38;26;01 - 00;38;49;04
Unknown
Totally. And my mission isn't just to qualify that person. My first mission is to take them off the marketplace. That's such good advice. Wow, that's a great way to put it. Yes. Get him on the phone. Keep him on the phone. That's the game we play is funny. We've had live transfers occur where, like, the calls are all recorded.
00;38;49;04 - 00;39;07;21
Unknown
We, you know, it says like, this call be recorded. Everybody knows. But we can hear the other investors. We assume they are like dialing in because they keep calling, because this person filled out multiple forms. But like, let's say we're the second or third form filled or filled out because we live transfer them, we actually have them on the phone while other people are calling it.
00;39;07;23 - 00;39;33;11
Unknown
So you just have such a competitive advantage if you utilize these live transfers. The next piece there that we adjusted because of this is what we call home seller experience. Adam, we talked a little bit about this before we jumped on. We got some really good feedback from a really high level operator last year where he said, you know, you guys do a great job of like taking care of us, your clients, but you don't treat the sellers like their clients.
00;39;33;14 - 00;39;53;01
Unknown
And we were like, dude, you're right. And we didn't do it because we didn't care. We were just like ignorant to it. And once he said it, we were like, oh, we we have all kinds of cool stuff we can do. So now what happens is when somebody fills out a web form the seller, it still, you know, the thank you page will pop and it will say, you know, hey, James, you know, thanks for filling out the web form.
00;39;53;01 - 00;40;08;02
Unknown
You've been connected with Adam from, you know, blackjack, you know, somebody either hammer somebody from his team is going to be reaching out. But if you want to talk to Adam literally right now, like at this very moment, just dial this number. And that's what that's where the live transfer comes from. So that's that's another component of the live transfer piece.
00;40;08;02 - 00;40;30;03
Unknown
So there's there's sort of two elements there that help you close more deals and make the seller sort of more sticky in your sales process. We're going to do an intro. This is also going to evolve over time right now we're pulling just kind of name and company name. At some point we we want to add things like images or videos where, you know, you're actually it's, you know, it's Adam saying, you know, hey James, thanks so much for filling out the web form.
00;40;30;03 - 00;40;44;28
Unknown
Somebody is going to be reaching out from my team to get an offer on your property here. Super excited to talk about you or to talk to you about the house so that, you know, while the live transfer is happening, they're watching you on video, which which also keeps them engaged. So there's a lot of cool things coming down the pipeline for that as well.
00;40;45;05 - 00;41;05;22
Unknown
And it's all centered around just a really high emphasis on getting you more deals because we care about you and we want you to win. I think that's incredible. And then the next feature, say you have live transfers now, and I love this because I remember years ago you and I would be going, hey, let's analyze these leads together.
00;41;05;22 - 00;41;21;14
Unknown
Like and, well, you know, because I'm constantly trying to improve my efficiency, my sales, my conversion. And I'd be like, I'd be sending you guys like a sheet of, like, all my leads. Here's where they're at in the pipeline. You'd be looking at me like, dude, I just looked at what sold. Did you know these three leads sold to an LLC?
00;41;21;14 - 00;41;43;22
Unknown
And I'm like, what? And then I get in there and I'm beating my team up because, you know, we let those go to waste and like, think about this. Like, if I go spend five grand with property leads today and I say, James, your leads are bad. And then three leads sell to an LLC. And those three leads, our average gross profit per deal in our business is $50,000.
00;41;43;22 - 00;42;10;04
Unknown
That's 150 grand. That is a 15 times no like a 45 times Roas. Like it's a it would have been a it only takes 1 or 2 deals to make your marketing look phenomenal and totally it's so I think we we get all these leads and we're thinking volume. But in reality what we should be thinking is I only need a couple, I know 2 or 3 of these clothes and that's game over, man.
00;42;10;04 - 00;42;30;08
Unknown
We're making a bunch of money on this marketing, and now you guys have the ability and platform to show what's selling, right? Yeah. So, thank you for bringing this up. It's funny, when you and I reviewed this together years ago, it was really underdeveloped. We were kind of pulling the data from one source, so it wasn't as good as it is today.
00;42;30;11 - 00;42;47;22
Unknown
So what Adam is talking about is we look at title transfer or from the leads we sold you. How many sold to somebody, right. To determine if we're doing a good job for you. So that if Adam said like, you come back to us and you say like, hey, James, the lead sucked, dude. Like I bought all these leads, I can get a return.
00;42;47;22 - 00;43;05;26
Unknown
We can say, well, they might suck. Like, let's look at the data. And the objective isn't to send you a list of leads of properties that sold to show you that you're wrong. It's it's for us to look at the data together to figure out where the holes are so that we can plug the holes. So I've looked at the title transfer Adam with people and like honestly like it was on us.
00;43;05;26 - 00;43;24;15
Unknown
Like we did a terrible job. What we do in those instances is we just give you a credit because we owe you a credit, because we didn't do a good job for you. We carry on and then on the flip side, if the title transfer looks good, so, you know, out of 100 leads 30 over somebody, right? I've seen people be successful at a 19% title transfer or that's a 30.
00;43;24;16 - 00;43;48;24
Unknown
Well, let's take a look at the lead you got from these 30. How many did you get. You didn't get any, you know. How much did you offer on this one that sold for 200. Oh, you offered 195. Well you're you're only off by a little bit. So we're able to look at the data and figure out where the holes are as you buy leads from us and as these properties on to somebody, we're going to send you emails saying, hey, just so you know, this property just sold.
00;43;48;24 - 00;44;08;28
Unknown
We hope you got it. But if you didn't, you should review the lead to see where it fell off. Did you lose contact? Was it you know, the offer was off like, you know, end up listed on the MLS? I do see a lot of wholesalers. They don't have the option for the seller who wants more than they can pay for the cash, you know, like for the cash offer.
00;44;09;00 - 00;44;27;10
Unknown
So they often lose out to people who do navigations, who have a really good, you know, internal handoffs to a realtor. And because of that, they often leave money on the table. So that's that's usually an opportunity to add a little bit, you know, to add some things to their sales process that help them maximize on more on more leads and more deals.
00;44;27;12 - 00;44;46;02
Unknown
So we're definitely going to notify you if we get a notification that a property transferred, so that you always know where you stand with leads. And it's also easy for us to make it right on our end. If title transfer is really, really low, we give you credit, we make it right. Yeah. So basically you're saying my leads good off titles are transferring.
00;44;46;04 - 00;45;09;11
Unknown
That means these the the motivated sellers are selling the keyword a seller meaning that they're selling. But if I get 100 leads and 100 leads don't sell in 12 months, you're like, oh man for something. So we got to tweak something in this copy because we're not getting the right lead or something. Yeah. I'm trying to remember the last one where I was like, yeah, we didn't do a good job here.
00;45;09;13 - 00;45;26;22
Unknown
There was one that I looked at where I want to say the fellow bought 101 leads. I want to say like ten transferred title. So 10%. He got one of those deals, right? So what that tells me about him is that he's a really strong operator because he didn't have a lot of opportunities to buy, but he still was able to get one.
00;45;26;22 - 00;45;45;15
Unknown
So for him, I'm like, yeah, like we definitely owe you a credit here. We got him a credit and he still buys leads from us to this day. You know, we're like, we're growth partners in this. We want to dance. We don't want to wrestle. Right. And I, I noticed new people kind of come in and they're they're they're feeling like we're we're adversaries.
00;45;45;15 - 00;46;00;06
Unknown
And, you know, we're both our own companies trying to make a bunch of money. And that's not the case from our perspective. We know that in order for us to keep selling, you need to make money. We have to get you a good enough lead to where you have a shot to buy a house. So, like, we want to grow with you.
00;46;00;06 - 00;46;20;02
Unknown
We want the feedback as you're going through so that we can fix things as they go. And we want to make sure that, you know, you're on track. Yeah, it's really, really powerful. I love that you guys have added these two components. I love your guys's transparency. And and we didn't touch on this. I want to close the loop because I opened it earlier.
00;46;20;04 - 00;46;47;05
Unknown
In terms of lead generation, what marketing channels are you guys doing to generate these leads for people? Amazing. I love this topic too. Anything that you can think of under this, on this inbound, we do it. We do it all SEO, paid ads, TV, radio, mail, you name it, we do it. Yeah. That's incredible. And that. No, it's no cold calling.
00;46;47;05 - 00;47;06;09
Unknown
I'm so sorry to hear of a no cold calling. No, I do want to be clear on that. There's no cold calling and SMS, I assume. No, not straight out SMS. We might do like a verification. Hey, we just want to confirm you're actually selling this house. You fill out this form. Are you actually selling this house? Press one for yes, two for now.
00;47;06;12 - 00;47;29;06
Unknown
Yeah. And do you have any like those leads? Come in. Do you have a follow up mechanism yourselves on the back end of these leads at all. So you can, like reengage your leads and stuff. Yeah. I mean we don't reengage leads like six months down the road that filled out web forms. Those move into like a different bucket from a, quality perspective, we kind of have.
00;47;29;09 - 00;47;47;22
Unknown
So one of the things we figured out over the years is how to figure out if a property is more likely to sell than not. If it's yes, it goes into the property leads bucket. If it's no, it goes into a different bucket and we might sell those leads for a couple bucks apiece versus like the premium, you know, 125 and up or at the, you know like the national level like 30 bucks or not.
00;47;47;24 - 00;48;06;24
Unknown
So it's just like a different it's just a different quality lead. There's still title transfer happening, but those lower quality leads, usually the cash conversion cycle is a little bit longer. And it's just the leads aren't as valuable because they there's less less leads that convert and they take longer to convert if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah that's great.
00;48;06;26 - 00;48;25;05
Unknown
Well thanks for sharing that too. I think that's those these are all questions that I know are on listeners mind. I know that a lot of the investors in the community talk about it. James, I'm excited for your presentation. You're coming to Cancun with us in a couple of weeks. And, I know you're going to deliver massive value to our team here at seven figure flipping.
00;48;25;05 - 00;48;50;05
Unknown
So I'm grateful that you could spend some time with us today. And and down property leads for people who want to kick the tires or know more about property leads and lead gen and what that might look like for them in their market, what's the best way for them to reach you guys? You know, Adam, I would definitely drop the special link that you have in the show notes, if that's a thing.
00;48;50;07 - 00;49;19;25
Unknown
Yeah. We'll we'll get folks to use your link. 250 bucks and free credit when they fund their account. So they can use that link to go right to property leads.com and set up a call. I would say if you're looking to scale and do more videos or you've been marketing with leads that you're struggling with and you want to hear what we have to offer, I would definitely recommend setting up a call with somebody in our team so that we can see if we're a good fit.
00;49;19;27 - 00;49;38;01
Unknown
We don't onboard everybody, but, you know, we if we believe we can help you in and that you're going to get after it and work the leads the right way, we'll we'll definitely give you a shot. Awesome. And yeah. So check them out the link for sure on the show notes. Or you could just go to property leads.com to if you can't find that these guys these guys are the real deal.
00;49;38;01 - 00;49;57;22
Unknown
If you guys don't know like I see I have such a great fortune to see all all the people in the industry, all the service providers, all the coaches, all the investors, and, you know, property leads is the real deal. If you, you know, even even if you don't love people, there's nobody in the marketplace that's going to say you guys aren't doing things the right way.
00;49;57;22 - 00;50;16;26
Unknown
I've never single heard one. I've heard a lot of bitching, moaning and complaining about people. I've never really heard anybody straight factually complaining about property leads. And I'm being completely honest when I say that. So, I'm grateful for the work that you guys do, and I'm excited to see you in Cancun. I'm grateful we could spend time with me today.
00;50;16;28 - 00;50;40;19
Unknown
Yeah. Thank you. We appreciate that. We, Yeah. Honesty is always the best policy. We agree. Yeah. Cool. All right. Hey, guys. Thanks for listening. We just wrapped up another amazing show with James Harkless from Property leads.com. He dropped some absolute nuggets in this thing. Things from speed to lead to live transfers to where people leads are actually generated from.
00;50;40;21 - 00;50;54;18
Unknown
You will not want to miss you. Probably you're going to want to go back and listen to this one again. It's gold. If you guys got some value from this, which I know you did, leave us a five star review or send us a message and know what else. Let us know what else you would like to hear.
00;50;54;24 - 00;50;56;20
Unknown
Thanks for listening and I'll see you on the next one.
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