I'm excited about having Laura Gillott here with me today. Laura, thank you for joining me.
Thank you for inviting me.
Yes, I'll start by saying I've got a more sultry voice, than normal. So, if the audience is wondering like, this is really enjoyable, don't worry, I'm not going to charge you for this episode. This one will also be free despite how much you might enjoy my relaxing voice.
So with that being the case, let's dive into the topic, Laura. Let's share some of your statistics, your with the Gillott Home Team out of Lebanon, Oregon.
Yup. Small town.
How many people live in Lebanon?
16,800 people.
16,800 people. Last year from Salem to Eugene, you guys serve 523 families.
526 families.
526 families were served by your team. So one would have to think if you serve that many families, you must have a massive Zillow budget. You must have a massive cold market marketing machine. True or false?
False. Very false.
Okay.
Yeah. We buy no Zillow leads. We are a premier agent on our listings. [engine roaring in the background]. Sorry. We have someone trying to drag race in front of our building.
It is Lebanon!
Right? Yes, good old Lebanon. Our budget is small there with Zillow where we're just a Premier agent with our, with our own leads there. About 80% of all of our business last year was just based off relationships.
Wow. So let's do the math. Let's say 80% of 523. Now, I made a commitment once to never do math in public, but that's gotta be somewhere around 450? I'm assuming somewhere in that range.
Yep, yep. Either past clients or referrals you guys closed. Meaning that's how much business you closed by referral from your sphere.
Yes. We include sphere in that or people who have referred themselves from our reputation and things that. For example if they just came in and said, "Hey, I want to list my home with you." "I'd like you to help us find property." And part of that is because we meet a lot of people through our events and we offer classes to help the community in buying homes. And then that helps us get those people walking in wanting help.
So I think one of the big myths, again, that real estate face is "Do I go quality (sphere) or do I go quantity (cold leads)? Some would believe, "I could never possibly know enough people to generate a mass amount of business by sphere." Right? So let's talk about, it's not just your sphere, right? You have a a great team.
We do. We do. When we get their sphere involved in this too and we market to that sphere. We give them the newsletter each month. We invite them to the events. Of course all of our past clients we offer items of value. We do the pies twice a year our client database. Anybody that gets the newsletter is invited to the rest of the events. We pair up with the Chamber and do National Night Out. Next month we have Biz Expo. We'll invite the whole database to the Biz Expo, let them know if they visit the booth, that we have something special for them. You're just trying to get as much face to face time with their clients as possible.
I love it. That's the goal, right? Face to face time with your clients in an era filled with bits and bytes where there's so much convenience in doing things electronically, that's been your secret sauce is getting face to face with people.
Yes. Getting face to face and then you know, it's for us, we don't do any cold calling, but what we do is lead with items of value or leave with contribution. So we'll call and say, "Hey, we've got an investor class coming up on Saturday. Do you have any interest in coming? Or do you know anybody that does?" And so that way we're just not calling saying, "Hey, give me your business, give me your business, give me your business."
I love it. So again, the way that I see you solving these two problems, or busting these myths, BTW--this episode's gonna be Mythbusters. The first one is that a combined sphere, you've got a good size team and all those people contribute who they know. The second myth that people hold is, "Even if I have that many people, how can I possibly take care of them? How can I possibly get face to face with that many people?" And what I hear you saying is a key to your success has been events, both ones that you're putting on, right? Like client appreciation events and then also events that you're not even hosting. Like the Biz Expo. It's not your event. You've got to space there and you're using it as an opportunity to reach out and invite everybody to come participate at that event.
Yeah, the Boys and Girls Club did a Brewfest and they shut down Main Street. We asked have a booth there and then we gave away a growler and then we invited people to come down to visit us at the event, helped market the event for the Boys and Girls Club and helped them raise money. When they signed up for the growler, we had over 500 people sign up for the growler. A handful of them said, "Yes, I would like a market analysis," or I would like a list of properties and I would like to be on your newsletter."
And now once they say they would like to be on our newsletter, we can continue telling them about the other events that are going to be happening in the area where we're going to be at. So we can continue that connection with folks. You do it on a mass level without spending that much many.
Right! What does a booth at the Biz Expo cost you?
A couple hundred dollars.
A couple hundred dollars turns into probably thousands of invitations and contacts.
Yes.
Hundreds of face to face contacts with a couple hundred dollars and some people staffing an event. Right?
Right, and the agents go and we just take turns, rotating in and out of there. We try to make the most of every event. So even at that event, because there's going to be 150 other booths there, we like to get protein packs, a water bottle and we go around and visit the other booths, give them an option to get something out of our cooler and thank them for coming. We learn a little bit about their business, ask them if they have any clients with real estate needs and let them know that we'd like to be their connection. We connect with them, they connect with us. It's a way to go around and talk to people without just saying, "Hey, we're a real estate team. We'd love for you to give us your business." If instead you go with contribution and give them the protein packs and a water, and of course we have them labeled with our team on there, it's a way to break the ice and to come from contribution.
The intentionality is strong with what you guys do, right? You don't just show up at an expo. We've all probably been a part of some sort of expo where we're like, "This thing is kind of a bust. Nobody's here!" But you're looking another layer below that to say no, there are people here just sitting in the booths like us thinking "This thing is maybe not as strong." And I'm not saying this about their expo. That's a mentality of "What if we go to this expo and there's nobody there?" Well, there's actually going to be somebody there. It is going to be other vendors at minimum, right? Go create some new contacts, offer value to them right now. You brought them into the fold, into the family.
Yup--so there's definitely people there. When we're there we're not looking at our phones, our heads are up and we're engaging. We're asking people to sign up for our drawing. We're offering them a free piece of cake. It is just the little things that we can do just to get the buzz going. And then again, you have to invite your database to come to the event because then people want to stop at your booth because people want to come by.
You know, if I were putting on a big expo, your team would be the first one I would call. I would say, "Get the Gillott Home Te...
