Welcome to the first in our brand new “Get to Know the Coaches” series on the Just Sell Homes website and it starts with Ken Goodfellow of Goodfellow Coaching and Consulting Inc!
This series will be ongoing as we get to know as many coaches as possible.
The goal is to show you the different options out there and so you can get to know your options. This is an introduction to different coaches only. You should still interview them to see how they fit with you and your business!
How would you describe your coaching?
Goodfellow Coaching focuses on running a successful business. We are not the “Did you make your 10 calls this week?” coaches. Our clientele is well established and essentially know how to sell real estate. Our guidance helps bring balance into people’s lives, creates a profitable business model and helps the client with operations and growth.
What makes someone “coach-able”?
The individual must be open to new ideas and thoughts and change. They must also be motivated to do better and be accountable.
Do you identify more as a coach, sales trainer, mentor, or accountability partner?
We identify more with the Coach role and even more so as Business Managers. Our expertise is highly focused on financial health and accountability and profitable growth.
Who should hire you?
Our expertise is with agents earning $500,000 or more. They are focused on growth and many are in the process of building a team. Broker owners hire us to assist with talent attraction, profitability, and general operations.
Who shouldn’t hire you?
We are not a fit for those just beginning in the business.
What makes you different than other coaches out there?
We are strong business coaches and consultants. Our In-Office strategy and implementation offering is dramatically effective and unique. We interview your staff and the agents on your team (or brokerage), review systems, marketing, financials, and over several days prepare a carefully crafted strategy and implementation plan.
We only work with top producers and have extensive experience in selling and preparing for sale, real estate team’s and brokerages.
Have you sold real estate personally?
Ken was a successful REALTOR who subsequently owned and operated a real estate brokerage with over 200 sales associates. Once he sold the brokerage he built a profitable and productive real estate team. After selling the team Ken started his coaching business. Ken’s real estate experience is unique in the coaching industry. The Goodfellow team coaches have all sold real estate and have all earned or are earning in excess of $1,000,000.00 annually in real estate sales.
Where are you located geographically? What percentage, approximately, of your clients are American vs Canadian?
Ken Goodfellow coaching has offices in Ottawa, Toronto and Florida. We are a Canadian company that services North America with approx. 75% of our clientele situated in the United States.
What’s your speciality?
Goodfellow Coaching group are recognized as the #1 Team Experts in North America having coached well over 700 top real estate teams. Our broker/manager coaching also reflects our extensive experience in owning and operating successful real estate brokerage.
Do you have systems for your clients?
We provide all systems needed to run a business. Some in-house and some third party.
How long to get someone up and running?
When we take on a new client we begin with a 30-page questionnaire on their current situation. Then in conversation with the client, a strategy is set and that determines our timing and start date.
What’s included in your programs?
Our program is customized to the client as we deal with top producers and all clients are at different stages with their business. Having said that we have coaches that specialize in systems, recruiting, marketing, luxury, real estate brokerage operations.
What is the price range of your services?
Admission to our coaching services is by referral, invitation or application. Once this criteria has been met we will review the investment.
Term length of contracts and cancellation requirements?
Our agreements are fully open. There is no set term and no obligation. We believe in results and not restrictive contacts.
What’s your turnover rate?
Our clientele is typically long term. We have a low turnover rate as our base is characteristically growth minded. We end up being long term business managers and in many cases partner as CEO’s of their company.
What’s the main reason people stop coaching?
They tire of the accountability.
Can you share documented and proven results for your clients increase in performance?:
YES. The testimonials are plentiful and powerful.
Do you hold any designations?
Ken is a Master Coach and all our coaches are certified within Goodfellow Coaching.
Do you want to continue reading about Ken Goodfellow coaching? Click Here to read an issue of their coaching magazine.
Do you want to connect with your customers with a marketing message that really resonates? You need to remember that its not about you. You’re not the hero in the story. If you want your marketing message to truly resonate then it can’t be about you. A lot of marketing today is based around the agent specifically. The best marketing is when it tells a story, but a story that makes the client the hero.
A good story about a hero resonates. People project themselves into the hero role. If you’re making yourself the hero it won’t resonate as much. Most people watching a James Bond movie want to think of themselves as James Bond, not Q. They want to be Batman and not Alfred. Neither of those heroes could do what they do as well as they do without Q & Alfred. They guide them, help them, give them the tools to succeed. Countless examples of this. Yoda to Luke, Mickey to Rockey, Rafiki to Simba, Morgan Freeman to anybody who will listen, Doc Brown to Marty, Gandalf to Frodo, Dumbledore to Harry, and the list can go on. You find these characters all over. They are essential to they story. Sometimes even loved more than the main character. They aren’t the hero though. It’s not about them. Can you make yourself the Mr. Miyagi instead of the Daniel-San of your marketing?
You need to apply this principle. Make your customer the hero and you’re the guide helping them. Next time you have a listing, talk about how you guided them to get the most for their home. They did it though. You helped them stage their home but they actually were the ones responsible. They’re the hero, not you. Give people something to relate to. If they list their home with you they can be the hero too. Give them the appearance of control over their situation because ultimately its up to them in the end. Even if you swoop in to provide help at the exact moment they were about to lose they are still the hero! Its just a way to reframe your marketing.
It’s one of the biggest challenges in marketing. You’re marketing your business, you want to make yourself look as strong as possible. Ultimately though, that’s not what resonates strongest with people. Most people are always thinking “What’s in it for me?” Can you answer that? It’s much easier to relate to someone they can see themselves in than as you, the agent.
For example, if I was selling investment properties I wouldn’t talk about all the things you can do to help them buy the right one and make money. I’d tell the story of John; John made a great decision to buy an investment property and with the rent being collected not only did he cover his costs, he got to take his family on vacation with the profits. See John here on vacation with his family? That could be you. You could be John.
That’s a much more effective message. Make them the hero, not you. You’re not the hero. (Even though you kind of are)
Content Marketing is one of the most effective ways to build an online brand that drives business. Where a lot of people struggle is the type of content to do. They aren’t sure. Luckily, you are in one of the best industries for content. There is so much available for you to write or record about. Whether written, audio, or video, it doesn’t matter. Do the one that you are most comfortable. An ideal strategy will have a combination of at least write and video but ultimately any content is better than no content. You can see that I almost entirely use the written word and its worked well for me. For others, that means video.
If you’re struggling with where to get started then take a look at your target market. What’s most important to them? If you’re in the suburbs then one of the big drivers is schools. So start writing in depth profiles of every school in your town. Start with one and then go from there. If you’re in the city it might still be schools, it might be profiles of different condo buildings. Look at your target market, find something of relevance to them.
The school route is a gold mine when done correctly. You can find information on schools but not a ton of in depth information. When people look to move to a new area one of the things they are most interested in is the schools. Call your local school, schedule an interview with the principal. Ask them everything about the school. From teaching philosophies, extra curricular activities, sports, etc… Every possible question that someone might have about a school, answer it.
Over time you can build one of these up for every single school in your area. Then every year you can spend a couple of hours updating the information to make sure it remains accurate. Each year more parents will be interested in the information so keep it fresh and accurate.
Once you have the content you have to promote it. This is where Facebook is amazing. You can run an ad to people in your area with children broken down by age of the children. So look up what age they start going to the different schools you’ve profiled, and run ads to the parents with children a year or two before. Then when they read the article, they can either opt-in for your newsletter or at the very least your pixel should pick them up.
When they go back to Facebook they can start seeing ads for your services to help them. You already know they are interested in schools and have children. Now you can serve them a more targeted ad that’s relevant to their interests.
Then go on Google and do google ads. Buy the terms around schools in your area. I bet not many people are paying to rank high for names of schools. Those terms will be a lot cheaper than your standard real estate ones. In fact, in my town at least, when I did searches of the different schools, not a single ad. Nobody was bidding those terms. That means its going to cheap!
If you’re stuck with ideas for content, or not stuck, start blogging or vlogging about the schools in your area. It’s great content that gets a lot of interest. With Facebook and Google you can distribute that content easily and very often for very little in ad spend.
Gary Vaynerchuk‘s latest episode of #AskGaryVee is a great one for real estate agents to watch. He had the top NYC agent on as a guest, Fredrik Eklund.
Have you ever NewsJacked? Have you heard of Newsjacking? Its one of the best ways to quickly rank well on search engines and have content potentially go viral. It involves jumping on a story quickly in the news and publishing information on your own site about it. You have a few different options for Newsjacking. For real estate though Newsjacking should take a more specific form.
Your website isn’t a place people will go just for news related to real estate. Although it certainly can be. If you want to really build your brand and increase the people who know, like, and trust you. You can showcase your expertise. The easiest way to explain how to do it is to you use an example.
Do you remember a year or two ago when the story came out that homes within a quarter-mile of a Starbucks raise faster than those aren’t? That was a popular story that got a lot of traction as people were very interested in it. So if you want to jump on the bandwagon of the story and use that attention to benefit yourself then this is where you can newsjack the story.
Write a blog, or record a video about the story and how it affects things locally. Go pull the data and see if home prices in your area have risen quicker around Starbucks than those that aren’t. By jumping on the story and giving it a local spin you can get people who read the story even more interested by seeing how it actually may have impacted them.
You can do the same things for so many different stories. Did your town announce a new development or transit route? How does that affect the local market? New mortgage rules come into play, write a story about what that means for people locally.
Want to take it a step further? Embed a Facebook pixel on your website and start tracking people who are reading the story. Now when they return to Facebook they can start seeing ads for your services. That way you aren’t hard selling them when they’re consuming your content but then when they return to Facebook they see the ads.
Even if you don’t collect their email address when they are on your site you are now at least reinforcing some brand recognition. This type of ad will be a lot more effective than a simple ad targeting anybody.
Pay attention to the news and wait for your next moment to do some newsjacking of your own!
When you’re doing digital marketing the secret is to constantly be testing. What works? What Doesn’t? How can I tweak this to make it better? Seemingly insignificant changes can lead to massive growth. It could be as simple as changing the colour of a button or even the font. Its always worth trying.
I’ll give you an example. Check out the two photos below.
They were pop ups from my site. Can you tell the difference? All I did was change the font. It’s not even a big change. It made the title a little darker and moved all sentence to all on one line instead of the text going onto a second line. It was changed to that font to make it the same as the font type I used across my entire site; Lato.
None of the copy changed, the background and button colour didn’t change. The result? See for yourself.
That’s right, just the font changing on my pop up resulted in a 175.27% improvement on conversions. Before that pop-up I was only capturing 6.17% of people who saw it. After I was capturing the emails of 16.98% of people who visited my site and saw the pop-ups. That’s a very significant difference.
This is also why its very important to only change one thing at a time. If I had changed the font and the button colour then I wouldn’t have known which change made the improvement. Now I know its the font. Next I can change the colour and see which gets a higher conversion rate.
If you want to try something similar for yourself, I used SumoMe‘s List Builder product. It worked very well. SumoMe feeds into my Mailchimp and adds people automatically to my mailing list. It’s a great tool to use. I highly recommend it.
Everything I do I test to see if its working or not. I test with multiple clients at a time so I can quicker results too. Its the benefit of working with many clients at the same time. I can leverage the data from all their ad campaigns to create best practices.
