Read the blog below:
Anthony Lamacchia – August 29th, 2018
Good morning everybody, I am here to talk to you about building your database, too many agents neglect this. I know I’ve talked about bits and pieces of it before, but today I’m going to spend a lot of time on it because it’s critically important. Your database is a living, breathing thing that needs to be nurtured, that needs to be fed, that needs to be updated continuously. Now, do you notice how I just made a mistake on the video and I just kept going, see I don’t care because I’m real, guys. I’m real.
When I do a video, I make mistakes, I don’t care, and this is what I want to convey to you all because I’ve talked to you all about having the courage to get on video. I don’t want people to be scared of making a mistake like I just did. Anyway, back to database, all right. I’m going to tell you a story. When I started in this business back in 04, I knew I had to build a database, and I knew that because I had come from years of working with my dad, and my dad always had a strong database that he would mail postcards to. He’s a huge believer in direct mail postcards, he never did any email, newsletters or anything like that even to this day, but he loves direct mail.
What amazed me over the years was, every spring he’d sent out a postcard, and boom, the phone would ring. Probably late spring, do it again, boom, get calls. In September, boom, get calls. He was in a landscape construction business. Naturally, when I got into real estate business, I knew I needed a list, I needed a database. To start that, I started with all the people that I knew. I said, “Okay, how am I going to do this?” I naturally put in about a 100 of the people that I knew, I went through. I distinctly remember borrowing my grandmother’s address book because my grandmother had everybody’s phone number, name, and address that she knew, and most of the people she knew, I knew. She let me borrow it, and I went through it and I uploaded them. Well I didn’t upload, I manually typed them in to AgentOffice.
For those of you who have been in this business a while, you remember that was an old Remax system. It’s kind of an archaic system now, but it was a really good system, and I manually entered everyone. When I was done with the people I could think of off the top of my head and done with my grandmother’s list, I said, “How am I going to come up with more people?” I drove around town. The town that I grew up in, Watertown, Mass. I said, “All right, if I drive around town, that will make me think of everyone.” God, the sun is killing me. I am here in Fort Lauderdale, my friend’s family vacation coming back next week.
I drove around town, and I had a clipboard and I jotted down the names of people because as I drove, it made me think of people. Jotted names down, when I got home, I went into MLS, looked up the public record, and then entered them appropriately. At that time, my database was for the most part addresses, and then over the years, I have added email addresses. Facebook has really helped because I’d message people and say, “Hey, we’re sending out a really cool newsletter if you’d like to see it. We put out housing reports and things like that. Don’t worry we’re not going to email you every day, this is a once a month thing,” and then I slowly, but surely built them up.
Now, today I have about 14 or 1300 people in my database. I don’t actively sell anymore as most of you know, but my database still gets emailed. My newsletter still gets my direct postcards, and I’ll tell you, my database has been very good to me over the years. I’m very fortunate– very grateful I should say, fortunate to have to so many supporters, but very grateful to all of them for providing me with so much business. Last fall, as an example, we launched a property management company and guess what I did first to tell the world other than on Facebook? Sent out a direct mail postcard.
We’re now doing property management, announcing Lamacchia Property Management, and boom, we got calls. Guys, you’ve got to put time into building your database. Make it a goal. We did a Bio Referral course in July and we said every agent has to add it. I want to say it was 20 contacts a week into their database. In the first week, 2872 contacts got added to the database as a whole. Now, I know a lot of you guys are going to ask, “What system do you use?” We built our own CRM. We have our own system customized, but guys, you don’t need that. I just got through telling you that when I started, I did it on AgentOffice.
We also had Top Producer for a period of time until we got on our own, but bottom line, you need a database, you need to build it, you need to maintain it, you need to update it, and you need to nurture it. It’s a living, breathing thing guys. This is a part of your job, and there’s many other things you can do with your database when you get their emails in now. Many others, like for example, uploading those emails, say, into Facebook and marketing ads to them if you want to. Uploading those emails into Google and marketing ads to them if you want. We don’t do that a ton because I don’t want to drive my database crazy, but we do it a bit and we do it here and there if we have something new.
The bottom line is, you can’t do all those things until you have a database, so if you don’t have one, get on it today, get 20 a week entered, get started, and each person, each agent as a goal, should have a minimum of 300. As the years go on you should be able to build more and more and then keep it updated. That’s it, my friends. As I said, just dropping a tip for you all, kind of long, five and a half minutes, but it’s really important and it’s worth the five and a half minutes. Yes, my national friends, I just finished working out and I had a patriot shirt on it and I thought you guys love it. Have a good one everybody. Enjoy the weekend.
[00:00:25] Female Speaker 3: Hi.
[00:00:26] Male Speaker: 200 pies in there going out between today and tomorrow morning. My question to you realtor friends everywhere is, how many of you are buying pies, bringing them to clients, inviting clients by and giving them something to show your appreciation for their business and/or their referrals? That’s a big thing you could do. Don’t put it off, don’t say, “Oh, how can I do this? I’m busy tomorrow.” Just go out, grab 10 pies, bring it to your top 10 advocates and make it happen.
Then they’ll become bigger advocates and they’ll appreciate you even more, and it’s a nice way to show thanks. Thank you everybody, have a great day