← Your Daily Real Estate Podcast with Tristan Ahumada
Your Daily Real Estate Podcast with Tristan Ahumada
Episode 884: Dropping $10K on Parties That Land Zero Clients. Time to Quit the Fun and Get Serious
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I've watched agents spend $10,000 on a client appreciation event and get zero deals from it, then do it again the next year and the year after that. That's not marketing, it's a hobby. Yesterday we did Nextdoor and LinkedIn. Today we're getting into the events. The kind that actually convert and the kind that don't. The kind that don't drain your bank account and actually produce something. Right? This is the section of the playbook where most agents waste the most money, believe it or not. They host events because every coach tells them to. They take pictures, they post on Instagram, they do videos, they go home feeling like they did something, but six months later, they look back and they realize the event actually didn't produce anything. So what do they think? Well, events don't work. Or, you know what? Events are just not for me. Or worse, they double down and host more events that produce nothing or more of nothing. So the problem isn't events. The problem is that almost nobody has a system underneath it. Here's what most agents miss. All right, so pay attention to this one. This is part four of a seven part series. So if you missed any part of this, go back to number one. It progresses because I'm giving you the whole plan in seven short, kind of short, 10 minute videos. But let's get going. I'm Tristan. This is your daily real estate. It's a podcast, it's a show. Do this daily. Basically been doing it for two and a half years. Please share this with somebody you think may need this and take notes. Reach out to me with any questions. I usually do breakdown for these too. So if you need the breakdown, I gladly send it over to you. Just request it here or on Instagram. And what I mean by here is if you're watching on YouTube, if you're listening, go ahead and request it on Instagram. We'll send it over. So three things have to be true for an event to actually convert. Even if one of them is missing, you're. You're hosting a party. All right? So remember that if you don't have the outcome of actually converting somebody for business, it might as well just be a party. And it's not a business activity. Don't get them confused. The first is the right people in the room. Most agents host events open to anyone who will come. That's how you end up with a crowd full of friends, neighbors, and people who will never, never list their house with you or never do business with you in general. So before any event, you should Be able to articulate exactly who the ideal attendee is and why. They're worth your time and your money. If you can't, can't C A N T. If you can't write it down before you send out the invitation, don't host that event yet. And look, at this point you have no excuse because you could just go to Claude or ChatGPT and say, hey, let's refine who I'm going to have this party for. And this is what I want as an outcome. Pretty easy, it'll take you an extra few minutes. The second is structured to capture exactly what you want to capture. All right, so digital business cards and QR codes help with capture, but the real asset is your CRM. Every attendee gets tagged with the event name, the date, the conversation topic, and more importantly, because this is the one that's left out, the next step. The next step, like, what am I going to do with these people after we're done? The tag is what lets you follow up intelligently, right? Because you want to have purpose behind the follow up. It's not like just thanks for coming, right? You want to make sure that you're following up not just right after, but a few weeks after, months later. Do you have another event planned? Are you going to invite them to that? What's next? Because I don't want you to just send out generic content because they won't open it. And if they do open it the first time, it's like, right? And the third one is a part most agents skip. So third is a defined post event sequence. Like define it, take some time, outline it. Within 48 hours, every attendee gets a personal touch, not a mass email, a real short personal note, maybe even handwritten, tied to something specific from the event. And the whole goal is you at the event, did talk to everybody because you're not planning to have like a thousand people there. This is, these are small events where you're going in and you at least are having five, 10 minute conversation with everybody who's there. It could be 40 people, right? 50 people. Then they enter these people that you have, they enter into a 30, 60, 90 day nurture, cadence, phone, text, email, all that mixed in in the right sequence. Without that sequence, the event was a party. Remember that. Keep that in your mind because parties are just a party. You're just somebody's going to pay the bill and you're not going to get much out of it. With that sequence. The event becomes a pipeline. And I think for me that's What I want, because I want to create pipelines throughout the whole year. And here's where a lot of you are leaving money on the table. The highest leverage event format isn't the block party. It's the curated small gathering. And I know some of you are going to disagree with me on this, but I've done these and they're, they're amazing. One on ones are my favorite. But these events, we're talking about 10 people, you know, give or take a few. 10 you can spend time talking to each one. It's different. They feel appreciated. And on top of that, in someone's home, right? Or private room at a restaurant, which I just did. I just came back from Austin, Texas, and I had this event and it was at a restaurant. We had, I think we had 14, 15 people there. And the connection was really great. It was intimate, right? And think about what you're doing here. It'll be around a topic that's actually interesting to your ideal client. It can be whatever it is that you're going to talk about. You don't even have to talk about anything, right? It could be that you are going to start a little talk and be like, hey, you know what, let's get everybody talking about the, the tax implications of selling in this next season, right? Or buying an investment property. Or it doesn't have to be anything, right? Or if you want to add another layer to this with your 14amazing people that you're inviting, layer in. Because remember, you're in a long table, you're over on this end, on the right. Maybe layer in. Who else is going to be here with you? Maybe it's an estate planner, right? Maybe it's an interior designer you're putting on the other end. Maybe it's these people that you're bringing in because you're offering them your audience because they send you or they will send you vendors. Think about this process. Long form, right? And if you want to add another layer to this, pick a local restaurant that you know the owner of or that you want to get close to. That's what I do. Now, the cost per attendee is going to be probably higher than the cost per attendee at a block party. But guess what? The conversion rate in this is way higher. Think about this. You've curated your list. This is a, this is a list of people you want in this room. And on top of that, you're layering in the vendor. And on top of that, you're layering it at a restaurant that is your choice. Because you want to connect with those owners, right. You just need 10 people here that are right for this room. Here's the part that makes the curated dinner really work. When you run a six person gathering around a topic or your idea of what you should be talking about, because real estate's going to come up. I do these and real estate always comes up. The guests get something genuinely valuable because then they're like they're talking in conversation, right? Which means they're grateful instead of just full. Because the conversation revolved around something that was helping them get educated. Because now you're going to go in a circle, something that's pertinent now in an ADU, everybody's building ADUs and where we're at. What about the market in general? Right. And you're positioning yourself as a person who has this expertise and knows the right people if they're in the room. Right. Not the person who just sells houses. And the conversations at a six person, 10 person dinner, they go pretty deep. And in a way no community event ever can. Just can't. They're too big. I remember I did a 600 person Halloween. I'm going to call it a party. Even though we did get referrals. Party at a park. With all of our past clients and a large portion of our database, there's no way I got to talk to everybody. I said hello. But it's different here. You learn what's actually going on in their lives. That's where the business comes from. Not from speeches, from the side conversation between dinner courses that you wouldn't have gotten at a massive event. So that said, do run two or three signature broad community events. That's important. Something seasonal, something charitable, something that becomes a tradition. Even more important tradition branded, right. Annual events, they compound in a way. One off events never do. The third year of a holiday client appreciation event is 20 times more valuable than the first. And by the way, the first is always. Well, not always. Sometimes I've seen some of you blow up on the first time, but they're gradually going to grow. Like if you think you're going to have an amazing big event, the first round, because that's your plan, you may end up with like 20, 30 people, maybe a hundred if you were shooting for a thousand. But I can tell you what happens after the first one. If you stay consistent, it becomes big and it becomes a brand. It becomes an institution as attendees start bringing friends. The community looks forward to it. Your brand isn't associated with a thing people anticipate. So pick Formats you can actually sustain for five years or more and run with them with discipline. Don't, don't change them every year just to be like novel and be like, ooh, look what I got this year. No, no, no. Repetition is the point. For most agents, the right mix is one curated small gathering a month, very small, plus two or three annual signature events. Now that's the whole calendar, right? But you don't have to do two or three. You could do one massive event and you could do these small 6 to 10 to 14 people, dinners, lunches, get togethers every other month or quarterly, right? Anything more than that, if you're going to go once a month, anything more than that. And three, I know some people that do four, but let's call it four bigger events a year, one small monthly get together, right? You're going to need a team for that. But anything more than that, it gets pretty heavy because I know some of you are doing that. We tried it. It requires a team and you need a system. You need a very strong system. So here's your action today. Pick one event that you'd run in the next 60 days. Could be curated small gathering. Could be your first attempt at an annual signature event. It doesn't matter to me, it matters to you. Write it down on actual paper, on a doc. Exactly who. This one's the key, right? Who the ideal person or people are going to be to this. Is it past clients? Is it a core of past clients? Is it maybe your clientele that's more luxury? Is it downsizers? There's a reason for caring about who's in the room. Because the topic. What are you going to talk about, right? Think about these things. What's on the menu not just for food, what's on the menu for talking. What's important to them. And if you can't write that down in two simple paragraphs, that means. That means you need more clarity. All right? Build the attendee profile first, then design the post event nurture sequence after, and then you can start sending the invitations. That's the move. Most agents don't do this. In fact, the agents that are doing this and doing this long term are producing actual business from this. So tomorrow we're going into sponsorships. Specifically, why putting your logo on a banner, it's one of the worst, worst uses of marketing dollars in your business. And what that agent that is actually winning with sponsorships is doing instead. Again, I'm Tristan. This is your daily real estate. It's a podcast, it's a show. Please share this with somebody you think may need this. Thanks again. Have an awesome day.