Tracking Your Results

How To Track Your Results So You Know Where You Are, And If You're Stuck, We Can Help You

Keeping careful statistics make the difference between success and failure with your Automatic Prospecting System. In order for us to help you on the weekly APS teleconference calls, have the following Tracking Form completed so that if I ask you for information on the call that you have it at your fingertips.

You must always be testing several marketing campaigns from the Members Only Resource Exchange until you find the one that works best for you. This chapter will show you exactly how to do that.

You do not have the luxury of the poet who writes, "I shot an advertising arrow in the air; it fell to earth I know not where." It's precisely this philosophy — seen throughout our industry — that results in a net profit of $25,000 on a gross income of $90,000!

The A.P.S., the marketing campaigns, the audio tapes and this handbook will show you how to track exactly where your advertising arrows land. You'll learn how to double up on the arrows that hit your targets, and you'll learn how to toss in the recycling bin those arrows that missed the mark completely.
Your mission: To utilize a wide arsenal of marketing strategies, all of which have been proven in your own tests. This means there is no longer any room for "just running an ad."

When you test five strategies in four different media, you'll learn what works and what doesn't work…in your market. This gives you the knowledge and confidence you need to leverage your results by focusing on what works, rather than what the rest of the industry does or says or thinks.

On our weekly APS teleconference calls, we're constantly are discussing and perfecting new strategies to keep you light years ahead of your competition and to add potency to your marketing arsenal. On the next pages, you'll learn our "language" for these conversations.

Campaign Tracking Form

1. Your Target Market: ________________________________________
2. Target Market Price Range: $_____________ to $________________
3. Name 3 communities in which your target market wants to move to or refinance in? _______________________________________________
4. Media or delivery device: (Daily newspaper classified ad; display ad; flyers; ugly signs; homes magazine; client newsletter; direct mail; postcard.)
5. Campaign begin and end date: (You put the flyers up when, or the ads went in when?)__________________________________________________
6. Have a copy of the ad or sign copy with you if you're asking a question on the call. If I ask you what your ad said, you must be able to read it to me immediately or we will have to go on to the next question.
7. Members Only Resource Exchange document number of the campaign:_____
8. If a classified, under what classification did the ad run?_________________
9. If display ad, in what section of the publication did the ad run:___________
10. If a classified in a daily newspaper, what days did it run? _______________
11. How many times did the ad run? _______
12. Total cost of the ad or ad campaign: $_________ (a)
13. Number of "hits" to your hotline as a result of the campaign: _________ (b)
14. Cost per hit: (a/b) $__________ (c)
15. Number of leads from the campaign: ___________ (d)
16. Cost per lead: (a/d) $___________ (e)
17. Percentage of hits converting to leads: (d/b) _________%
18. Number of consulting appointments as a result of the campaign: _______ (f)
19. Cost per consulting appointment: (a/f) $_______ (g)
20. Percentage of leads converting to consulting appointments: (f/d) _________ %
21. Number of transactions from the campaign: _________ (h)
22. Cost per transaction: (a/h) $________(i)
23. Gross fees/commissions from campaign: $___________ (j)

Marketing Campaigns

Campaign Target Market: You must direct your campaign to a very specific target.

For example: First time home buyers in the $90,000 to $140,000 price range. First time home sellers. Condo buyers in Kentwood or Ada. Second time home buyers in the $250,000 to $300,000 price range. People who could benefit by refinancing: Income property buyers; Condo sellers; Executive home buyers in the $500,000 to $1,000,000 range; Income property sellers; Executive home sellers.

Campaign: A campaign is an ad or series of the same ad used to attract a definite target market e.g., a single home magazine ad is a campaign. 50 flyers in supermarkets, libraries and other public places is a campaign. The same ad running in the classifieds for 5 different nights under the same classification is a campaign. 5,000 flyers in the weekly shopper is a campaign. A direct mail letter to 500 homeowners is a campaign. A month's worth of weather channel crawl or cable TV or radio spots is a campaign. An ugly yellow sign is a campaign. Five ugly yellow signs can be accounted for as 5 different campaigns (information of vital interest to each individual seller) and as a grand total for your own statistics and to show prospective sellers at listing presentations.
Campaign cost: The cost of the ad, the sign, the flyers. If classifieds, the cost of the series. If mail or flyers, the cost of paper, printing, and postage or delivery. If a weather crawl or cable TV ad, the cost per month.

Step 1 Of The Automatic Prospecting System 4-Step Cycle:

Media Or Delivery Device: How did the message get to your target market?

Examples:

• Daily newspaper for sale classifieds
• Direct mail letters
• Flyer on your seller's place of business bulletin board
• Weekly shopper newspaper for sale classifieds
• Direct mail postcards
• Info box on your sign
• An ad for your HomeFinder Service or HomeLoanFinder Service on the back of every property box
• Weekly shopper newspaper for rent classifieds.
• Sign calls (yellow signs are your most effective source of calls!)
• Display ad in the daily newspaper
• Client newsletter
• Display ad in the weekly shopper newspaper
• Daily newspaper for rent classifieds
• Flyer on grocery store bulletin board
• Flyer on library store bulletin board
• Church bulletin classified ad
• Flyers that drop out of the daily or weekly shopper newspaper

Control Ads: Each campaign should be tracked with a separate mailbox code so that you can identify the exact media and ads that work most effectively. You should begin by testing 2 or 3 different ads in each media to determine which works best.

At the end of a month, you will know which ad works best in each media. This becomes your control ad. Never be happy with your control ad! Always be testing a variation of your control ad against another
control ad to see if you can beat your control. If you can, the winner becomes your new control ad.

Fast Track: Never just be testing in only one media! You must begin testing in 3 or 4 different media, because that's the only way we can learn what works best in your market!

Here's where I recommend starting: Daily newspaper classifieds, weekly shopper classifieds, a small homes magazine ad, free flyers in supermarkets, ugly signs, an ad in their client newsletters. (By the way, the ads and scripts and campaigns are in your Real Time Marketing Library, just waiting for you to plug them in.)

The members who get off to the fastest start begin by testing 5 or 6 different media, and keep testing them all the time! Please don't call in on the weekly call and say, "I ran one ad in one newspaper and it didn't work. Oh, poor me!" You will be asked why you didn't test 4 different media.

Totaling Campaigns: After the first month when you get your control ads established, (the ability to generate leads for under $2 each) you want to begin to get a better "overview" of your lead costs. This is most easily accomplished by totaling your campaigns of a like media so that you get an overall view of your consulting appointment costs and your transaction costs. It's hard to get a true feel for these numbers without having more than 100 to 200 leads.)

Step 2 Of The Automatic Prospecting System 4-Step Cycle:

Hits: "Hits" are the number of prospects who called your hotline as a result of your campaign. This includes prospects who listen to the entire message as well as those who listen for 5 seconds and hang up. You must know how many "hits" your hotline received to be able to effectively gauge the impact of the
marketing campaign. That's why is it vital that your hotline provider has a "call statistics" feature so that you can know whenever you need to know exactly how many "hits" your hotline received during any given period of time.

Total Hits: Hits should be totaled at the end of the campaign. Newspapers have almost no "shelf life" and a classified ad campaign can be totaled 3 days after the last classified ran. If you are testing just one classified ad in, say, the Sunday daily, you will know your hits and leads by Wednesday.

A Homes Magazine has a longer "shelf life," and may continue to generate hits even after the next issue appears. You can tell when a campaign "dies out" by assigning a different mailbox to each ad.

For example, even if you run the exact same advertisement in a homes magazine in the June 1 issue and on the June 15 issue, you should assign each ad different mailboxes. Prospects calling off the June 1 ad may be directed to box 125 while those calling off the June 15 issue may be directed to box 126. That way you can tell when calls stop coming in on the June 1 campaign and do your totals.

Hit Costs Rules Of Thumb: "Hit" costs usually run $1 to $2 depending on the media and target market. For example: If a campaign costs $100, your hotline should receive 50 to 150 hits. If you spend $100 on a campaign to generate 80 hits, your hit cost is $1.25.

Another example: Your campaign may be a small $60 ad in a home magazine that results in 30 "hits" to your hotline. The cost per "hit" is $2.

Step 3 Of The Automatic Prospecting System 4-Step Cycle:

Leads: Leads are prospects generated as a result of the hotline message who have figuratively held up their hands and said, "I want to know more..." Leads are prospects who are motivated to take action after listening to your hotline. The action is often just another baby step. Depending on your call to action, they may call you, leave a message asking for a return call, request a special report, register for a seminar, attend a group showing (also called an open showing) or attend a Tour Of Homes. The key questions here are: How many hits turn into leads?

Tracking leads is vitally important. Without statistics, you have no idea what is working and what isn't working. This means that you must have a system installed whereby whoever is answering incoming leads to the office asks every incoming caller how they happened to call. This information is critical. Without it, we can not help you.

Lead Totals: Leads can be totaled at the same time you total your hits. It is highly unlikely that a prospect listening to your hotline will write down your number and call several days or weeks later. When they listen to your hotline message, they will either have an emotional urge to take action, or they won't. If they are emotionally attracted to you, they will respond instantly.

Lead Rules Of Thumb: As a rule of thumb, depending in a large part again on your target market but also heavily upon the quality of your hotline script, 8% to 12% of your hits should respond and become "leads." For example: If your campaign generates 100 hits, your hotline message should generate 7 to 12 leads.

If less than 5% of the prospects listening to your hotline become leads, this is a sure indication that the prospects listening to your message (1) did not see any benefit in calling you rather than doing it themselves or using someone else, or (2) were still too fearful to call you (read page 98 of Selling The Invisible by Harry Beckwith), or (3) did not believe you.

Lead Costs Rules Of Thumb: If you spend $150 on a campaign to generate 100 hits, your hit cost would be $1.50. If 8% of those hits become leads, (8 of the 100 hits become leads) your lead cost is $18.75.

First-time home buyers are much easier to attract than executive home sellers. Your lead costs will vary for each target market. First time home buyers may cost $20 per lead while executive home sellers may be $75 a lead.

STEP 3 of the APS Cycle tracks the results of what happens AFTER the prospect takes the action you suggested in Step 2. The ultimate goal of step 3 is to get the prospects to advance to step 4 (a showing, a presentation or a seminar), but ONLY if the prospect has the earmarks of becoming a "great" or "sometimes worth helping" client.

Step 4 Of The Automatic Prospecting System 4-Step Cycle:

Leads-To-Presentations Rules Of Thumb: As a rule of thumb, if your step #4 is to obtain an appointment, the number of presentations you generate from your leads should be 20% to 50% depending on your target market. Buyers will often be a higher percentage than sellers.

For example: if you spend $250 on a direct mail campaign and generate 80 hits to your hotline, your hit cost would be $3.13. If 10% of those hits become leads, that means that 8 of these prospects will have "raised their hands," and taken the baby step of contacting you. 2 to 4 of these 8 leads should turn into a personal consultation.

Another example: Your campaign may be an $80 display ad in the weekly shopper that results in 40 hits to your hotline. The cost per hit is $2. These 40 hits turn into 6 calls to you. Your $80 ad has resulted in 6 leads, at a cost of $13 per lead. After you screen the leads, you may determine that only 3 of the leads are potentially "Great" or "Sometimes Great " prospects, so you book 3 appointments in your office. Only 2 of the appointments show up. Your cost per consulting appointment is $40. ($80 campaign cost divided by 2 presentations = $40.)

Presentation-To-Transaction Rules Of Thumb: Depending on your target market and your ability to present shoppers with their options, you will find that 95 in 100 first time buyers, 80 in 100 second and third time buyers, 40 - 80 sellers who you meet with will do business with you and result in a commission or fee.

The reason that this ratio is so high when compared to the closing statistics experienced by salespeople is that the quality of prospect (a shopper, actually) is so much higher. Using the A.P.S., clients have self selected themselves by "jumping" through a series of hoops.

Hoop #1: They had the opportunity to "bail out" when they called your hotline and heard the message. They could have hung up after 5 seconds, but they listened.

Hoop # 2: They could have elected not to leave a message or call you — but they liked what you had to say, so they contacted you.

Hoop #3: They could have talked to you and said they would think it over, but they agreed to an appointment with you. Or, if you had identified them in the call as "uses you for information" clients, or "doesn't trust anybody" clients, you would have rejected them and not made the appointment.

Hoop #4: They could have developed "cold feet" and cancelled the appointment (or just not show up.) But they met with you.

At this point, you're rarely giving a presentation to a half-hearted, insincere "uses you for information " clients or "doesn't trust anybody" individual — they've all dropped out on the path of the hoops!

If you care — really care — about them and put their interests first, only the most skeptical will not want to do business with you. Using these formulas, your success is virtually assured at the presentation, so long as you stick to super-servant principles and don't sell!

Cost Per Transaction Rule Of Thumb: While I am not as familiar with lender "client acquisition cost" numbers as I am with those of real estate companies, I do know that traditional methods of marketing (floor time, open houses, image advertising, farming) result in Realtors® spending from $700 to $1,500 to obtain each new client. I also know that using lead generating advertising and technology (The 4-Step APS Cycle) results in a Client acquisition cost of $100 to $300! (Perhaps $300 in the executive home markets or directly soliciting listings)

Normally, the higher end your market is, the higher your acquisition cost will be.

In other words, lenders and real estate agents only have to pay $100 to $150 per new customer to get a steady stream of great first time home buyer clients (or refinances in a hot market) that result in net
commissions of $1,500 to $3,000.

On the other hand, if you're shooting for the higher end buyers, refinances, or directly going after listings, you may pay $200, $300 or, in the upper-executive market, even $500 for clients who will bring you $4,000, $6,000 or even $10,000.

Using The APS To Sift, Sort & Screen… Automatically

Here's why a good offer works: When Mrs. Sullivan responds to a lead generating ad, you are alreadypositioned differently in her mind. You are no longer a salesperson — you have given her options that she didn't even know were available before she responded.

You have already given something without asking for anything in return— valuable information of which she was not aware. Information that will improve the quality of her life. This is Cialdini's first Rule Of Influence: Reciprocity. (Read Influence by Robert Cialdini)

You've already established in her subconscious mind that you're different from the salesperson that she has spoken to in your industry — far different. She knows you're a professional. Your tone of voice was that of a consultant — not a salesperson.

When she calls you, she will talk to you like a professional consultant — with the same tone of voice as when she calls her doctor, dentist, attorney, CPA, or other professional. While other salespeople all are screaming about how great that they are, you have let her know about services that benefit her in a huge way — services that she wants — that will improve her life. You have demonstrated how you are different — and valuable.

When Mrs. Sullivan calls you at this stage, it's actually your job to screen Mrs. Sullivan and determine if you can help her — and if you want to help her!

• Does she have the ability to buy or get a loan?
• Is she motivated?
• Will she do it your way or will she fight you for control?
• What type of client is she?
  1. Great?
  2. Sometimes great?
  3. Fun but hopeless?
  4. Uses you for information?
  5. Doesn't trust anybody?

If she sounds like a #1 or #2 type prospect, you make an appointment to meet with her and her husband in your office.

But beware of the #3 and #4 types of leads. They will want to call and waste your time. The #5 types most of the time never even call you because their too skeptical. A few of them will call. Just politely disengage. (Read Values Based Selling by Bill Bachrach)

And Therein Lies The Secret Of How The APS Can Instantly Catapult You To Success!

Your hotline is like a big funnel; hundreds of people a month call and listen to your messages and your offer. Hundreds will hang up; hundreds don't listen; hundreds don't respond; but the sincere, motivated prospects do respond to your offer!

You Don't Get All Of Them (But You Don't Want All Of Them)

Key point: The people who hang up and don't respond to your Hotline, are the very same people who would hang up if they called you on a traditional ad. They're the #4 and the #5 types. They are the people who call lenders and ask for your best rate — then hang up. They are the floor calls, the expireds and the FSBOs who reject Realtors®.

Except now you're not talking to them! You're not being rejected! The system is being rejected, while you're doing something else productive — helping people!

The Ones Who Don't Hang Up Are The Ones That Count

APS Marketing is a numbers game — just like cold-calling — except that technology is doing all the "grunt" work for you. No longer do you personally have to experience rejection or hostility — or waste the time making and taking calls from #3, #4 and #5 types.

With the APS, you don't care about the people who hang up, don't respond or aren't motivated.

If your hotline receives 1,000 calls and if 900 suspects don't respond, who cares? You have 100 leads from the most motivated of the prospects — many of whom are #1 and #2 type clients.

You may screen the 100 leads and make appointments with only 20 of them. Perhaps 15 of them actually meet with you. You'll eventually do business with, earn a fee, and begin building a relationship with 9 or 10 of them.

The Possibilities For Increased Business Are Unlimited

The APS works for you 24 hours a day. It's like a robot that keeps on working for you without pay.

It takes your calls and delivers your message at all hours of the day and night.
Your call statistics will prove to you that many people call hotlines between 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM. Many of these calls are from people working evenings or nights. Others are folks who read the newspaper late at night and like to get the information right then.

Night owls, people whose hours are different because of work, habit, whatever, love hotlines. They see hotlines as a real service. They feel you're doing something for them — giving something to them — instead of forcing them to talk to a salesperson during business hours.

Because people can call a hotline anytime, 24 hours a day, your message is heard by more people — and that's the name of the game in marketing!
As a result, you talk with more ready-to-act prospects.

o Lenders make more loans.
o Realtors® get more buyers, and their listings sell more quickly.

You'll get far more calls on your advertisements because they are non-threatening. Consumers know they can obtain information quickly and conveniently, 24 hours a day, without being pressured for a name or phone number.

The #1 and #2 types of clients will listen to your entire message, because it's unique, and gives them lots of useful information that improves their lives. You will be the professional in their minds.