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Today we are talking with Ryan Dranginis and Chris Wesser about their new service, Bid My Listing. It provides transparency to real estate agents and sellers, allowing realtors to bid on listings, not leads. Sellers get the chance to choose from multiple realtors and decide which is the best fit for them.
Ryan Dranginis, Chief Marketing Officer, and Chris Wesser, Chief Strategy Officer, are part of
an exciting new tool for sellers and agents; Bid My Listing. Be sure to check out their website and social media platforms at BidMyListing.com.
Three Things You’ll Learn in This Episode
- What is Bid My Listing?
- How it benefits both agents and sellers.
- How it provides transparency to the selling process.
Resources
The Listing Advocate (Earn more listings!)
Transcript:
So how do you attract new business? You constantly don’t have to chase it. Hi, I’m Mike Cuevas a real estate marketing. This podcast is all about building a strong personal brand people have come to know, like trust, and most importantly, refer. But remember, it is not their job to remember what you do for a living. It’s your job to remind them. Let’s get started.
What’s up ladies and
gentlemen, welcome another episode of the real estate marketing dude, podcast. What we’re talking about today, folks, as Welcome to the shift should happen. So shift happens during the shift, this will be my second one and my career. And there’s a major and major opportunities always within shifts. So what I like to say market shares are taken. Because when things are going really good, no one really grows except the ones doing all the deals. And when things start going a little better, a little shaky, there’s opportunity for the rest of the people, the most of the people to get in the office or get into the business and make some traction. So we’re story today, interruption is here, guys. This is my neighbor I have on the podcast, but he has a company that is called Bid my listing, which is a new listing service for real estate agents. And they’re making some waves. As a matter of fact, one of my old friends from Chicago sent me a message on Facebook the other day, he’s like this fucking bid, my listing thing is got some traction, I feel bad for the real estate agents out there. And I’m like, well, they’re not trying to take real estate out of the agent out of the deal. They’re trying to work with real estate agents and give sellers a new alternative to selling their property today, because that’s what sellers want. If you guys have been on the show, you’ve realized that we have a couple things going on in the space as well. Owner advocate, we offer seller multiple options, and no one hires you for what the hell you do. They hire you for how you do it. So we’re gonna dig underneath the hood, see what these dudes are up to. And I’m gonna tell you why you should sign up for their service by the end of this because it’s free, and you have nothing to lose, and you might get a listing or two. So I’m gonna be coming with some value today. Without further ado, gentlemen, why don’t we introduce you guys to the show, Ryan and Chris, why don’t you guys go ahead, introduce yourselves. Tell them who the hell you are. And let’s get into it. All right,
awesome, Mike. Number one. Thanks for the intro number two. Thanks for having us on here. You’ve got some cute kids and some good smelling barbecue that I constantly see out there in the street. So nice to be chatting with you here on the pod.
What else do you expect from a bunch of Mexicans?
Good stuff. So I’m the Chief Marketing Officer of Bid my listing. Really excited to be here talking to you and everybody who’s listening in the podcast. We are a place where you can buy listings, not leads, and we can talk a lot more about that. But disruption is the right way to position it. And we’re you know, we’re feeling good about where we are for the shift. So excited to chat here. Thank you for having us.
grisco Reddit. Yeah, sure. Thanks, Mike. Like Ryan, super happy to be here. My name is Chris Weser. I’m the Chief Strategy Officer of bid whitelisting. And my job is to kind of make sure we have world class practices, world class people, so that we can deliver a world class product to the world and really thankful for the team we built. Super excited to have Ryan on board because he’s crushing it. And we’re watching progress happen every single minute, which is cool.
What does what has been my listing and why is Josh Altman all over my Facebook feed?
That is a great question. And number one is all your Facebook feed because we are good at retargeting you. But number two, Josh Altman is the co founder of good my listing. But my listing is a place where real estate agents can find listings, not leads. So that you know our mission is to help people make smart decisions about real estate. And when I say people, we’re talking about home sellers, and we’re talking about real estate agents. So the experience on Bid my listing is pretty simple. I come to bid my listing.com type in my property address in a couple of clicks. As a home seller, I can put my listing up for auction. And as a real estate agent, I can come to bid my listing and see real estate listings that are up for auction in my area. So I can place a bid on that listing, I can specify a payment of cash upfront that I’m willing to offer that home seller for the opportunity to represent the sale of their home, specify my commission amount or listing term. I can talk a little bit about my marketing plan and why I’m the perfect fit to sell that home for that home seller. Click a button and the homeowner gets a chance to review the bids and hopefully selects you as the winning agent and you guys march off happily into the future. Sure.
So I’m a seller. I want to list my house, you guys. They call me you guys. You say, Alright agents, here’s a house who wants to bid on it. And then highest bidder, whoever that necessarily has been or whoever the seller wants to choose to represent them. And this agent would pay for that listing. And now they have a listing. Yep, that’s That’s
exactly it. So Josh Altman, in our co founder, Matt Perlman got together, Matt was actually selling his home, he, he lived up there in a beautiful property and lawn was good friends with Josh, they went out to dinner. And Matt was like, Hey, here’s what’s happening, I got a bunch of agents coming to my property, you know, walk me around my house, tell me how awesome they are sitting in my kitchen table, pitching me on whatever the you know, however, they are the best fit to sell my house. He signed a listing agreement in the agent took off went a different direction. And, you know, try to find a bunch of other listings for for themselves. So Matt got together with Josh and said, hey, the process is broken. The way that we fix this is by providing transparency in the process. So they could bid my listing as almost a digital version of the kitchen table, where the home seller is going to receive bids, and the home seller has the opportunity to select the agent that’s the right fit for them. So not just based on cash, not just based on commission, but based on that agents reputation, and their plan to market that specific property.
So, folks, what I want you guys to get out of the show is that sellers wants something different. The truth is 99.9% of you fucking guys are offering the same damn shit. Hey, I’ll put your lesson in amaryllis, I’ll put a sign in here and I’m gonna sit there and pray for a buyer to come. And then I might have some open houses and kick you out on Sunday. That’s not a marketing plan anymore. And it does not guarantee or warrant five to 6% Commission anymore. Sellers aren’t commission compression is a real thing. In Phoenix, you guys, you could talk to my partner out there, the Commission’s is getting down to 4%, four and a half percent. And you have the appetite is out there. There’s a reason why you have big tech. You have these large funds, these corporations, he’s known as I buyers, you have transactional funding, you have fixed endless companies, you have, you have Wall Street involved in real estates and asset class today, which has a lot of interruption. And companies like this are going about to eat your guys’s lunch. And the reason for that is because they’re doing something different. That’s all anyone wants. The only industry that hasn’t changed in the last 50 fucking years has been the real estate industry the same way you sold the house and 1950s Exact same way you sell houses in 2022. The car industry has changed. I could go buy a frickin car out of a vending machine today. But yeah, when I saw my house, it’s been the same damn thing since our parents bought their first, isn’t it? Has anything changed in the real estate industry? Ever? On the listing side?
Yeah, so I like to think about it. So, Chris, although I’m a Marine, and he’s an army guy, and I don’t like to say nice. But when I initially met with Chris, he has a really good, you know, strategy and has done a lot of research on the market. I’ll let him talk a little bit about the money that’s being spent at the top of the funnel. And kind of how we think about the industry ultimately being able to help agents do what they’re good at, which is connect with home sellers directly and provide an incredible experience during the sale at home.
Chris is sure what the number is saying what your research as it came out to this idea. What do sellers want?
Yeah, so so Like Ryan said, So Matt Perlman, our co founder was selling his house, he realized the interests are not really truly aligned. Right? Number one, number two, you just mentioned the word asset class. No one had ever treated the listing as an asset before Matt, being a serial founder who’s incredibly insightful about things like that said, Wait a minute, my listing shouldn’t be an asset like these people want to go make commission from my house, they should pay me for that opportunity. I should have something up front for that. So we developed Bid my listing. And once we got started about a year ago, and started digging into the numbers, and substantiating sort of where we thought we could be in the market, something popped out at us. And that is today, agents spend about $22 billion a year in marketing to secure listings, right. So they do that through all of the standard channels, that most agents can’t tell you how it works, or why it works, right. They’re there. They’re giving their money to digital marketers and others who are hopefully delivering them leads that hopefully turn into listings. So what we realized is, wait a minute, we can just bring the two parties together directly. The agents can spend that 22 billion through our platform, and they can buy the exact listings that they want, right and with our sort of matching algorithms will be able to match the buyer and the seller and the agents so that you have the best data truly the best agent for you and the homeowner is going to get some cash up front, you know Agent has skin in the game, you get compensated for that asset. And the interests are truly aligned. So that was the theory. What’s really cool and Brian can speak to this better than me. As we’re watching it play out and we’re and we’re pushing, you know, marketing dollars out there into the world ourselves and bringing people in. The value proposition is so overwhelmingly good and the interests are so overwhelmingly aligned, that our that our marketing spend is just more efficient than anything you’re seeing out there in the market because people love it. I love
First off, let’s be honest, 90% of agents who are buying leads, don’t even call back any follow up on them, but they just don’t know what’s wrong with our industry. But, and you guys know this, like you guys will get leads, but you don’t follow up with them. And then the other problem that so many agents have in the online space, at least with digital marketing is they don’t have the either technology, the wherewithal, the skills, the autoresponders, the lead capture tools to actually effectively do it at high scale. And you’re right, it’s very expensive. And that’s why most people don’t do it. They lack skills, or they lack the knowledge. Many, many times and you guys are solving that for agents, because you’re right, an agent that is going to try to go out on Facebook ads and generate, you know, we have some contract costs up to 700 $800 for to acquire a listing contract, you could determine if you really know what you’re doing your cost of acquisition for listing contract, but 99% I just don’t understand what I just said. And it’s right, and then you just end up we just throw we call wishful marketing, right? Yeah. So my own agents on my team is like, Mike, I’m gonna go out there and go farm this area. I’m like, bro, you have 5000 friends on Facebook. Why are you gonna go farm a bunch of strangers? farm that people you know, they all have a referral for you. So we spent you’re right, we spend our money carelessly. I think a lot of the reasons we get paid a lot. And we do close a house. Like shatters 20 grand myself throw one at this. See what happens, right? But no one is approaching adspend in a business mentality. Very few people. Yeah, yeah.
100% agree with you there, Mike. And if you if you can look out your window and see my whiteboard here on the wall. The way that we like to think about it is so you’re looking at a marketing funnel, right? top of the funnel, you have people that are thinking about selling their house, bottom of the funnel, yet people are actually doing something, there’s an entire industry hundreds, if not 1000s of companies that exist in that funnel that are helping real estate agents get those thinkers to the point where they’re doers, the way that we’re approaching the industry is we’re taking that funnel and we’re overlaying a tee on top of it. And we’re saying to agents come to us, we’re going to connect you with those doers. We’re going to connect with home sellers that are ready to transact. And we’re gonna allow you to focus your time and most importantly, your marketing dollars on the thing that matters the most, which is getting in front of those home sellers, knowing your ROI being in complete control of your marketing budget, sitting down on a Monday morning and saying instead of spending the week you know going out and working my farm knocking on doors doing all the things I want to do acquire home sellers. I can sell my calendar not am on Monday morning, I’m logging into my listing. I’m deploying my marketing budget to get seller listings. And it’s you know, it’s that simple
keep turning my mute on here, guys, but what do you guys think that I like it a lot. I think that I’m I’m curious to know what your research shows on and I’m sure Chris sounds like a really really smart dude here. And I’m sure you did some research and you guys did stuff of what sellers want. What do sellers want today from their agents? Do you guys have any color on that?
I’ll take it past that. And on the Chris of the, you know, I mentioned we’re Think of us as the digital version of the kitchen table. So you know right now I can pull up my phone, I can click a button and you and I can have a burrito delivered in the next 10 minutes. I can click another button and Uber picks us up and brings us to downtown Encinitas. You know, the world is used to transparency the world is used to removing friction. So digital products that are removing friction, and that’s what homeowners want. So homeowners want to sit down, they want to treat you know, they want to treat the sell their home like it’s the most one of the most important business transactions in their life and be able to see transparently, I want to see 20 agents who are bidding on my listing I want to see their reputation I want to see their marketing plans. And you know, I want to I want to be able to make a decision smartly. I want to make a decision on my terms and that’s what we’re providing to a home sellers and that’s that’s what’s really resonate and that’s what they’re loving about the platform.
What I like about this is I used to lose a couple of listings to little cousin Billy who just got his license a little prick or Aunt Susie the realtor, you know, every year this happens to agents. This is though such a USP though I could see that occurring. Because with anything you guys you have to first generate attention the first time you get the opportunity pitch your business, whatever it is in any business if you don’t generate the opportunity and I Think what the interrupt is like, hey, I’ll buy your listing or I’ll pay for your listing. Like that’s sexy. Like every seller just say, Wait, what? I’m gonna hire a realtor anyways, they’re gonna charge me five or 6% of your time me, I’m gonna have a way to get my best, the best realtor out all of them, and then they’re gonna pay me to represent me. And then they’re that means that they’re gonna fight for it. So there’s a very famous tagline by LendingTree says when banks compete, you win. It’s very similar, right?
Yes, yes. The tool, Priceline adage says that
Priceline Yeah, when banks compete, you win. Was that Priceline? Travel? Travel? Travel? Yeah.
So but it’s, you know, it’s the same exact thing. It’s, it’s giving homeowners you know, both transparency, flexibility, and they be able to make a decision on their terms. And it’s, you know, one of the stats that we pulled is 75% of people that are selling their home meet with less than two agents? And are they’re basically making a decision, because it’s easy, you know, like, if, without my listing, you know, I’m going to call up the first guy that drops me a postcard, or the first guy that I see on Facebook, or I’m going to go ask you, Mike, across the street. And yeah, you know, refer me to or yourself. So the, we’re helping people make smart decisions, which means, you know, I can pull on my phone and see all the the price of every stock in the US or, you know, whatever I want to see, we’re helping home sellers do the same thing.
I like it. I like it. I just it just, it’s it seems so simple. But yet so effective, you know, and you’re just like, Why isn’t anyone thought about this before? But again, it’s because we’re a bunch of dinosaurs. No one’s ever done anything differently before. And anyone who’s doing anything differently is getting buzz and the buzz is what you need, especially in a shift like this. What do you got? What do you guys think’s gonna happen? With this market? Right here? We’re seeing the shift some places more than others. I’m seeing that all over the country. How do you think this plays in into all of that? I think it’s a positive for you guys.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I’m too I think the you know, there’s inventory constraints across the board. That’s something that we’re, you know, we’re all dealing with the, you know, what we’ve found, in our early days of working with a bunch of different home sellers is this number one, it solves a real problem. So inflation is on the rise, putting cash in the homeowners pocket is a good thing. Number two, it’s a very effective tool for people that are publishing listings at scale. So you know, there’s a shortage of housing across the board, new housing developers, it’s a very efficient way to get their listings to market. So whether you’re architect developer, big builder, there’s a lot of traction there. So you know, I think, whatever direction the market decides to go, we’re gonna be well positioned to receive it.
I like it. Any other things that you guys think you want to add in on here? And where do you guys find most of your sellers at? Is this all online marketing? You guys doing a lot of different channels? How are you finding sellers? What are you targeting? If you’re willing to share any of that?
Yep. So I think an important caveat here is, we’re you know, we’re early days, I’ve been my listening. So we officially launched the platform on June 2, we’ve seen tremendous traction, most of our marketing to date on the home seller side has been primarily direct response, you know, using Facebook, and other digital channels. It’s an incredible for us to have somebody like Josh Altman, as a co founder, he has an incredible sphere of influence that he’s been activating for us, which is, you know, which is great, especially on the agent side, keep an eye out for us agents in the National Association of REALTORS publication that’s coming out here in a couple of days. So we’ll be doing some introductions there. So the important thing on the marketing side is the word network product. So you know, a lot like Tinder, where if there’s not two people that want to date in an area, then the product doesn’t make a lot of sense. For us, we’re a network product. So think of us as an extension of your marketing team. You come to my listing, you sign up, it’s fast, easy, and it’s free. We see a concentration of agents in a zip code, and we go out and turn our marketing laser on that zip code, and we’re acquiring homeowner listings. So and we’ve, you know, I feel like Chris alluded to it. Right now, positioning is Get Paid cash upfront and make a smart decision about selling your home really resonates. So it’s been a real good interaction in the early days.
Yeah, so different. Chris, how about you?
I guess the one thing I would want to add because this is just it’s resonated with everybody I’ve spoken to I spend a lot of time speaking to VC analysts to spend their entire lives studying this industry. And the thing that really really resonates a lot with me is today if you look at NAR, NAR says that agents spend somewhere around 75% of their time hunting for business. And to me, it’s just really, really cool that agents can now spend 99% of their time selling listings that they buy on Bid my listing. Anytime you talk about that with with economists, they just see that as a massively disruptive thing, because it allows the agent to spend the vast majority of their time doing what they’re really good at. And it’s kind of kind of one of my favorite pieces of the entire company’s puzzle.
Like it. Why don’t you guys go ahead and tell them one more time where you could get any other closing thoughts you want to add in here. But make sense, folks, this is very simple. These guys are doing some different setup for their stuff. But regardless, you have to do something different. You don’t get noticed. That’s what this is all about. Differentiation is a good thing in real estate because everyone’s doing the same thing. It’s not that hard to stand out. There’s only one real estate marketing Dude, that’s done on purpose. Right? There’s one other dudes out there. And that’s done for brands. I get it all the time. There’s a reason brand matters. USP matters, differentiation matters. So go ahead at right once you guys close it out.
Awesome. Well, again, thanks for having us, Mike. we’ve chatted about this over beers and excited to be talking about it. You’re on your podcast. For everybody who’s listening, signing up for bid my listing. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s free. Go to bid my listing.com. Follow us on Instagram. You’ll see alerts come out. When we have listings. If you sign up, you’ll get alerts when there’s listings in your area. But we’re here to make a real change. We’re here to help agents deliver a great experience to home sellers. And we’re excited to be here and look forward to seeing you there. My listening.
Sir, I appreciate you guys. Thanks for coming on to the show. And thank you for listening to another episode of Real Estate Marketing podcast. Folks, if you want to build a personal brands very simple script, edit and distribute your videos and put you on the map. Real estate is not hard. It’s a giant popularity contest. And the more people know who the hell you are the more opportunities that arise because 10 to 15% of them are moving this year and 100% of them have a referral. And the one they always hire is the one they know first and foremost, at least to the tune of 80% So visit our website at WWW dot real estate marketing do.com Subscribe and schedule a demo with a dude quit waiting. What are you doing schedule now? Thank you guys for listening and we’ll see you next week peace. Thank you for watching another episode of the real estate marketing dude podcast. If you need help with video or finding out what your brand is, visit our website at WWW dot real estate marketing dude.com We make branding video content creation simple and do everything for you. So if you have any additional questions, visit the site, download the training, and then schedule a time to speak with the dude and get you rolling in your local marketplace. Thanks for watching another episode of the podcasts. We’ll see you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai