404: Everyday Open Houses - The Simple Strategy That Doubled Our Listings with Lisa Archer

In today's episode of Empowering Women in Real Estate, the podcast, we're going to be talking about the everyday open house strategy with Lisa Archer. Hi, I'm Karen Cooper, a wife, mom of three, real estate broker, team owner, and founder of Empowering Women in Real Estate. As a realtor, I've personally helped well over 700 families in my career, and now I help thousands of women from all across the country balance real life and real estate through daily inspiration, motivation, and actionable plans to increase their success. Listen in as I share stories and tips from my life and business and interview some of my favorite people. hi there i'm so glad you're here for today's episode i am fascinated by the business strategy of this woman i met lisa archer through i actually don't even remember how we met um she's part of our inner circle we met through empire women in real estate and we were talking somewhat recently on a mastermind session and we were talking about, you know, everyone was talking, it was the first quarter review and everybody was talking about their pillars and what was working and where their business came from. And Lisa shared that, you know, how much of her, her business, her team's business was coming from open houses. And then she told us that they do an open house every single day, every single day, like seven days a week. And they will take shifts and do at least a couple of hours every day at an open house. And I'm not gonna share too much more because you're gonna hear it all in this episode. But I was absolutely fascinated by what she was sharing and not just the strategy behind it, but she has the numbers to back it up. They track how many opens they do and they track where the business is coming from and they track how many transactions are resulting from it. And it's not just, this is what I love about this conversation today. It's not just the business that they're getting from selling that particular house, that open house, or maybe the buyers that come in, but it's all of the other listings that they're getting in that same community or neighborhood because the neighbors see them doing the work. and so I'm fascinated by this. So I am really excited, thankful to Lisa for being willing to come on the show and to share so clearly what they do and how they do it. So I'm really excited for you to take a listen. If you are somebody for whom listings and open houses are an important part of your business, I think you're gonna get a lot out of this. Even if you are an agent who doesn't yet have enough of your own listings to do something like this, we talk about ways that you can do that in the episode. So take a listen. Let me know what you think. Come message me on Instagram. I'm at karen.w.cooper. And until next time, stay well. Lisa Archer, I am so happy to have you here on the podcast today. Thanks for having me. So, you know, this is really kind of coming in. I'm going to have you introduce yourself here in a second. But we had a very interesting conversation on a recent mastermind where you were talking about a strategy that you have with everyday open houses. And I was fascinated by what you shared and the success. Like you have the numbers, right, to back up what you do and why you do it. And I was sharing it with some of my team members afterwards and they were like floored by what you were sharing. So before we jump into that, would you please introduce yourself? Tell us who you are, what you do, how long you've been in business and where you are in the world. my name is lisa archer i am a 21 plus year realtor now um we have multiple states that i'm licensed in north and south carolina and then we also have expansion teams so like i am sitting at an open house right outside of charlotte that's where home base is and then we have expansion teams that are in myrtle beach columbia charleston we just launched greenville south carolina and wilmington North Carolina and then we have a team down in South Mississippi. Okay wow amazing how long have you had your team? I literally started a team right almost right out of the gate so 21 years ago I partnered with Mighty Ad and the first thing I learned from a event that I had gone to was hiring hiring admin so it was the first thing and then the second thing we did was hire two buyer's agents. One of them is still with me. She's been with me 18 plus years. Wow. That's amazing. He's a builder now and I'm not being happier for him. Yeah. That's incredible. And then, and obviously this is our topic today, but this is, you know, is important. You know, this is what I've done too. So I like this topic. When did you start expanding? Like what kind of motivated you to do that? Well, back in the day, so there, you know, wasn't a ton of agents doing the whole expansion thing. And I was in a mastermind with like 14 other people in Gary killer and we started talking about expansion and put together curriculum. I started teaching it and then it kind of happened naturally from that and then COVID. So we had several locations during COVID that were not essential and it was just one of those things. Most of them, most of the agents that we had expansion teams with got out of the business completely because they were not essential and also during that time, my admin then had been with me for 14 years at the time she passed away. oh god not during covid but during covid she couldn't get into the hospital while she had in it was it was terrible but she was our director of expansion okay and obviously like during covid i did become essential again even though i've been out of production for several years i was teaching and teaching and all the things and obviously that stopped during covid so i got back in production and i was like there's just no way i could so most of our expansion locations other than the local ones, we were able to, you know, we're just like, okay, they're not working anyway. And I didn't have the capacity. So long story short, I'm back in production. And then we just, as I was teaching and coaching again, just people, or people naturally like that are on the team, Hey, we're moving to so-and-so. And I'm like, okay. And we didn't want to lose them. So we just naturally, and we had other people that were joining the team that already covered another location. So it was my actual, you know, it was one of those, it was a God thing. I was, I didn't naturally want to do it again, but it happened. It happened. Yeah. And I was like, okay, well then, you know, if God's introduced to me, these people were obviously supposed to do it. And how amazing when it kind of like happens naturally like that, you know, like it's such a, I kind of feel a little bit like that myself when we started our expansion team a couple, it's been a little over two years now, a couple of the women that we expanded with, it was like one of them, for example, she had been on our team in Virginia years ago, like, I don't know, like nine, 10 years ago, one of our first team members. And then she moved. She moved to another state where we couldn't service that area. And then, you know, so it just kind of like came back around. And so it's such a, it's so amazing, right? When you can do that kind of thing. So, but that's not why we're here today. We're here today because I want to hear, I want you to tell, I know I have a feeling that our listeners are going to be just as fascinated by your everyday open house that you do just as I was and my team members that I shared this with So tell us what you do and why you do it and why it works and all the things Let me give you last year numbers so we can put a little bit of credibility behind what we're going to talk about. So last year we did like I think 347 give or take open houses that we actually tracked and logged. We have a with our CRM so we use Brivity and we have an open house app. We are supposed to log all of our open houses. Now, some of us don't always do that. Like I'm literally sitting in an open house right now and I have not logged it yet. I will. I'll go back and do it, but ball three shorts. So that's how many we logged. And out of that, we, 32 of our listings sold to a buyer who came through one of the open houses. Now that doesn't mean we double-sided 32 listings. Now we probably did double side eight i think 18 or so wow and you know not necessarily the buyers agents who are listed in the open house and several of them actually were mine because i was having to be student at the open house people would come in i had three of them that the people that came through the open house also needed to sell their house so not only did i double side the listing i was sitting in i also put their house under contract yeah i was able to list and sell their house as well so you know that's what three transactions three different times so it's nine transactions of my own personal that happened because this year so far, I think we've posted a hundred and I think it was 117 the other day, 122, I can't remember which again, as I said, not logging all of them, but we've put 14 under contract as of last week, this past weekend, two more went under contracting to buy our king through another house. So we're now 16. Wow. And, and, you know, the thing that I love that you were talking about, and I also want to kind of get into the tactical of how you make this happen. But one of the things that I heard you say on that mastermind that we were on together that I thought was so powerful is you talked about how it not only are you, obviously your seller's happy, right? Because you're selling their house, buyers are coming in. I'm sure you're selling some of those buyers other homes that you're meeting through the open house, but also you're getting a lot of other listings in the neighborhood because they're seeing you doing the work. That's what you said. I heard you said it multiple times that they see us doing the work. Yeah. Talk about that a little bit. Yeah. So, and I think the story we're talking about was about a month. Um, I guess it's been two months now. We had a listing that went on the market right before Thanksgiving and the people, um, moved to Utah and we love it when we get a vacant listing. Absolutely love it. Like I, if they're moving out, like I really want to wait to put it on the market, like when they're gone, cause it makes it so much easier. Obviously we don't have to talk to anybody and get approval and whatnot we just you know we go go and show we do um it's always on an open house anyway so we started doing those right before thanksgiving and i think it was like mid-january we put it under contract and during that time we did 30 plus open houses and the day we went to put the under contract sign in the yard the neighbor to the left literally comes running out of a sign or at his house and he's like put that sign over here in my yard and what and he said are you lisa and she was like no i'm beverly he said well i wasn't sure because there's been so many people hosting the open houses we've been watching and we are so grateful that you guys got them under contract uh we want you to sell our house wow wow for that afternoon we put a coming soon marketing plan together we're now on the market we've probably hosted there needs more it's rural so like it is going to take a little bit longer than you know it's not first pick it on the market going out of contract, but we've already picked up several buyers there and actually had a showing yesterday. They were like, would they do consider a carpet on something? Absolutely. So, you know, when you start getting into those conversations, you feel like, yeah. And then while I heard the year, he's like, Oh yeah, we're going to be all be moving out. Everything's going to be gone in about a month. And he said, but my wife's not moving just yet. We're headed back. We're headed, you know, out of state the boys and i and then my wife's still gonna be here because she's her job's not done yet until end of may or middle of may or something he said but she's gonna live across the street with the lady who's or her girlfriend who's renting who also wants to buy whenever her so everyone's already talked to her and then um who said oh he said two doors down where the dogs are gonna stay like during the first whatever while we were getting photos that's what it was He said, they're going to want to sell the end of the school year. Wow. People two doors down from them, the cul-de-sac, they want to sell the end of the year because they're moving for a job or what. I'm like, it's crazy. That's like five or six transactions, right? Just from that one. The neighborhood saw us doing the work and they're all like, I don't think they'll call anybody else, even though it's a newer neighborhood. Like people, those houses were built in 2021. so it's not like it's been that long since they spoke to their agent right yes that's right that is so like reflective of I think what happens is people don't you're right like five years right if five years since they but some of them probably haven't heard from their agent in five years and their agent isn't following up right and so then of course when they don't see their agent anywhere on social media in their mailbox in their email inbox in anything and then they see you right there and your team doing the work, like, of course, it's going to make them want to work with you guys. I love, talk about that for a second. I do want to circle back to something else you said, but while you were talking about work, right, doing the work, because I'm so fascinated by this, people are coming to you. And, you know, I think that lead generation is one of the hardest things in this business. And, you know, I hear, I've always believed listings is the best way to get more business, right? And you guys are taking that to like the nth degree by holding these daily open houses. And what you had said when we were on the mastermind is like, you're there doing your work, right? You're working. It's not like you're just sitting there all day waiting for something. Like you're actually doing other things. So talk to me about like, how do you make this work? Is it like eight hours a day? Is it four hours a day? Like, how are you guys doing this? So honest to God, so like within our CRM, we have something that's called the day in the life of our CRM for lack of, you know, so it's a day in the life of our business. and it literally walks us through all right so the first thing you click on is new leads it pops up the second thing is people that have been on their listing alerts looking at property that list pops up when you click on it the third list is people that are looking at their marker reports so they're looking at their home value that list pops up like those are your people to call first and foremost every single day and i've told them i told our agents like look i do this too if i don't have a listing appointment in person if i don't have if i'm not out showing a buyer which that's rare like most of the buyers I give to them I don't totally put a buyer in my car now if I pick one up at an open house if they're buying a house I keep them but if they're not they're they're going to get to work yeah that's not our team so long story and I told them look if you don't have an appointment somewhere you need to go sit in an open house at least two hours you don't have two hours lead generation anyway we call it opportunity generation I hate the words because people hate the word lead. Like nobody wants to call the police. Nobody wants to be a lead. Yeah. Absolutely And so they go and they do their day in life and they make any follow calls that they have They do their tasks If they got email or paperwork or whatever they got to get to our admin team or need to get to a client whatever They do that while they're there as well. It also helps. So when you go home at night, all those things that you would have done at night are now done. You've got them in the open house. If it's a busy open house, great. if it's not great. It's a mindset thing. It is a mindset. Yeah, make your open houses your mobile office. I think I love that idea right there. I think that it is such a mindset because I think in our mind, this is funny, because like when I first started in my career, Sunday was open house day, right? It wasn't probably for you too, right? Saturday, you didn't as much hear about open houses. It was typically Sunday. Now it's like Saturday and Sunday. Now we sometimes see Friday evening. It's just a mindset because you have people coming in during the day in the middle of the week, right? It's the most bizarre thing. Like, and I'll say this, like in our market, like we are blessed that 150 plus people a day are moving to the greater Charlotte area. That's great. Yeah. When those people are on job interviews or whatever, what is their spouse, significant other person that they're traveling with? What are they doing? They're literally driving around yes and that the job interviews are definitely Monday through Friday right yep that's right so they're driving around the only open houses they see are ours yeah because nobody else is doing them yes that's right even if it's not like the area they want to be in they're probably going to click on so when they're on the portals I'm not going to mention my name you have so many but when they're on the portals you click open houses and if consumer is going to go and see, all right, what open houses can I go see? Yeah. The other piece of that is when we're not doing a physical open house at a location, we have a virtual open house going. And every MLS has the ability to do that. Ours does. Again, we're lucky. So we do a virtual open house every single day. There's something about midlife and real estate that nobody really talks about. You don't hate the business. In fact, you're probably really good at it, But sometimes after years or even decades, you just realize that you don't want to keep running your business the same way. Maybe you want fewer clients or you're ready to step back from production altogether. And that's why I created the Midlife Real Estate Blueprint. It will help you to redesign your business for the next chapter and whatever that looks like for you. Visit empoweringwomanrealestate.com and click on Midlife Real Estate Blueprint to learn more. and I tell our sellers part of my spill whenever I'm going into whether I'm taking an expired listing or if I'm going in and talking to a client for life that is now looking to sell or if I don't know who it is home value it doesn't matter my same conversation is this look we're going to do a virtual open house every single day that we don't have an in-person open house we're going to do the in-person open houses as much as you let us yes I love that the conversation and I tell them say look and we've got a whole things like we're working on because this this actually has happened in the last week where we do the virtual open house and people are knocking on the door wow because they don't read it or and I also tell them look if somebody knocks on the door thinking you're having an in-person open house and it's a virtual tell them go walk back to the sign give me a call scan qr code whatever you know and they can get the information and we can set up an appointment for later okay quite a lot of people call him and say hey we thought we were having an open house you're like oh too funny that we're having a virtual open house today that z word doesn't always necessarily put it doesn't always show it right i said do you see where it's got the link and they're like oh yeah and i was like on that um i said when would be a good time for us to come show it i'll call one of my agents right now see what their timing is and i'm like well we're here now so i'll call i'll put in our group chat hey got a got a live one over at 123 Main Street who can go show or at least call them now and reschedule. Yeah. And so how do you do that virtual open? I don't think my MLS does that. Is it like, it's just like a video tour that they're looking at or? Yeah. Okay. So now we're marketing every single time, even on our, but we didn't always do a walkthrough video on all of our listings, but we have to do it now on all of them, even the low end stuff or like, even our land, we're doing like a really short video and we're putting it on there just so we go to the top every single day. Yeah. Well, because it is, it is like when you use it that way. I mean, I know so many agents that they do these really elaborate listing videos and they're almost like commercials, like kind of like movies, right? And then, you know, you see it posted once and then not much else happens. But, but what I'm hearing you say is it's like an actual tour, like a video tour of the house, which is, which is really very valuable, right? To, to a buyer, somebody who's coming from an area who isn't here yet, or, you know, think about somebody who's PCSing, right? Military relocation. So that's amazing. Something that you said I wanted to talk about, you know, I think that, and, you know, you and I've been in business for almost the same amount of time. And I feel like there's this sort of like perception, I think, among a lot of agents that the business just, it kind of comes to them. They don't have to necessarily do anything proactive. And what you're doing is really like the most proactive that you can actually be. And it's smart because you're, you're using your time wisely. It's not like you're just sitting there twiddling your thumbs or scrolling your phone all day long. Like you're, you know, you're there for a shift of the open house and you're, you're getting your work done if nobody's coming in, but you're also buyers are potentially coming in and then sellers in the neighborhood are seeing you guys and going, okay, I want to work with them. Well, so let me, let me use some stats on that so we started doing this doing the daily open houses almost two years ago so within our company we had a challenge to do 30 open houses in 30 days well so two of my agents and I decided okay let's do it let's see what happens we've already done open houses on the weekend but we weren't necessarily during the day and um so March 1st so March 1st to 31st I think I did 32 we have like 33 and shri's did exactly 30 and we had 12 listings then uh-huh active coming to an active and under contracts we had 12 listings and so it was really hard to do that many open houses we would have to be like multiples and do like two hours here go to another one sometimes come back to the same one at that you know but what we forced ourselves in 30 days to figure out all right, how do we do this? And we had some builders that would allow us to do their, to open houses. And that was good. Well, fast forward one year later, we had like, we were carrying 20 listings. So we almost double right now we have 56. Wow. Incredible. It's that power of consistency and momentum that we talk about so often in this business, but I think people just kind of discard it, right? And, and look at that two years, you went from carrying roughly 12 ish listings to like 50 some, right? I mean, that's, that is absolutely amazing. So, so for an agent who wants to do this, and maybe, and I know every market is different and maybe they they don have listings Have you guys and now right now you guys are carrying enough volume but have you ever set other agents listings Like so funny enough we not set other people listings because we have not had to you haven't had to say about that is we did do the builders until we built our inventory up. And I have every single week that I, there's a list of at least 10 to 12 agents in the market center who are begging to host her. and i always my my response is always look my guys get first chips yep and this is the you know like on wednesday i'll post the list i'll take a screenshot i'll highlight what is what we still have the ability to show so like the big ones obviously are always blue and so i'll put that in our office because like our office is like 700 plus agents so yeah so i'll put it in there But my whole goal with those agents is, all right, why would you not want to join the team and be able to do this all the time? That's right. And it's become a byproduct for recruiting. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Because you actually have something for people to do, right, to generate business. Because people are afraid. They don't. They struggle with what to do. They struggle with the consistency. And, like, it's almost like being a new home sales rep, right? Like, they're kind of doing the same thing. It's almost like being a new home sales rep, but you're creating it for yourself, not working for a builder. Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. There's no way you can't be successful on the team unless you're not willing to do the work. Absolutely. That's it. And you can fight me on that. Yeah. You know, it's true, really. I mean, it's true for anybody in this business. I mean, I think that's why the failure rate is so high, because people get into it and they don't do the work. And I think they don't understand the work that's required. They see the big commission check and they, oh, well, you know, my so-and-so just bought a house. Well, this is going to be easy. And they just don't realize what goes into it. And I get so frustrated because I'll hear agents say, well, you know, maybe this isn't for me and I'm just going to go quit. and, you know, I'm just going to go get a job. Well, you would show up nine to five or whatever for an employer for a job. Why can't you do that for yourself? Like for whatever reason, people don't have that mindset to treat their business like a business, right? Yeah, this is amazing. I'm so grateful to you for sharing all of this. Do you have any kind of like little parting thoughts or advice for anybody who wants to try this kind of strategy? What would you say? So look, just do it and start, you know, if you have listings great if you don't go borrow some they're there's the agent in your market center or in your office or a builder who would love for you to host their listing open i mean obviously they have to put it in the mls and not you so you don't have as much control over like when you can click right but and then go doorknock meet the neighbors let them see you doing the work And then obviously, like my shirt says, be a promise keeper, whatever you tell them you're going to do. So like a simple door knock. Hi, my name's Lisa. I just put Bobby and Susie's house on the market down the street. And we are going live this weekend or on Friday or Thursday, whatever the day is. Have you ever thought about picking your next neighbor? Right. And then they just phrase it differently. Do you want to be your next neighbor? Do you know anybody? And we pre-apologize for all the traffic we intend to create. Love that. We say that. So then even if they don't see all the traffic, we've still put it in their head that we're going to have it. You planted a seed. Yeah, you planted a seed. They're going to see the signs. They're going to see the flag in the yard, all the things. And say, hey, whenever we get it under contract, we're going to come back by and tell you how it went. Or we'll let you know how it went. Instead of telling me to come back by unless you promise to go back by. So in our case, we're definitely going to send a Coast Guard or we're going to do the Circle Dial. Or, you know, depending on who does the door knocking, they may be the one to go back by. That's a hot area. We want more of those things. They're definitely good. Somebody's definitely going to go back and door knock. Sure. You know, do what you say you're going to do. That's the biggest knock for our industry anyway. Yeah. You know, it really is. I mean, it sounds so simple and so rudimentary, but there are so many people in our business that do not. They don't say what they're going to, you know, they don't do what they say they're going to do, right? They're not a promise keeper. And that's why our industry gets a bad name because you have people that don't care and they just say anything to get the deal done. And they're not necessarily really in it and building that relationship and doing those things. What I love about our conversation today is, and this should be an encouragement, I think, to anybody who's listening, whether doing it the way you're doing it is right for them or not. The bottom line is there are a lot of creative ways to generate business in this industry. if you are willing to create a system, right? Keep the promise to yourself for what you're going to do and actually do that work consistently. Like there's literally no excuse and no reason not to be successful. We just, I don't know. I don't know what that mindset block is for so many people. It's definitely the mindset and that's the issue because it's simple. Yeah. It's not so easy, but the work is simple. Yes. It's open house, do the marketing, yeah go sit at it but you gotta change your mindset that it's worth your time yes that's right no such thing as a bad open house whether you either got your all of your work done on computer so you can go home and be with your family yep or you know your friends or yourself or whatever or you had an extremely busy open house you didn't get your work done i will sit when the open house is over if it's vacant i'll sit for another hour if it was super busy finish my work so i don't do it when i get home that's you when you get home yep exactly yeah That's it. The work is simple. And honestly, a lot of the stuff that we do in this business, especially when it comes to like generating the business, actually is simple. And I think what happens is it's almost like we're programmed to believe that if it's simple or if it's easy, that it's not going to work or it's not worth it. Like we have to make it so hard and so complicated in order to feel like we're doing something worthwhile. And that's just not really the case. So it's funny. Like that's the reason most people get out of, get out of real estate. It's because they want to take that simple thing and make it complicated or do make, make it like more splashy. Not like there's a reason people have been doing, you know, that the successful real estate agents are still doing it because they've kept it simple. That's exactly right. Yeah, that's exactly right. I'm so grateful to you today and for this time to have this conversation. So for anybody who, who wants to follow you, maybe they have referrals for you to one of your markets, or maybe they're in your area and would be interested in your team. What is the best place for them to find you and connect with you? I would say probably on Facebook, Lisa Archer. I'll give you my cell phone. I'm fine with that too. 7-4-9-6-5, 7-4-3-5. Yeah. Reach out. Tell me that you've done it. You've got some results. I'd love to hear it. Amazing. Thank you so much, Lisa. I appreciate you being on. You're very welcome. Bye girl. thank you for listening to empowering women in real estate the podcast click subscribe to be notified every wednesday when our latest episode is released and be sure to check out our group on facebook