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Hey, welcome to CasaCast.
Today with Ruth Fouts.
Ruth Fouts is the founder of Venturi.
He's a market leader and has literally created an entire segment in our industry.
I've known Brooke now for about five years and have learned a lot from him and
have been grateful for his friendship.
Today, we're going to be talking about seven things he's learned in helping
700 companies grow their inventory.
Brooke, welcome to the show.
Steve.
So glad to be here, man.
Thanks for having me.
. So Brooke, we met about five years ago, I believe at a streamline summit.
I don't even remember that if that was where it was or not,
but it sounds about right.
Yeah.
It seems like I've known you forever now.
And in that time you've taken Venturi from literally sort of just an idea
all the way to a market leader.
Everybody knows Venturi in our industry and the good things you've done.
Well, yeah, I appreciate that.
It was, uh, there wasn't a straight line for sure.
There wasn't a, you know, really even a category called inventory
acquisition before we started.
Um, and, uh, As I heard, you know, one of my mentors said before,
like, when you want to start a business, start a business, it's
something that you know really well.
And it's something that you're really passionate about.
And that's exactly what I did.
And, uh, but again, there wasn't really a, an industry.
There wasn't a vertical, there wasn't a company to copy.
And we really kind of created this category of, of inventory acquisition.
Now it's got a little bit more popular now and a couple other companies have
jumped into it because of, I guess they've seen our success, but yeah, just, uh,
happy to do it and having fun doing it.
Brooke, when you thought about what your future was going to be and
how you're going to create a new company, what made you decide this
should be what I'm going to do.
I'm going to go help people grow their business.
What was the spark?
You know, obviously I've been in this industry for about seven, uh, 17 years.
And one of the things that I think I did pretty well was, you know, I, when I
first kind of jumped into this industry, I started a company called managers
or realty and grew up pretty fast, grew up from zero to 500 properties.
You know, I thought that was kind of normal.
And then I would go to conferences and I would, you know, people would ask, you
know, they're kind of the modern day, like how many head of cattle do you have?
The question that's, you know, how many properties do you manage?
And I would always kind of tell them that and everyone's jaws would
drop about kind of how fast we grew.
And so I got asked to like start doing some presentations
at VRMA and events like that.
And, you know, next thing you know, I kind of became like the inventory guy.
And, you know, when I kind of became a free agent, I was looking for
something to do, you know, again, I went back to, you know, when one of my
mentors said, he's like, Brooke, you know, do something you're passionate
about, do something you really enjoy.
And Do something you really like.
And honestly, I really didn't enjoy the, the operational part of growing a
company, but I love the growth side of it.
So I actually decided to call a couple of friends that called like
three or four friends that were in the industry and said, Hey, I think
I'm about starting this company and this is what we're going to do.
And every one of them, like, you know, 30 seconds into my
pitch said, Brooke, shut up.
I'm in, you know, I didn't tell him the price.
I didn't tell him how much I didn't, you know, I didn't
really have a business plan.
I didn't have a pricing sheet.
Um, so that was really the catalyst of what kind of launched us.
And then it's, you know, and that's kind of the beauty of starting businesses.
I think it's, it's like, start with something, you know, so many people get
caught up in trying to, you know, build out the entire business plan and have
every single thing answered on the other way, I build something, get something
in the hands of your customers and see what they think of it, and then just,
you know, iterate from, from there.
And that's kind of what we did.
And even though we weren't software out of the gates, I think it's You know,
we were kind of followed that MVP kind of a process, you know, that so many
software companies do, but we did it really initially as a, as a marketing
agency out of the, out of the gates.
Yeah.
And in that time, you've grown your company from literally zero to
how many clients do you have now?
Yeah, so I think we're, we're just shy of 400 partners on our platform.
We've got about 50 employees.
We've got companies all over the us.
We have a couple companies outside the us but for the majority,
they're, they're, they're US based.
Um, and yeah, we've grown that in the last, uh, five years.
So just like I grew my vacation rental management company from
zero to 500 properties in five years, I've grown this, uh, to, uh,
almost 400 in, in five years too.
So That's incredible.
And you've written a couple books.
Uh, one is zero to 500 properties in five years.
And that's been a success.
, you've had got a lot of copies out there now.
Yeah.
So I don't think I've announced this, but we're actually just about to surpass,
uh, between the two books, uh, 10, 000 copies, either we've given away
at conferences, uh, or sold on Amazon.
Yeah, really, really proud of that fact.
And I mean, not too many people can say they've sold or given away 10, 000
books, but it's, uh, glad to do it.
And, um, you know, all a hundred percent.
I just wrote a check every quarter.
I look at my.
My Kindle account and how much, uh, we made and, uh, all 100 percent of the
proceeds go to, uh, advocacy efforts for the vacation rental industry.
So just wrote a check to, uh, to VMI, uh, a couple of weeks ago.
That's good for you.
And then you mentioned the second book, but the second book is the
vacation rental secrets, right?
Yeah, that's this one.
I wasn't really planning on doing.
Um, and it actually went really, really fast.
It all started from a LinkedIn post where I just asked a couple friends.
I said, Hey, do you mind sharing some of your mistakes and push that out?
And it went viral.
And next thing you know, I had, you know, just tons of people were following
this and, you know, reaching out to me.
And I was like, man, this content's too good.
Um, I actually went to a conference.
I think I was at the Northwest VRP.
And somebody came up to me and said, Hey, Brooke, I never met this person before.
They're like, I love your post on these, uh, the mistakes.
In fact, I print everyone out and I put it into a three ring binder.
So I'm like, wait, you're making like a book out of it.
And he said, exactly.
And I was like, that was kind of like the light bulb moment for me.
I'm like, you know, this content's too good just to having a LinkedIn post.
So we We turned all that content into a book.
We summarized it.
And again, we, we give those away.
Um, if anybody wants a copy, obviously they can email me
directly at brookinventory.
com.
Happy to have me to give them a copy, either one of those books.
You've always been really generous with knowledge and information.
And today you're going to be generous with us with some information.
Appreciate you doing that.
So, Brooke, we're talking about the seven lessons learned when you're helping
over 700 companies grow their inventory.
And for number one, you said they understand the value of good data.
What do you mean by that?
If you think about it, you know, they, they say data is the new gold.
And, um, one of, uh, our chief revenue officer, Rob, who, you know,
really well, uh, he says, you know, 50 percent of all your marketing
just comes down to your list.
And it's true.
So true.
If you think about it, if you're going to market, do proactive marketing, like you
have to have really, really good data.
I mean, I would much rather have really, really good data.
And send a small amount then, you know, just spraying it out there to everybody.
Um, so whether that's, you know, getting that data from, you know, multiple
different sources, you can get it from, there's many list brokers out there.
You can buy data from, there's several companies in our space
that, you know, sell data for this.
You can, you know, uh, scrape, you know, the, the OTAs, you can
scrape Airbnb, Vrbo, booking.
com, you know, you can get vacation rental permit lists, which will
be one that's often overlooked.
Um, and then just compiling that data and then, you know,
appending it to get emails, to get phones, to get mailing addresses,
there's a whole process in that.
And I mean, that's probably where we spend about 50 percent of our time, uh,
inventory is really just building out a robust database of target data, because
again, that's, that's half the battle.
Because if you think about it, if, if you can get somebody where they're
a higher propensity to make a move, you can save, uh, some money versus,
you know, just spraying out to every single person in a, in a zip code.
When you're thinking about how you understand your data, like what
are some of the key pieces that you're thinking, like, okay, this
is all a big contact list, but maybe somebody would ask themselves, how
am I supposed to understand this?
Like, what am I looking for and what am I trying to understand?
Well, it's understanding what is your ideal?
What's your ICP, your ideal customer profile?
What does it look like?
And what I usually recommend is start there.
You know what I mean?
Get a list, get a spreadsheet of your current customers, your current owners.
Where are they?
What buildings are they in?
Where are their addresses?
Look at it on a map.
Look at where those properties are.
Look at even where they live.
Uh, I think there's a great story of, uh, Drew Brown.
Uh, you know, he realized in Hilton Head that a lot of his owners,
you know, came from one little specific, uh, town in, uh, Ohio.
So he actually went out to Ohio and did, like, a real estate seminar and
actually got people to come out to it, um, because he just recognized it.
And he didn't, he wouldn't have noticed that if he didn't put it
onto a map and noticed that all these owners lived in, like, with a zip
code in some random town in Ohio.
Um, so really understanding like where those targets are coming from.
What is your ideal customer profile look like?
Um, and then, you know, it's just reaching out to them and then you can
obviously do it in multiple different methods and we'll talk about that.
But obviously there's, you know, direct mail still works.
We'll talk about that in a second.
Email works.
Um, you can do some really creative things.
If you have their emails in your phones, you can do some really
cool, creative digital marketing where you're actually serving up
ads directly on their social feeds.
But you can only do that if you have a really strong, robust
database and people don't understand how difficult that actually is.
This is not like where you're just, you know, you're not just buying a list from
a list broker and just starting there.
Um, you know, there's a lot of different things like, you know, we, we have an
entire data science team on our, our team.
I think we have four people on our team that that's all they do full time is
they're going through there, getting that data, compiling it, but then there's
other really creative things you can do.
So, you know, I'll give you a perfect example.
If you get just, let's say if you're just leveraging.
Call it like a vacation rental permit list, or if you're just leveraging,
uh, like a scraped OTA list, you may be missing out on a lot of targets.
So one thing we've actually been able to do is let's just say you realize
that a lot of your targets are in a couple of different, you know, if you're
in a condo market or in a couple of buildings, well, what you can do is we
have this button in our platform that actually allows you to select and hit
every single person in that building.
So, yes, you may only have like 10 records out of a building
that has 200 people in it.
But if you hit, it's kind of like the boost up or the power up button,
you know, on like when you play Nintendo, you hit that button.
And then what you're now doing is you're hitting every single one
of those targets in that building.
Cause you know, if you've got 10 targets potentially in there, then maybe the rest
of those, uh, could be targets as well, but you don't have their addresses, but
kind of powering up or boosting up the, you know, you, you allows you to do that.
So, um, yeah, there's a lot of different things you can do, but it is mission
critical to really start with that really good solid list out the gates.
Yeah, that's really cool.
By the way, that's, you know, a target rich environment is what we
called that in the military, right?
You know, that you've, you've got a few targets there and
obviously you're doing well.
So target rich environment, Brooke for number two, you said they're
consistent in their marketing.
I mean, this one, I cannot preach this enough.
You know, the, the best companies, the companies that have the most success.
You know, just like they very often do on a guest marketing, they build out
their marketing calendar 12 months in advance, they lay it all out there,
they have their direct mail outline, you know, whether it's every month
or every other month or at once a quarter, but they've got it laid out.
They have their emails kind of like laid out there.
They've got their digital laid out there, and it's, it's great.
You know, obviously they're making some adjustments as they go, but they
stick to it because the companies that we see that usually end up failing
are the ones that the law about one or two postcards and they say all this
doesn't work and then they, they, they stop and they'd never do it again.
But you have to, there's, there's something that was developed.
I think it was developed by the movie industry actually.
In the 1930s or 1950s, something like that is called the marketing rule of seven.
And what it says is it takes on average about seven touch points before somebody
actually recognizes your brand So you have to be in front of them seven different
times before they even recognize you and you have to be in front of them And you
know, here's another thing some people say well brooke This is our busy season.
They're right in the middle of summer We you know, we don't
want to you know market to them.
That's stupid.
Nobody's making a move right now and so But you're planting those seeds and what
you're doing is you want to get in front of them while it's top of mind, you know,
maybe they just went to their house, you know, they just spent a week down
in their vacation home and they realized that the cleaning was less than par.
Maybe they realize there's lots of damage.
Maybe their rentals aren't that good.
Maybe they're off a little bit this year.
You want to get in front of them be top of mind because here's what happens.
We have tracking specific phone number tracking on every
marketing campaign we do.
We see how long people are holding on to these pieces.
People are holding on to these pieces for a month, six months, even a year.
We've even had some a year and a half later.
And the person calls are like, I've been holding on to this postcard, just waiting
for the right time, you know, to do it.
So you have to be in front of them and be top of mind.
Um, you know, be consistent, uh, for sure.
It reminds me of those, you ever been to those like arcade games where You drop
a quarter in and then you just drop it.
Then there's like thousands of quarters and just eventually
it ends up like tipping.
It's just, you got to keep dropping those quarters in and eventually it pays off.
And, but here's the beauty of it.
You don't need a lot, like the ROI, you don't need a huge response
rate for it actually to pencil out.
The ROI is so solid on some of you sign up a new owner.
These contracts are so valuable.
I mean, you only need about a half of 1 percent response rate
to a 1 percent response rate.
And just an average conversion rate and the ROI pencils out as long as you're
in a market that, you know, that has, you know, properties doing, you know,
north of 20, 000 in gross public revenue.
Yeah.
Brooke, that reminds me of in 2008, when the economic crash
was happening, I needed cash.
And I decided I had to sell my airplane to make payroll and do
the things that had to get done.
And as I walked into my house, I was like, okay, how am I going to do this?
And there'd been a gentleman sending me postcards of really interesting,
uh, airplanes on the front and on the back is like, if you're looking to buy
or sell your airplane, give me a call.
And he'd done that for several years.
And I walked into my kitchen and open the drawer.
And there was five of his postcards that I'd saved because they were cool airplanes
as a, you know, as an enthusiast, I picked it up, turned it over, called them.
And some of those postcards had been there for a long time.
And, uh, yeah, he got the business and he got the broker, the sale of that
airplane, but it was all because of these little three by five, you know, whatever,
whatever size it were small postcards with cooler planes on the front of it.
And it's the same thing for us.
Absolutely.
I mean, I I'll tell one other story similar to that about a year or two
after I graduated college, I wanted to start a mortgage banking operation.
You know, when you're 23 years old, you don't have any money.
So what do you do?
You go to dad, you know, went to dad and dad's like, well, here's
what I'll do for you, Brooke.
He owned another small business.
He's like, I've been getting this damn letter from Wells Fargo
saying that they have a 50, 000 line of credit for me available.
He goes, I'm not going to give you the money, but I'll, I'll co sign for you
with this right here with this 50, 000, but He even made the comment before
he's like, they've been sending me this line of credit, uh, information forever.
And I've just, that's, I'm like, what a waste.
Why are they wasting their money and sending this to me?
But sure enough, a couple of years later, we took advantage of it.
And that was the 50, 000.
We, we launched our mortgage banking operation and it was just
kind of ironic, but the same kind of thing, same, same comment.
He never called on it, never planned on calling on it, was making fun of
them for sending it to us consistently.
And sure enough, we ended up leveraging that to launch the business.
One last story, Spencer and Carpentry had sent a letter out to some of the
neighbors and sure enough, a year later, the woman called right after Christmas
and said, I'd had your letter on my refrigerator for nearly a year now.
And I decided I was going to give myself a Christmas present and get a new property
manager when I saw the statement I got this last month and he got the deal.
So that's pretty cool.
We hear that.
I hear it all the time, time and time again.
So for number three, Brooke, you said they utilize the seven
messaging building blocks in all the marketing to new homeowners.
What does that mean?
This one took me a while to kind of formulate and this one definitely
didn't come out of the gates.
Um, I mean, this, this probably, Probably took a couple of years
for us to really figure this out.
But what I realized was, you know, if I looked at all the messaging, um, so
anytime you want to message to a new homeowner, um, you know, it doesn't matter
what it is, it could be a direct mail piece, it could be an email, it could be.
Uh, owner presentation, you know, whatever it happens to be like every single
marketing piece Needs to follow the seven key messaging building blocks And you
know again, this has morphed over time and we've added and we take the way but we
really you know This is the way it's been for probably about three or four years now
Um, so what it comes down to is whenever you're going to market to them Just make
sure you have all these pieces in it.
It's almost like a checklist And again, if anybody wants
to email me, brookeinventory.
com, we actually have a worksheet.
Happy to send it to you.
It has lots of different examples.
And what I love about this is once you build this out, you
have this as your baseline.
And you use this in any of your marketing efforts that you do from then on.
So you don't have to be creative.
Again, you've got it written out there.
So we'll go through them really, really quickly.
So the first is, uh, USP.
What is your unique selling proposition?
This is like, what is the one thing that makes you different?
What is the one thing that sets you apart?
You know, this is not like a platitude, you know, it's like, so, you know, if
you think outside of our industry, you know, think of Tom's shoes, you know, buy
one, give one, like that's their thing.
So, like, just what's that one thing that sets you aside?
Number two, what are those key features and benefits?
Like, this is like really what's in it for the owner.
What's, what's the part of your rental program that sets you aside?
Like, you know, whether it's, you've got, you know, a full time revenue
manager or, You know, you've got, uh, what, you know, triple inspections
on, you know, uh, on cleanings.
It's just like, what are the parts that really just highlight your rental
program that you make it unique?
And, um, I'm sure you've got some good tips on there where it's not this like
platitudinal, uh, you know, thing.
So number three is, uh, what we call trust icons.
These are really cool.
It almost helps at like a subconscious level, establishing trust and credibility.
So someone just glances and they see this, they may not even notice it.
You know, but maybe they are at the subconscious level.
So, you know, just like maybe they're a member of the VMA, maybe
they're, , a plus rating on the, you know, better business bureau, maybe
they're their Airbnb superhost, maybe they're a VRBO, , premier partner.
Um, you know, those kinds of things, you know, help kind of
build those trust and credibility.
Uh, you know, maybe you're, you know, we, we just launched on
comparant, uh, our sister company.
Market leader.
So this is the top 1 percent of all vacational managers are market leaders.
Um, so like put that badge on there and celebrate that,
uh, number four social proof.
So social proof is a, it's a, it's a, again, it's like another kind of like
psychological phenomenon where people actually trust the actions of others.
To help them make a decision.
They actually feel that some people have more knowledge about the situation
than they do and what's going on.
So it's also evidence that, you know, people, uh, you know, signed
up with you and they've seen kind of some value from your services.
So obviously a perfect, you know, the tried and true one is social proof
of social proof is testimonials.
So, you know, if you have a testimonial, um, and what I like to do is, and we can
talk about this later, but like, if you do any kind of micro targeting, so if
you're targeting very specific communities or buildings, make sure the testimonials
are for people in that building or in that, you know, in that community, it just
resonates a little bit, you know, better.
The fifth thing, compelling offers.
So just really, you know, craft really good, compelling offers
to make them irresistible.
I mean, not to sound cheesy, but it's kind of like the infomercials.
I mean, there's a reason why infomercials follow the same format because they
work, you know, so, but have some kind of compelling offer that I would say it's
like, it knocks them off their stool.
You have to do something that kind of gets them just out of the, just,
they're used to like seeing the same stuff over and over again.
So.
You know, give them some reason to reach out.
So it could be like a free smart locks or 0 percent commission for the
first six months or a signing bonus.
I've even seen a lot of people leverage, you know, here's my acid test for
a really good, compelling offer.
So envision your ICP or ideal customer profile standing over the
trash can or the recycling bin.
And they're just going through the direct mail.
And they're just dropping it in the trash can drop it in their cycling bin.
And they come across your postcard and they're literally dropping into the trash
can and they stop because they see like.
I'm telling you, it could be like a signing bonus or could be something that
stops them in their tracks and all you want to do is just put that postcard
aside and not throw it away and then they can make that decision later.
Maybe, like you said, they put it in the drawer.
It did something to kind of give them the reason to act.
So that's a kind of a good acid test for a good, compelling offer.
Here's another one that's kind of similar to the infomercial.
It's called risk reversals.
So risk reversals like are transferring the risk from the
buyer to the seller, like make it really easy for them to sign up.
Like don't give them any excuses, you know what I mean on why they should sign up.
So, you know, this is a little bit controversial, but like, you know, I
actually recommend don't doing long term contracts personally, um, or
maybe, you know, no startup fees, you know, and I, when I would go around
that first year, I signed, you know, when I first launched inventory, I went
around, you were one of them, uh, I went to 34 onsite, you know, visits.
And I would ask about the rental program and so many people had sign up fees and I
would say these contracts are so valuable like you're adding another hurdle to make
them sign up, reduce friction, reduce the, you know, the friction and signing
up, you know, make it so easy for them to sign up that they have no excuses.
And adding startup fees is sometimes just another excuse.
And now I've gotten pushback on that, but I still believe in it because I
want to, you know, I want to get the, you know, how many people did you
pretend, what's your opportunity costs?
How many people did you lose because you didn't, uh, you know, have that
in there or, you know, say what you will about evolve, evolve as a
great example of risk reversal, if you're not happy, you can cancel.
And they'll send you 100 percent refund of your management fees.
Think about that.
100 percent refund of your management fees.
Now, if you read the fine print, it's only between month, like six
and seven and stuff like that.
But at least it sounds really good.
You know, and it gives them kind of like, what do you got to lose?
You know, no money out of pocket, you know, no startup
fees, no long term contract.
You can cancel and get a 100 percent refund.
You know what I mean?
So to me, it's a, it's a perfect, you know, kind of what I call the, you
know, the infomercial risk reversal.
And then last but not least, and it's funny that people
forget this one all the time.
It's so obvious, but they do.
It's called CBA, CTA call to action, like every marketing
piece you have, it doesn't matter.
Make it so simple.
Like it's amazing when I go around whenever we would meet new partners and
we would look at their landing page.
Like there's no easy way to sign up.
There's no easy way to inquire like you should make it like the call
to action should be on that page so many different times where they don't
even have to think about it later.
There should be a call to action no matter how you're scrolling down and
every piece of that web that landing page or, you know, You know, even
on, like, when you send a direct mail piece, give them different options.
You know, my mom, for example, like, she wants to call and talk to somebody.
Don't force them to just go to a website.
Give them a phone number that someone, and we'll talk about this later, but actually,
someone actually answers the phone.
But my brother, on the other hand, like, he doesn't want to talk to anybody.
He's an introvert.
You know, he wants to just text the person.
You know, and he'd rather do that thing than going to a landing page.
So give them the option to text.
Give them the option to call.
Give them the option to go to a landing page.
Give them different options on this call to action.
To fit kind of those different demographics.
So again, those are the seven key messaging, uh, you know,
building blocks that need to be on every marketing PC there.
You said it at the beginning of this, but I feel like after hearing
these seven people are going to want to ask you for that worksheet.
Can you tell everybody how to get that worksheet?
Yeah, just email me.
We've got this great worksheet.
Brooke, B R O O K E at ventori.
com and happy to send you the worksheet.
It's got all those examples I talked about.
It's got the seven key messaging and you know, it even gives you
blanks so you can fill them in and then you've got your sheet.
And then next time you do a marketing piece, just reference that, that
worksheet and you've got it ready to go.
And it's easy peasy.
I feel like that could have been a podcast all to itself.
So that was really good stuff.
So for number four, you said they leveraged technology to make
themselves effective and efficient.
It's kind of like Tony Stark technology to me is like.
Giving, uh, Tony Stark, the Ironman suit.
Look, I've been in everyone's shoes.
You know what I mean?
We grew our company.
You're answering tons of calls.
You, I mean, your, your phones are blowing up.
Like you don't have the bandwidth to sit there and constantly do the follow up.
So make yourself more productive.
Again, these contracts are super valuable leverage technology.
So there's a couple of different things you can use.
The first one is, I mean, and again, this blows my mind that most people don't do
this because it's funny if I ask them, do you have a CRM to track guests, you
know, past guests or, you know, any guests and the answer is always yes.
You know, absolutely 100%.
But then I asked if they have a CRM for, you know, owners.
And I mean, luckily, more and more people are starting to do it.
But I would say 90 percent don't.
The majority are using either, uh, Post it notes.
They're using yellow legal pads.
Some are using, uh, Excel spreadsheet.
And maybe 1 percent is using like a HubSpot.
But just use something because these leads are so, so valuable.
And one of the things we found, so again, After helping 700 different companies,
we've seen about 50 percent of the deals that many of our partners are closing.
Most of our partners are closing.
They didn't close initially out of the gates.
What they did is they actually put it into our CRM and the marketing
automation did the follow up and they closed it later many months
later and 50 percent of the deals.
So if you're not leveraging some kind of CRM that has that marketing automation,
what you're doing is you're, you're really losing because you do not have the
bandwidth because again, I've been in your shoes, you don't have the bandwidth to sit
there and do the constant follow up unless you have a full time business development
rep that is really, really good.
And even then.
Why would you, why, why wouldn't you leverage this inexpensive
piece of technology for a couple of hundred bucks a month?
I mean, HubSpot has a great version.
Now it's just a CRM, you know, in the free version, if you want to start
getting the marketing automation, you're going to have to start paying.
But Zoho has one Salesforce, obviously.
You know, shameless plug Venturi.
Obviously, we've got a CRM with marketing automation built in.
So, so get something, you know, to at least track those leads because
again, it's super, super valuable.
And again, 50 percent of the leads are not closing out of the gates.
So, if you don't have out, I mean, they don't have that kind of automation.
You're actually leaving money on the table and you're losing deals because
you're, you're, I just trust me.
I know you're not falling off at all those most of the time.
You know, we have so many things going on as property managers, you know, and
even business development teammates, you've got a thousand different people
you're talking to hundreds of things happening day, emergencies, floods,
check ins, door codes that don't work.
And then to think that you're going to have the mental bandwidth to go,
remember to go back two weeks to look at a yellow pad, to call this person at a
certain day, it's just not realistic from a point of just being a human being,
you're just not going to get to it.
Well, it's, it's kind of like the Eisenhower matrix, right?
It's like, you know, important and urgent, you know, like, it's like,
you're obviously going to do the things that are just obviously really urgent,
you know, you're putting out fires and sometimes literally, you know, and those
are the things, the screaming owner, the screaming guests, the person that fell
off the deck, like those are the things that are going to take your priority.
So.
Why not just leverage a piece of technology can do that, that
drip for you automatically.
I think that one thing that I always love to say about technology is supposed
to make you bionic, not robotic, right?
So it doesn't mean you set it and forget it.
And then sending out messages and you just expect a contract to sign up.
It's helping you build things out.
It's making you bionic, but you still have to have input.
So it's not just robotic with nobody giving real responses when it's time.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
And obviously there's tons of different pieces of technology.
Go to a VRMA show and look at how, how many different companies, how
many new companies are out there.
I mean, you can spend your entire day, you know, doing nothing but
like signing up with new technology.
So you gotta be careful, you know, not to go overboard, but at the same time, if you
can find things that really do make you more productive, I would definitely do it.
You know, now specific to the use case of getting new homeowners, you know, a couple
of things we've found, uh, as far as pieces of technology that are really good.
Cold email outreach.
That is one that just, I mean, I just got off the phone literally like an
hour ago, a new partner out of Sonoma.
And he just signed up two new first email campaign out of the gates.
He signed up two new homeowners.
The first one was I think 140, 000, uh, projected gross book and revenue.
And I think the other one was 150, 000 projected gross book
and revenue first email campaign.
So again, this goes back to point number one, you have to have really good data.
That you have to have really, really good data out of the gates.
But then secondly, like this is not like, this is not constant contact.
This is not mail chimp type of email, cold email outreach.
There is an art to it.
It is definitely a little bit, be a little bit unique.
You're not writing these beautiful, pretty letters.
This is very simple.
You're asking for a very light lift.
You just want to hit them, hit them with small.
You want to look like you sent them a direct message where it wasn't.
Cold crafted.
Um, and you know, what you're asking is something as simple as like would you
like to see, you know, rental projection on what we think we can do for your home?
We've been very successful helping other neighbors, something like that.
Very simple, late lift.
You're not asking for them to sign up right out of the gates.
And, um, Those little messages work, and then it gives you the opportunity,
gives you a little bit of an inch, gets you their foot in the door, and then
you can build out, uh, performa, then you can kind of go over, you know, your
seven key messaging building blocks of what makes you unique, your USPS
and, you know, features and benefits, compelling offers and all those things.
And then hopefully you get them.
But.
I would recommend, um, there's many different, you know, services
that do this, but use a specific tool that's meant for this.
So like Mailshake is one, uh, Lendless is another great cold email outreach, but
also if you don't know how to write direct response copy, and there's definitely,
again, like I said, an art to it, find somebody that does know how to write
direct response copy, have them write like a three email campaign sequence for you.
We're big fans of Upwork.
You're probably going to hear me talk about Upwork a lot.
Just hire somebody on Upwork for a couple hundred bucks and just have them write
it for you and then just put that into Lendlist or Mailshake and let them,
uh, you know, send that out there.
And off he goes, that brings us to number five, they send direct mail consistently.
So direct mail is not dead.
The vacation industry, many people think, uh, you know, they're, I've
had many partners, very successful partners with us kind of roll
their, their eyes on direct mail.
They're like, you know, look, we're a technology based company.
We're forward thinking like seriously broke direct mail.
Well, guess what direct mail works in a vacational industry is one of the
few industries where it still works, but you gotta be consistent with it.
You also obviously, Hey, you have to be, you got to leverage that.
We talked about before there's seven key messaging building blocks.
USP's, features and benefits, call to action, compelling
offer, all the other ones.
But you have to be consistent.
I would much rather send a thousand postcards six times over the course of
a year or six months than I would have to just drop in 6, 000 all at one time.
There's a compounding effect there.
People are not ready to make a decision all the time.
Again, we talked about the rule of seven.
There's really a compounding effort, you know, the R and again, the ROI
is there, the math pencils out.
I don't know how old this is, but I had a stat that I remember I
said in one of my presentations previously, but the CASA sends 7.
5 million mailers per year.
They wouldn't do that.
They tracking all of this, right?
They wouldn't be doing that if it didn't work.
And I actually read, if you actually dig into their investor deck, their
organic CAC or customer acquisition cost is actually a third of the
cost of what their M and a was.
So they were spending on average 6, 700, I believe on an organic CAC basis
versus a 21, 000 on an M and a basis.
So a third of the cost.
So look, if the cost is doing it, that's why they send 7.
5 million mailers per year because it was our number one, you
know, ways to grow organically.
One of the things that Vicasa has done well is push, push,
push for homeowner acquisition.
If they're nothing else, they're consistent in their homeowner acquisition
marketing that has been systematic and on point since the beginning.
Number six, they have the right person in the business development role.
And I think this is an incredible discussion point.
I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this.
I'll be a little candid and vulnerable right here.
I mean, here's the thing.
I, we can do everything right on the Venturi side.
We can get the right lists.
We can help them create the best marketing campaigns.
We can send out those marketing campaigns.
But if they don't have the right person in that role, closing the deals.
They're never going to be successful.
And, you know, this was kind of a epiphany, I guess, last February for
me is I actually had two partners cancel back to back from each other.
And when I looked into their system, I logged into their, uh, their
CRM, the one person that 34 new untouched leads and the other one had
like 20 something leads untouched.
And when I called him back, I was kind of like, Oh, sweet.
It wasn't us.
Wasn't our fault.
You know, they, you know, they just didn't do their thing, you know,
thinking that they would stay on.
And they're like, yeah, Brooke, you know what?
We hear you, but we're still canceling.
So it's like, we did everything in our power.
We did everything successfully.
We generated the leads, you know, we got it at a good CAC or a CPL
cost per lead, but they didn't have the right person to close that.
And that was like an epiphany for me.
It's like, you know, it's so important to have that right person.
And, but if I looked across other companies.
So one thing we do is.
We do culture index.
Uh, there's also predictive index, which is just as good.
So we do these psychometric personality assessments on many
of our partners and consistently, especially in the early days, when
I was onboarding every person, I was going on site with every new partner.
I would notice the companies that were successful.
One of the common traits is they had a really good, strong business
development rep in that role.
That was very responsive, which we'll talk about in a second, but they were just a
good salesperson, but they were the right.
They were that right profile that right psychometric personality assessment, and
they will do I would notice they would do three X the output of what many of the
other people were doing shameless plug, you know, then Tory actually we launched
a fractional business development team, and we did this specifically because we
knew the exact profiles of what people were and we did all this really not
even to make money, but just so people would stay on the platform because if
we could plug in a fractional business development role, we're breaking even on
that position and they're closing deals.
They're going to be more likely to stay on the platform.
So it's kind of ironic, we're pulling in, you know, people into a software
platform just to, you know, reduce churn.
And, you know, even if it's, like I said, at a break, even it works, but,
but yeah, the, the, if you have the right profiles, you know, the trailblazers,
the persuaders, sometimes even, you know, daredevils or mavericks or,
or rainmakers, uh, even enterprisers sometimes too, they will do three X the
output of most of those other profiles.
I see it all the time.
You can get everybody right up to the point, but if you're not calling
it back, if you're not following up, sometimes even just the desire to want
to talk to new people, your efforts are diminished pretty dramatically.
Again, candidly, that's what's so challenging about our business.
Um, I can do everything, right?
We can, we can kill it, crush it.
But if they don't have that right BD person in there, There's a
high probability it's actually not going to be successful.
So we've actually tossed this out in some of our leadership meetings.
It's like, do we do culture index on all of our prospects in advance and make sure
they have that right person in the role.
And if they don't have the right person in the role, And if they choose and,
you know, give them the option to sign up with our fractional BD services,
but don't literally not even take on anybody unless they actually do that.
And, uh, there's a solid argument then of why that is, because we know if they have
the right BD role person in that role, there are retention is incredibly longer.
It's the success of the ROI is incredibly better than if they
don't have that person in there.
What are some of the metrics inside the system?
You could say on a Weekly basis or monthly basis.
You're like, okay, I'm going to look at these four metrics to decide if my
business dev person is the right person.
And what would you say those four metrics are first?
And we're gonna talk about that.
That's the number seven point.
But responsiveness, they have to be responsive and they just have
to have a good closing ratio.
You want to see at least a 25 percent close rate.
And if you're getting below that, it's, it's hard for the, a lot of times
the numbers to pencil out because it does cost a lot of money to generate
new leads, uh, on a cold basis.
But if you're generating them in there and you're getting about a 25
percent close rate or higher, there's almost always a pretty decent ROI.
And, but again, those, a lot of things that are flushed out through those
psychometric personality tools, you can get that in the interview process.
Really cool.
So we've touched on this number seven.
They're incredibly responsive.
Every vacation manager we speak to, they want to grow.
They want to add new properties and they want to know what the
silver bullet is that that does it.
But.
The irony is they, they want the flashy things, right?
They want the beautiful marketing, the pretty postcards, pretty
landing pages and stuff like that.
But it comes back to like the fundamentals, you know, blocking
and tackling, it's like pick up the damn phone when a lead calls
or respond really, really quickly.
You know, Mark Roberge, who is a, he was like employee number three at HubSpot.
He was the chief marketing officer there, chief revenue officer.
And now he's actually a Harvard professor at sales.
And he owns a couple of VC firms.
Um, but he says, if you connect with a lead immediately or call them back
within two minutes, the likelihood of success is 10 X and just waiting one hour.
I'll say it again, 10 X versus waiting just one hour.
And it's about 10, 000 times more likely if you wait a day.
So, I mean, with our fractional BD people, a team, like I've been out
of dinner with them with clients and they will literally answer the call.
You know, some people think it's rude, but they'll actually answer
the call at the dinner table, even if they're with their family.
And they'll just say, look, you know, thanks for calling.
You know what?
I'm actually having dinner with a client.
I'm having dinner with my family.
Would it be okay if I called you back and, you know, half hour an hour
or, you know, what's the best time?
But just picking up that phone sometimes because here's what happens.
They're just gonna they're not gonna leave a message and they're just gonna
go to the next one, you know, and we actually have some data to back that up.
So we actually jade on our team who I know you've met.
Jade is awesome.
Oh my God.
She's incredible.
She, uh, she went around, she secret shopped a hundred, uh, professional
vacation rental managers, and she inquired about, she just specifically
called on like their, um, you know, property management services.
And by the way, like here's a little data point, like.
Call your numbers, like go to your website, pretend like
you're an owner and you want to sign up in your rental program.
How challenging is it?
Call your number.
Do you have to go through the phone tree, which I highly recommend you don't do.
Um, do you, you know, does it go to a voicemail, which most of the time
it does, you know, just what is that experience like secret shop, your own
company, you'll, if you see how difficult it is, You will change some things
immediately, especially when you realize just again, how valuable these leads are.
So Jay went out, she secret shopped a hundred companies.
She inquired about property management services.
And like the results were like astonishing people when I picked
up the phone 34 percent of time.
And this is after her going through like all the call trees
and everything else menus.
And then when she left the message, which again, as I said before, who
leaves messages anymore, they only called us back 57 percent of the time.
Which means most management companies are missing the majority
of opportunities that come in.
So I, I'll give you a perfect example.
Like, um, I, I was looking for some help with my property down
and I have a personal vacation down in Bethany beach, Delaware.
I was looking for some help on it.
I was calling around some different companies.
One, one guy's website looked awesome.
He was a young professional, was in some kind of career, did a career
change, just looked really good.
Another one was, You know, didn't look so great, you know what I mean?
But he called me back on Sunday immediately.
I mean, immediately, I guess what the other kid never
called me back ever, you know?
Um, and who am I going with?
I went with it together for the second guy, the guy that, you
know, called me back on a Sunday.
Who's he's like a 70 year old man.
You know what I mean?
Doesn't use a computer, you know, doesn't even he mails me physical invoices, you
know, um, but he was quick and responsive and he got the business, you know?
So, um, again, the most successful companies we see out there, they
have 100 percent connectivity rate.
So when Jay did that exercise again, say what you will about some of the large,
you know, venture backed companies, the Casa had 100 percent success rate.
Every time she secret shop them there, they're doing something right.
They understand the value of that.
Sometimes I think about when I've shopped for things, I'm going
to buy a large purchase or, you know, a service I'm looking for.
And I'm at the front end of this funnel and I'm calling people.
I'm thinking, and I'm not getting them to call me back or like, I'm
having to work to give them money.
And I keep thinking like, if I'm working this hard to give you
money, how hard is it going to be when I'm trying to get my money?
Right.
And, and that psychological thing, it has to be happening with homeowners.
Like if it's this hard to sign up, how hard is it to rent my place?
How hard is it when I've got a problem with a work order or I got something
going, you know, wrong with my property.
I think making their lives easier is their idea, right?
Because you can do this yourself.
The reason why you hire a property manager is to take friction and work
and hardship out of your life, because you're going to go off and do the
job that Earned you the property.
So if you're going to make it harder as a property manager, how
much value do you really have?
That's a great point.
Steve, every touch point throughout the process is an indicator of how
well run your other, your operation is.
If you've ever gone into a restaurant and you'd look back in the kitchen
and it is just, So spotless.
It is just and they're not screaming.
They're just running in a nice efficient manner.
Like that's why I love open kitchens.
You know, I remember my wife and I went for our anniversary last year at Delta
Healdsburg, you know, kind of nap on Sonoma area and um, we actually had an
open kitchen concept and we actually got this one table that was right in front
of the, it was actually like a bar that was overlooking the, uh, the kitchen.
And just seeing how methodical they were about everything, how clean
everything was, and guess what?
It was one of the best meals ever.
You know what I mean?
So it's like, when you have this well run operation and every other touch
point, it's usually a good indicator.
Or conversely, if they're seeing, you know, miss mishaps and missing
appointments and non responsiveness in the early days and early phases, you know,
it's, uh, it's probably a good, uh, early indicator that it's our canary in the
coal mine, that it's probably, there's some, some trouble underneath there too.
Even if you're like, you can say, Oh, well, I'm just not focused on sales.
I'm operational.
The truth of the matter is, say it or not, but if that isn't your focus
and you think you can get a homeowner to doing that in your homeowner's
mind, that's exactly what they're thinking , this is a reflection of how
my relationship is going to be with them.
If I were to ever sign up with them.
Brooke, thanks so much for coming on the show.
I got one last question for you.
What is your favorite thing about Costco?
Oh, my gosh.
You know, I am sure other people have said this, but it's got to
be just the culture of the team.
Like, I've never seen a team that just works so well together.
One of the greatest experiences I've had, and I've told the story
in some of our all hands meeting.
When I went to visit you guys in Park City on site, starting off the meeting, you
know, going over your, uh, the orange, uh, credo, you know, and reading through that.
And the way, you know, your, your team members would share
the stories and experience share.
Going through that, I think it was such a cool experience and I've
never seen any company do that.
Uh, we sure appreciate that.
Yeah.
And, and, you know, it's these people who, uh, truly believe in what they're
doing that's made it so special and we're all really grateful for them.
Brooke, again, thanks for coming on.
We're so glad to have you.
And maybe we can come back and do another one on how to know if you've hired
the right business development person.
I'd love that.
Let's do it.
Let's make it happen.
Thanks, bro.
Thanks, Steve.
We've got orange credo