Michael Vervena with iGuide talks about the start of his career and how he got involved in services helping realtors. Michael also discusses the importance of virtual tours in making informed decisions for certain properties. DJ and Michael also discuss the importance of providing accurate information on the size of the property you’re representing. Last, Michael talks about staging and gives tips on how to make the most of it.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
If you’d like to get more information on the services offered by iGuide, visit their website by clicking here.
This episode is brought to you by Follow Up Boss. Get your 30 day trial by clicking here.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
Today’s episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by follow up boss. The best of the best know that outstanding follow up is essential for a thriving real estate business. And more than ever, they’re using follow up boss the leading CRM for real estate to make it happen. Follow up boss helps you convert more leads. Robert slack, founder of the number one real estate team in United States uses it in his $1.5 billion business. Deborah Beagle uses it to guarantee that agents who join her team get two homes under contract in their first 90 days, and Barry Jenkins uses it to automate everything to run his $200 million team on a 25 hour workweek to reclaim his work life balance. For a limited time follow up boss is doubling their free trial for keeping it real podcast listeners go to follow up boss.com forward slash real for 30 days of unlimited access, no credit card required. That’s follow up boss.com forward slash real for a 30 day free trial. And now on to our show.
Welcome to keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show and in just a moment, we’re going to be answering a very important question, which is how should I structure my virtual tours and my photos for best customer engagement. And we actually have an industry insider Michael Verbena from Ai guide to talk specifically about these practices. But before we get to Michael and I guide, I want to remind everyone the best way you can help us grow. Actually, I’m gonna ask you for two things. Normally, I just asked for one. But it would really appreciate you helping us out in both things take less than a minute. But if you do like the show, and you want to help us continue to reach a broader audience, please do two things. Tell a friend to think of one other realtor that you know that could benefit from hearing from top producers and industry insiders like Michael and send them a link to our website, you can find us at keeping it real pod.com Or just have your friend pull up a podcast app search for keeping it real and hit that subscribe button. And the second thing is please leave a review for us whether you’re using iTunes or it’s now known as Apple podcasts or Stitcher or Spotify or Pandora or Google Play Anywhere you listen to our podcast, please leave us a review. It really helps us reach more people. But thank you very much for continuing to support our show. I think we’re at episode like 313 right now. So we’re super, super grateful for everyone because you’re the reason that we can continue to grow and support the show. So thank you, and now on to our interview with Michael verbena.
Today on the show we have Michael Nirvana from Ai guy. Now let me tell you about Michael Michael Rivanna is a manager at AI guide which is a proprietary camera and software platform for capturing and delivering immersive 3d tours DPL four plans and reliable property data. He enjoys the process of working with others to build something unique, whether it be a product brand or a company and since 2016 Michael has established the AI guide brand and Canada as one of the leading 3d technologies and has most recently led the expansion of AI guide internationally. Visit I guide at go i guide.com. That’s go the letter ai guide.com And we are super excited to welcome Michael to the show to introduce this technology to our audience. Michael Welcome.
Michael Vervena 3:53
Welcome. Thank you for having me.
D.J. Paris 3:55
We’re really excited to have you here. Before we we talk all about you know the sort of virtual life that that we are all had been living for the last several years. No thanks to Coronavirus. Be very curious to hear about your sort of path into real estate. How did you get into this industry?
Michael Vervena 4:18
Yeah, sure. Yeah, that’s great. I well, I guess it started out I I’m a child of a product of two Realtors I guess at the end of the day. My dad is a broker owner for the last 50 years and still at it doing commercial residential real estate. My mom was a realtor for a dozen years and successful on her own right. And so I’ve always kind of been in the periphery of the real estate world. You know, listening to other episodes of of top performers on your show where they talk about how they got into real estate and, you know, in part because of their parents who were, you know, uncertain about getting into it. You know, similar story with me is, I didn’t really want to get into not less less about being in real estate, but I didn’t really want to be in sales, however, ended up finding my way into consumer packaged goods world got into sales and marketing and product development and really started to enjoy and embrace kind of the things that we do making, you know, I guess I built a career on improving processes, improving products, and you know, making the sales process easier and making the messaging easier so that people better understand of products and services are a right fit for them. So I ended up moving on from that career and helping out a lot of small and medium sized businesses in with their sales and marketing, lead generation, any removing hurdles, and helping them to streamline their processes and getting closer to their customers. And hence, it’s how I joined up with I guide, you know, came across them fascinating technology. They were pivoting, you know, when I got started, they were a company that were servicing real estate agents directly, they were, you know, producing the 3d virtual tours and photography and marketing services for photographer for agents directly. And they had just pivoted in order to scale. And that’s when I joined on on board, and we had probably less than 50 service providers around 50 service providers at that point in time. And now we’re over 1000 service providers were in 26 countries were coast to coast in the US. And yeah, it’s been it’s been fun, we’ve probably done over a quarter million 3d tours, and drafted over a half a billion square feet in, in floor plans. So it’s, we’ve come a long way. And it’s exciting to see this grow, and especially in the last couple of years. So I’ve got back into the real estate game, not directly but you know, servicing this industry. And it’s exciting. It’s nice to see how this industry is growing.
D.J. Paris 7:09
Yeah, it is really impressive. Being that, you know, virtual tours have been around for some time. But you know, I think maybe in the last several years, when we went into lockdown, and we started, you know, looking around our own, you know, four walls, most of us were probably working from home. And maybe we started thinking about, you know, as just sort of workers, do I am I going to return to the office? Or do I want to upsize? Do I need a home office? You know, am I am I going to be, you know, in? Am I going to have a home a home office life that I didn’t have previously. And, you know, for me, I know specifically I decided to upgrade. And even though I’m not working from home, it made sense for me to explore other options. And I will tell you, the very first thing that I as a consumer looking to find another place to live, we’re looking at when I was exploring different options with condos, and, you know, various sort of different types of properties here in Chicago was I went straight to the virtual tours. And I’m always surprised at how I was always rather I should say it this way, I was always disappointed a bit when a listing wouldn’t have a virtual tour. So I’m curious to get your thoughts on how important virtual tours are and what sort of trends you’re seeing as from, you know, buyers and sellers, with respect to how important they are to a listing.
Michael Vervena 8:46
Yeah, great question. You know, quite simply, you know, that 2020 This shift in terms of what we’re all dealing with and living through different two different extremes in Toronto we’ve been in we were in lockdown for probably one of the longest periods of time. And definitely a shift in terms of the use of this technology, not only in residential real estate, but we’re seeing it in commercial real estate and all these other sectors, in terms of being able to convey space and show and demonstrate what a space can be or look like communicating that and so, you know, we have a we have a technology that documents property. And what that does is it gives the ability to to be in a space virtually as simply as you know, you can just be there. And so what that really does is that helps empower people to make informed decisions about that environment. Because you can go in there now and you can, you know, get comfortable with understanding what that space is like you can measure on screen you can figure out if your furniture is going to fit. And one big part of what we provide is the floorplan side, right on the actual image 3d tour. And people find that as important, if not more important than just the 3d tour. Because as you’re walking through that space, you understand where you are in that space and where you’re positioned, how you’re fit and flow works for you, if it’s a business, or if it’s, you’re a buyer looking to buy a home, understanding that, hey, my baby’s rooms gonna be close to my room where my teenagers rooms gonna be on the other side of my room, is this going to provide enough space for me within the home, but to talk about, you know, the industry as a whole, you know, prior to COVID, you know, this was it was a slow game in terms of using this technology, to better market properties. And what’s interesting coming from my background, and consumer packaged goods, you know, marketing to consumers, when I came into residential real estate world, that it was interesting to see that there was a shift going on within the industry, you know, Zillow quickly become the gone from being a disrupter to being in the incumbent, because they had won the eyes of the consumers. Eyes are the prize. And, and so now you’ve got people like Amazon that have come into the industry. And so you’ve got this, when you’re searching for a home online, you’ve got all this wealth of information and data and great information about searching for a home. And you know, when you’re on these search portals, you can find out walk scores in the schools in the neighborhood, and you can really zone in and understand if the neighborhoods can work for you and your family. But then you kind of drill down into the house information. And as you pointed out, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, I literally looked at a property yesterday, that was $2.2 million, that had seven cell phone pictures on it, that were low res, and I couldn’t even make out with the house like a $2.2 million home. And then you go the next home. And it’s it’s a half a million dollars, they’ve got a 3d tour, drone video, beautiful photos that really convey like what this property could be for you. And so when we saw COVID hit, definitely that demand went up because people couldn’t go into homes, they, you know, they couldn’t see these properties. And even though we saw people buy homes sight unseen previously, with the 3d tour and the floor plans that just, you know, definitely did skyrocket and drove that. Over the last year, we’ve seen that come down a bit, probably more so in the US and in Canada. But that that overall trend has increased greatly over previous years. And what it’s doing is is creating a better consumer shopping experience for the home buyer. It’s giving them the information that they want. And, you know, as a consumer, myself, you know, I think everybody can relate that we’re all you know, even with working from home, I seem to have less time now than I did before. And you know, I don’t have time to run around and do those errands that I don’t know how I found time for before. And you know, if I’m searching for a home, I want to make sure that when I do go look at a home, it’s the right home for me, I’m a better qualified buyer, I’m not wasting the sellers time, I’m not wasting the agent’s time, not wasting my time. And we’ve seen redist we’ve got this tremendous feedback that this has helped to sell homes faster and made this process of the transaction easier as well.
D.J. Paris 13:33
The other thing that I guy does, that I am a huge fan of and i Everybody should be a huge fan of is that it also accurately measures rooms. This is one of the biggest challenges that Realtors face when either listing a property or showing a property. You know, obviously, buyers have specific needs around room sizes. And, you know, we you and I were speaking before we went on the air today about how challenging it is because oftentimes realtors will use previous MLS data to to to put up a new listing, which may in fact be inaccurate. And so the buyer shows up the rooms aren’t as advertised, or at least with respect to the measurements. And you guys solve for that.
Michael Vervena 14:25
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I can relate just to kind of a personal story is probably more impactful with pictures. But, you know, going into last winter, we knew we knew that we were going to be sitting outside a lot more and you know, maybe have friends outside distancing. And so I got hit on Instagram with a firepit and I’m like, This is great. I’m gonna buy this. This is perfect for you know, sitting outdoors, and it showed to be like about knee height. There was a picture of a person’s leg. It showed that it was you know, 19 inches tall and in a pocket Really 90 inches wide. So it was, you know, it probably just been bigger than a milk carton. If I don’t know if I’m beating myself if anybody knows what milk cartons look like anymore, but that size, and you know, six weeks later shows up in my mail, and it was the size of a candle holder and my, my family has not let me live this down. They teased me about this. And it was misrepresented and advertised. And even though they showed it was that size, I you know, they actually showed the inches and they totally misrepresented what they sold me. And you know, that was damaging to that company’s brand. And when I mentioned that company, I wouldn’t buy anything from them again. You know, and it was, it was disappointing to me as a consumer, and I’m actually questioning if I would ever buy anything again, on, you know, Instagram, to my wife, my wife, we said, Well, you didn’t research it. So, you know, shame on me, partly for that. But you know, at the end of the day, it was misrepresented. And that happens all the time in terms of when you go to sell a home. We see it all the time, just at the end of last year a case there was this a case here in southern Ontario. And I see that the cases all across North America, where you know, the buyer was a first time homebuyer went into the home. The home was advertised the they advertised a range between 2020 500 square feet. Yeah. Which is problematic in itself. You know, you know, it’s like if I sold you a used car and told you it’s between 60 and 80,000 miles, you how would you think like you need a new car? Yeah, I
D.J. Paris 16:35
wouldn’t trust you.
Michael Vervena 16:36
Yeah, exactly. So that’s what they said, the homeowner told the buyer, it was 2100 square feet, agents said it was 2000. And when it had an independently appraised, it was 14 150 square feet. Now, wow, that is that is a big difference. And you know, definitely, you know, upsetting, especially in markets, you know, we’ve been dealing with hot markets for years now. And you know, across North America, you’re seeing that prices of homes are going up. And in Toronto, they’re over 1000 bucks a square foot. So you can quite quickly add up in terms of what that cost is on that home. So what we do is, you know, we have a camera system that’s using a lidar time of flight measurement system. And so we’re measuring, you know, 1000s of points in each room. And we upload that data that data is uploaded to a team of drafters who draft with those four plants, they follow a prescribed methodology of measurement. And now if you don’t know what that is, it’s quite simply, as you know, you’re gonna get a final answer in terms of what the total square footage is on the home. You know, back in math class, you got marks for the final answer and your math problems? Well, that methodology of measurement tells you how you solve that problem to get to that answer, what you included, what you excluded in the rules about how to measure that home. And so then now you have an apples to apples comparison, when you’re looking at two properties, what you included, how you measure the home, all the data points that went into it. And so that gives you like that math problem, the rest of your marks, and so if there is a dispute, you can quite quickly, you know, talk to the other person, or whoever has a different measurement for that home. Because you send six appraisers into a home, you’re gonna come back with six different answers. But you know, it’s all within a range of, you know, a couple of percent if you can stay within that range. Okay, now that’s acceptable. And you can go through exactly how you got to that answer. So it’s defendable for you as an agent, when you use a builder’s plan. Sometimes it’s kind of like baking a cake, I’m going to it’s an as built plan. It’s not necessarily always built to that plan. They change things I worked as a framer for years, you know, you’d move doors and windows and you know, there will be changes in that in that property. So what is the final outcome of that baked cake, when you bake that cake, you have a recipe at the end, you have that final product, you have to go back and and measure that home to find out what that accurate measurement is. And those measurements are rather. And that helps, you know, protect you as an agent protects us your brand, and you’re providing your consumer with precise and accurate information. One last point on that is realtor.com did a study in 2020 where they asked you know, you asked about the market and what how COVID affected it, but they asked consumers what is it that you wanted to see and sure the first thing that came back was a 3d tour because they couldn’t get into the properties, but they wanted accurate and accurate listing information. And you know, so that reliable, sorry, accurate and reliable listing information. And if you’re using someone else’s MLS listing, you’re using tax data, you’re using a builder’s plan if you don’t know verify that as an agent, you’re opening yourself up to risk. And you’re doing a disservice to either the seller or the buyer, depending on if it’s bigger or smaller.
D.J. Paris 20:09
Yeah, absolutely. And I think this is a really important thing. And it’s also a way to differentiate yourself as an agent amongst all the other agents out there to say, Hey, I’m going to not only sell, you know, do a virtual tour for this property, but we’re going to accurately measure every single room to give the most immersive experience to a potential buyer, but also accuracy. The and to speak to accuracy with to a seller is really, really a nice value, add, in my opinion, to be able to say, hey, we’re not just going to take beautiful foot photographs, but we’re going to do a secondary piece on top of this, which is making sure each room is measured correctly. And then we’re going to create an environment where potential buyers can play in those rooms, and see themselves with and be able to put their own personal items in those rooms, you know, virtually. So it’s so important. And I know that every not every, of course, but a good number of buyers and sellers who are, you know, somewhat technologically savvy are going to explore options like this before they end up putting offers in. And so it from a cost perspective, you know, what does this look like to an agent? You know, what is this? Is this an expensive process? Or is it reasonable? Or?
Michael Vervena 21:39
Yeah, I think, you know, again, it’s reasonable. So, our services are usually offered through third party photography, and marketing companies, sometimes in House Media Department for a brokerage or team will have their own system. And so typically, it’s bundled in with, you know, photo package, and then they may do other things as well. I mean, if you look at the eye guide, it’s an iframe like a YouTube video is an iframe, it’s embeddable, you can put it on your website, it acts like a single property website, in a sense. And you can include things that, you know, all the top things buyers want to see when they’re searching for a home online. That’s not for me, that’s from NAR home buyer and seller study comes out every year, you know, they want to see photos, they want to see property details. You know, that’s not only the rooms and the rooms, the number of rooms and the price of the home. But what are the room sizes, what are the total area calculations of the home. And number three that comes up every year, our floor plans, because floorplans depict how that home fits and flows for them. And so it provides all this detailed information, you can include things like video and drone, video, 360s, and drone videos, it just depending on the provider that you use, it’s all for your services, but this can be delivered. And I think, you know, typically, it’s around, you know, for an average sized home, I would say between 250 and 299. With photos, all those other things like video and drone stuff would probably be extra, but that would be 3d tour for plans, room measurements, area calculations. And photos are typically in that package. Now that ranges from market to market, you know, in in Northern California, you know, San Francisco area, it’s probably going to be a little bit more than, you know, in some other markets that are out there as well in the Midwest. So it’s all dependent on the independent buyers, but it’s quite reasonable in terms of the cost of the home. It’s a fast, easy process. And the nice thing about it, it’s a marketing tool. So you get all that content together, you put that out on the MLS like through your multimedia link, and that’s gonna populate on realtor.com and on Zillow, and it doesn’t populate, like down below. So Zillow used to, you know, you know, they used to have it down below below the fold, they’ve seen the importance and the search portals have seen the importance of this. And in Canada realtor.com. They embed it right on the main listing page, Zillow and realtor.com right underneath the main photos, they have 3d tour, and you can click on that. And now you can have this immersive experience the benefit, you know, beyond the buyer where now the buyer has all this information that really qualifies them and gives them a good understanding of the property. The benefit to the agent is you’re keeping people on your listing much longer like we see the analytics. And we’ve got the analytics back from a lot of the search portals and told us this that, you know, people typically will stay on a listing much longer really dive deep in understanding that property. To boot. They’re going to see your branding there and understand that you’re the agent that’s putting this out and that again just bolsters your And and what you do to help people market and sell a home, which is one of the top things that buyers want our sellers, one
D.J. Paris 25:08
sounds, it’s such a great observation that you do want people lingering on your property that you’re selling virtually, or in person, as as much as you want, we know that, that that’s always a good thing. And by the boy, you just made a point that I want all of our listeners to understand is you want people hanging around your listing as much as possible. And by giving them a immersive experiences that will keep them engaged, and they’ll be able to explore the the property, obviously much better than just through static photos. It is it my question is, is there ever, you know, in your your business, of course, is through virtual tours? Is there ever a reason not to use a virtual tour? I mean, it seems to be the what the consumer wants? And what what it if you don’t have it, I suspect, you know, like, I when I went looking for my property, I had a neutral to negative feeling if I didn’t see a virtual tour, because then I went oh, no, I have to go see the property. And I, you know, and with photography, too. That’s the other thing that I’m curious about, is I think consumers are wising up to the fact that we don’t live in an Instagram perfect world. And when we see professional photography, we understand that there’s a little bit of staging that’s going on that that yes, the room doesn’t really exactly look like that. But with virtual with virtual tours, you can actually see what the room looks like. Because I know when I see, we have 800 agents here at our company. And when I see the photographers that they use a boy, the sky is always perfect. You know, for an exterior shot of the house, the interior shot are all perfect. But again, does the home actually look like this? The virtual tour will confirm those those particulars, right?
Michael Vervena 27:15
Yeah, you’re right. And well. So to kind of touch on that I’ll start with the last the photos first. The photos are that emotional draw. Same with video video is really about building agents branding to and join them in, in what we’ve seen in the photos kind of draw you in. And I know personally, because I’ve been looking for a home for a couple of years in the GTA. And it’s such a hard market to to try to buy in, especially when we’ve got such a limited area that we were picking. And my wife will look at it. And she goes, yeah, now don’t like it. Because the photos are not very good. I’ll put it that way. And it doesn’t it’s not enticing. But I’m like, no, no, look, look, the size is right. Like this is good for our needs. This was fit her needs. So I have to drag her there to go look at it. Well, on the opposite end, you know, she’s taken me to some homes, because the photos are gorgeous. The house is beautiful. And I’m like, Yeah, I think it’s too small. Like it’s gorgeous. But we’re gonna have less storage. You know, it’s just not it’s the right round rooms. But if we’re going to be struggling in there. And you know, in a couple of cases, the agent didn’t put the floor they had floor plans. They didn’t put them online. Yeah, had to go there walked in the house in the yard, right? We just wasted our time. Let’s go. And it’s like, so those, you’re right, it does draw you in and keep you there longer. What the beauty is, is if you have a home that’s rough or a rental property, or you know, something is demolished, because I’ve seen, I’ve seen crazy images out there and stuff that you necessarily wouldn’t put those 3d tours on, you know, nice thing with our tours, you can turn off certain rooms, you know, if you’ve stuffed that everything in the garage full of stuff or, you know, storage, messy storage, closets and stuff like that if it wasn’t staged, but the floor plans, you know, don’t show the mess they sell they sell the potential the home. And that’s what’s nice about the floor plans because it shows you where the storage is where the light comes in where the windows are, if you need to change things around and it really actually provides more information. I think Zillow does a homebuyer study where they see that four plans are higher than 3d tour is number two on their list. And wow, again, it really kind of gives you a good understanding of the fate and flow of their property if that works for you and your family. But, you know, again, the 3d tours if it’s, you don’t want to show some of those images. Yeah, absolutely. You can turn those off and just use the floorplans and some of the photos to depict it.
D.J. Paris 29:44
So it’s a really interesting so for our listeners whenever you have a listing Are you number one having a vert including a virtual tour, are you including floor plans, which that’s probably the easily overlooked option and You know, he’s absolutely right. Because I know that floor plans they do in some way. It really, Michael’s right, they give you so much more information than a static picture. And you can plan Whoo, I guess, pardon the pun or pardon the using the same word AP, it’s built into the word floor plan. So what do you have floor plans, people in particular, you know, who have a personality type where they like to, you know, visually see things and plan for that next move are going to want to, you know, put those things together. And that enables you to do that. So for plans are a must. virtual tours, of course, are also a must. And AI guide essentially does all of this for you. I’m going to pause for just a moment to acknowledge our sponsor for this episode, which is follow up boss now after interviewing hundreds of top Realtors in the country. Do you know which CRM is used by more than one of our guests than any other? Well, you guessed it, it is follow up boss. And let’s face it, following up is the key to taking your business to the next level follow up boss will help you drive more leads in less time and with less effort. But don’t take my word for it. Robert slack who runs the number one team in the United States uses follow up boss and he’s built a one and a half billion dollar business real estate business rather in six years. And follow boss also integrates with 250 different systems, keep your current lead sources. And they will integrate with all of your different platforms there and get this follow up bus is so sure that you’re going to love their CRM that for a limited time they’re offering keeping it real listeners a free 30 day trial. Now that’s twice as much time as they give everybody else. But you have to follow the special link to get that 30 day free trial. So visit, follow up boss.com forward slash real Oh yeah, and by the way, no credit card required. So you can try it through 30 days, risk free, but only by visiting follow up boss.com forward slash real follow up like a boss with a follow up boss. Michael wanted to also talk a little bit about sort of do’s and don’ts with respect to photography with with listings. I remember when I first entered this industry, and I’m not a practicing agent, myself, our listeners are practicing agents. But I remember 15 or 12 years ago, I guess that there was a prevailing thought that keeping the room as as bare as possible was a good idea so that people could visualize their own stuff within the confines of those rooms. Curious to to know how that’s changed and shifted over time. And if you have suggestions for our audience about how staging should happen when somebody has a listing.
Michael Vervena 33:03
Sure, yeah, and and then that’s the nice thing about how we offer our services through third party real estate photographer companies and, and, you know, all these these these companies are marketing companies, they’re they’re professionals in terms of really helping you kind of, you know, finding the right partner, but really helping you in terms of staging that. And on the staging side, that’s that’s part of it is reducing the amount of clutter, taking down personal photos, there’s there’s lists out there in terms of where you know, top things that you can do to, you know, make that property more appealing, changing paint colors that are very dramatic, to, you know, more muted, more whites making it look more, you know, fresh and modern. And, you know, the more things that you do, and if you’re your agent, or the company that you’re that the seller, or the agent is working with, you know, procure, like professional services to help you out with those things, because they do bring a lot of value. On the other side of it too, you know, from our 3d tour side and the photos, you can you can take, you can shop those out to third party providers, or a lot of the companies will offer these services that to virtually staged spaces. So if it is a builder’s home, or if it is an empty apartment or condo, you can get some of the rooms staged, which also help kind of, you know, help people to envision what it looks like or what it could look like. And that’s a more cost effective way to be able to, you know, add those things. I think, you know, on our side from what I see in terms of adding value, and this is a bit of a tangent.
I think in terms of any digital assets that you’re going to get and if you get propelled So in digital assets, professional photos, a 3d tour or floor plans, get the room measurements, area calculations, all that stuff together. The big thing that we, you know, I look at, I look at 1000s, and 1000s of agents in their analytics, and I can go in and look at the listing and see how they’ve done on that listing. And, you know, sometimes unfortunately, there are agents that will pay for all these services, but then they don’t really market those services or share them, and you get great analytics. And so one of the big pointers that we kind of share is about getting the most out of your online listing is by stage share and show stage that stage your digital assets just like you would stage your home. You know, getting those professional photos done, getting all your digital assets together, and packaging them up in a way where you can deliver them. Like I mentioned earlier, you know, you’ve got this into an AI guide, you can put that out through your MLS system and habit show right under the main photos on Zillow or realtor.com or realtor.ca, for examples. And that’s the stage part but the big part where you get a lot of value as an agent. And again, homebuyers home sellers are looking still one of the top things that home sellers look to their agent for his to help sell and market that home is share that you know market that property you get it on the MLS, you get it on Zillow, you get it on realtor.com and realtor.ca. You you share it on your social media. And in some cases, when I look at some of these analytics, their agents daggits 1000s of views through their social media. Now I don’t know if they’re boosting or they’re just gonna, you know, huge followings. But a lot of the top agents will, you know, get tons of views on these properties. And why is that important, because then they can show results to their clients. So one thing that we provide is analytics report, you know, here every week and analytics report, you can take that to your your home sellers and say, hey, you know, feel good about how many people came in looked at this home, because this is how many people came in looked at it virtually, this is how many people returned and looked at it again, this is how much time they spent on it. And here’s all the ways that I got your property out there for people to see. And the reason why I love Analytics, you know, being a, I guess a kid of Realtors is that I think a lot of home sellers don’t realize how hard Realtors work. They work weekends, evenings, they’re busy all the time. And part of the you know, I guess the not appealing part of real estate is get to work for yourself. Your entrepreneurial is fantastic, but you’re working all the time. So it’s that that toss up, this is something tangible that you can show to your clients to say, Hey, this is the value that I brought to the table, and you know, tuck them in after your solo home, especially in a market like across North America right now, where homes are selling in days, we’ve been dealing with that in, in Ontario, Southern Ontario in Canada for years, and you know, home sells fast. You know, your sellers, you know, they want to make sure that they’re their next referral, that they say use my agent because they did this, this this for me. And they showed me how they did such a great job for me. It just brings more value to your talking your clients and you make sure that they’re happy with what you brought to the table because referrals and winning listings this is, you know, a key part of law. I guess what my dad always used to say bread and butter, right?
D.J. Paris 38:26
Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. And I think that it’s really important. So you create these great virtual tours for your listings. And then you have to promote them on social media. At the very least, of course, they’re going to also distribute to Zillow, Trulia realtor.com, as you mentioned, but promoting them on social media is really important for our audience to understand. Because not only does that get more eyeballs on the property, and hopefully, maybe even a few additional buyers come your way. But it also is a branding exercise for you to showcase. Here’s what I do for my clients. Here’s why when people hire me, why they hire me and what I can do for them. And so it really feeds every part of your business, including, of course, the end result for that particular client, which is to sell that property, but it also introduces everyone in your social sphere, to your process. And by pushing and it creates content that you want to probably, you know, most Realtors on a regular basis are thinking, what should I be posting on social media right now this is content that you can promote and you can re reshare it as well. So maybe a year after the home is sold, you can repurpose that content and say hey, you know, here’s something I did a year ago that I thought was really neat. So there’s really a lot of benefit in addition to just helping get a home sold for a higher price point. For to the to to for the seller, but I think this also really speaks to marketing and branding. And just separating yourself from every other agent out there who isn’t offering the service. Michael, if anyone is interested in having their photographer connect with with, with that guy, what’s the best way that they should reach out?
Michael Vervena 40:21
Yeah, just go right to go guy.com. And you can, you can connect with one of our product experts right there. And they’ll provide your demo and all the details that you need to better understand that for sure, they can reach directly out to us there. And that’s probably the quickest path or you know, reach out to us on our Instagram or Facebook as well. And I can provide some links for you to put in the show notes.
D.J. Paris 40:49
We will definitely have links in the show notes for everyone. You can also go to go i guide.com. That’s go Gio and letter i guide.com. Go i guide.com. And ask your photographer your photog to, to connect with I guide because they’re there what they’re doing is so impressive. It’s going to really take your business to a different level. Because what you’re going to be able to do is it’s going to create assets for you to not only sell the property that you’re currently working on, but also brand yourself as somebody who really goes that extra mile with the most cutting edge technology. So Michael, thank you so much for being on our show and be half of our audience. We want to thank Michael for his time today to share some of those tips about best practices around the aesthetics of listing a property and doing virtual showings and Virtual Staging. And also, on behalf of Michael and myself, we want to thank our audience for continuing to listen and support our show. Best way that you can always help us grow is to tell a friend think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing from this great conversation we just had with Michael and send them a link to our website. Best way to do that. Just send them right over to keeping it real pod.com and they can stream every episode we’ve ever done. We have over 300 ready to stream there as well as our Facebook page, which is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. Every episode we’ve ever done can also be streamed right from our Facebook page. So tell a friend please. And thank you, Michael so much for coming on the show. And we will see everyone on the next episode. Thanks, Michael.
Michael Vervena 42:36
Thank you. It’s great. Appreciate you being here.
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify
