Welcome New Clients Joe & Shannan DiRaffaele

John: So Joe, how did you hear about us? 

Joe: I met Frank a couple years back, and I've been in dialogue with him. I've been watching a lot of the mutual top producer friends I have around the country that use your services, and I'm really impressed with the work that Vyral Marketing's putting together for them. In speaking with them, they've been very happy with the quality of the work and its results. Our past clients and sphere of influence business is very important to us. We love those referrals. We do what we can to keep growing and expanding those relationships. We thought this would be an outstanding tool for it.

John: Summarize where you're at with your business right now. What are your goals moving forward?   

Joe: We've been riding the roller coaster for the last decade in real estate here in Vegas. It's been 21 years of doing this, but the last decade has been the most interesting ride. The market shot through the roof and then fell on its head, and we were in Vegas which was the bottom of the barrel. We had all the worst statistics. So we fought and climbed our way through all that. We've come out the other side. In the last couple years, we've got back to the traditional business model that we built early in our careers. We really have some great relationships with people that are out there. We've been in the community and we're real active. Ultimately, our goal and objective is to keep expanding those relationships. Not just expanding them in numbers, but expanding the depth the relationships we have with people. The closer that we can to the people we know, the more top of mind we become. That obviously creates better opportunities for referrals, and that's what our main focus is.

John: How many people do you think you have in your database? 

Joe: There are probably about 6,000 people [in the database]. From a close relationship standpoint, I would say probably 800 to 1,000 people locally. Then we factor in our other real estate relationships that we have around the country. We do get referrals [from them]. It seems like everybody knows somebody coming to Vegas, retiring here, or what have you. There's a couple thousand there as well.

John: Great. Are you doing anything to market to those people right now? 

Joe: We do network. We are visible out in the community, and we call them. But no, we don't do any other formalized marketing. We did years ago, but when the market collapsed, everybody here was losing their home in foreclosure. They're upside down, and the only time they wanted to talk to us was if we were doing a short sale.  People were kind of putting their heads in the sand. They didn't want to talk about it. The reality is we stepped away from it. And we stepped away from it for awhile, except for communicating via phone, because at that point we could tell who we were dealing with.

John: So why hire us? Why not try to do this yourself? 

Joe: Shannan and I already wear 15 hats each, in terms of what we do on a day-to-day basis. Real estate is a part of our life. It's not our entire life. Obviously, it is the vehicle that provides income and allows us to live an exciting life everywhere else. Quite frankly, I think if we took this on, we'd be starting a whole other business, and it just does not make sense for us to do that. We're big believers in doing what we do best, and we try to surround ourselves with the people that we feel do the best at what they do, so that we get a great partnership. Without question, from everything I know of your company – what I've been watching, the relationships I have with other top producers around the country – you guys fit that bill. So it was kind of a no-brainer.

John: What results are you expecting? What does success working with us look like to you? 

Joe:  We get a pretty good amount of business from our past clients sphere of influence. I think last year we did just over a 100 transactions, and I think 67 of them came from either doing business with past clients again, or from them referring us business. So, we feel like we do well on that. What I would consider to be a success would be two parts. Number one, expand that number – make it a greater number. We are growing our business in other areas, so we're not as worried about increasing the percentage of overall business coming from it, just the units of production. Number two would be really developing the kind of presence for the past clients sphere to the point where they think of us the moment real estate is mentioned. The dot is connected, and they don't have to pause for a minute.