"I guess I was more or less running my own watered-down version of what it is you guys do for my team now in 6 different markets and 5 different states. With Vyral....the engagement we're having and the conversations are so much more powerful. I'm fairly confident I'll be able to tell you that the 4 deals a month from our database turned into 8 or 12. What I love most is that you guys are always reaching out to me. It's not just about quality of service, but about a message I should consider or a way to tweak my video. I love that!"
-Vyral Client Brian Gubernick
[Full Transcription Below]
John: I am here with Brian Gubernick, who has been a Vyral client now for 6 months. Why don’t you tell us about the results you’ve seen so far using Vyral Marketing?
Brian: It’s been pretty interesting. I think it’s important for me to explain what I was doing before doing business with Vyral. I have a pretty sizable database and it’s somewhat unique because I operate my team in 5 different states. I have agents on the team in Denver, in Phoenix, Michigan, and Portland, and our database is rather diverse. For quite some time, we’ve been interacting with our database and, before Vyral, we were using video through BombBomb.
The greatest advantage from Vyral was I was able to become so much more efficient in terms of our interaction from a video perspective, using Vyral over BombBomb. We were shooting like 56 videos a week, and they were terrible quality. I could never get the camera right, and we kind of accepted it and said it is what it is. Just from an efficiency standpoint, working with your team as a central point of contact, I can’t even put into words how much happier I am, just from the logistics of the actual operation.
We were using BombBomb, in addition to calls to our database. However, when we were interacting with them it was more of a blind call, if you will. In other words, we had all their names and were just cycling through them regularly. As anybody on Vyral knows, you are getting your reports, and the reports are accurate in terms of opens, clicks, and all of that. Now we’re much more targeted in our phone calls. We’re still cycling through our database, but we’re changing the order in which we’re doing it based on the interaction or lack of interaction with the videos that are going out.
In addition, I was sending my own messages that I was writing with the mindset of “I want another touch to the database.” I was writing my contacts and using what others were using that I thought would sound like an effective message vs. being as calculated and as scientific as you guys are with your messages. I guess I was more or less running my own watered-down half-ass version of what it is you guys do for my team now in 6 different markets and 5 different states. The results, with a database my size, they’ve always been below what I thought it would be. We do roughly 400 deals a year and if you’re only doing 4 deals a month out of your database, that’s well below what any good database should produce. With Vyral, granted it’s only been 6 months, but without question, the engagement we’re having and the conversations are so much more powerful.
A lot of the interactions we’ve been having since working with Vyral are “I want to do something in the spring.” Spring time is obviously right now, and people are looking to do things. I know because of the interactions, the experience that our clients are having, being so much greater than it was, I know we are going to see a significant response or result from the Vyral efforts over the past 6 months right now, in the springtime. I don’t think it’s really played itself out yet for me to give you a fair number, but if you check back with me in another 6 months, I’m fairly confident I’ll be able to tell you that the 4 deals a month from our database turned into 8 or 12 because the quality of our interaction and the professionalism of what we’re presenting is so much higher.
John: Cool. So, we don’t have a lot to measure for you in terms of ROI yet, but I think we really just got you going at the end of 2015.
Brian: Yeah, we started working on things about 6 months ago. By the time I got my content and data to you, it wasn’t as simple as me shooting a video. I had to figure out universal messages, we had to mess with a variety of different templates, and a brand that had to be changed to an extend for your purposes, which was a great thing. We link to a Facebook account a lot of time, so what does the branding look like? I was unwilling to put time into it because my team was managing it. But we’re not social media experts. What we are experts in is phone prospecting. We know how to convey a message once we get someone on the phone, but in terms of interacting with them through video and through email, we’re novices. You mentioned we didn’t get rolling until December; it’s probably because I took 45 days to get the right content and right message, and I owe it to Maddie and her team for helping me get that message together.
John: How much time are we saving your teams every month?
Brian: Here’s the thing, from a time perspective, every month with the BombBomb videos, we had 6 different templates, that required 6 different videos, shot by 6 different people who were not in my office in Scottsdale. Let’s say Gwen in Michigan, who is 2-3 hours ahead of us in timing, is shooting her own video and sending it over to the home base, and now we’re editing it. It’s unbelievable how much time we were spending doing this. Believe it or not, we would get so frustrated doing this that everyone wanted to strangle each other because it was tough to get the right video, right angle, and all the stats, and then I had to review it.
I would spend at least an hour or two hours every send out, going through every video and watching them myself. We do just over $3 million in commission, but I can kind of back into my hourly wage. I looked at my hourly wage and know it shouldn’t be spent reviewing BombBomb templates. If I’m spending 6 hours each month, that alone is a couple thousand dollars in hourly wage. Now, I get a video sent to me and 98% of the time I have no change or comment to make. This isn’t me saying, “Hey, I got you on the line, let me tell you how great Vyral is.” I would be the first one to say if I had some challenges or if something was taking too much time. I’m nitpicky with this sort of thing, and I don’t want to mess it up. It probably takes 5 minutes before we send out the video. I’m going through the data when we get it back, but that’s part of the business. The only thing that takes me time are the videos, and I’ll generally sit down with my business partner Jason Abrams and we’ll knock out 5 videos at a time. It takes us an hour every month and a half or so. It’s not that big a deal at all. I probably cut my time down to 1/20 of what I used to spend.
John: What took you so long to hire Vyral Marketing?
Brian: Well, you know, that’s funny. It’s a great question. I’ve known about Vyral for a while now. I’m a Keller Williams guy. I’m in the same room with a lot of people that have been using Vyral for a long time. Actually, Frank and I talked about Vyral a few years ago. The reason I didn’t do it, Frank will tell you, is I was running my team in multiple locations. I didn’t feel comfortable that we’d be able to roll it out in all the different locations. I know you guys have made some tweaks, that you’re always in the lab making some changes. Eventually, I went to Frank and explained his product was something I needed at that point. You know, I could’ve just been blind before, too. I remember talking about this multiple location expansion with him, and it wasn’t a good fit for me at the time, but six months ago, I recognized you were more than there and I felt good about having a conversation. It moved quickly and wasn’t that big of a decision at the time.
John: It sounds like the fear was, I don’t know if this was going to work. It seems that was addressed and you felt totally comfortable. Were there any other fears?
Brian: I don’t think there was a fear of the system not working, because I knew your reputation and I saw a lot of the material out there already. I knew it was effective, but I was concerned whether your staff could handle this different sort of team. We’re a big team in multiple locations. Maybe I got wrapped up in it too much, but I was concerned with the logistics than I was necessarily about the message. Once I got comfortable with not only how you deliver the message, but the people, you have top notch people. I’m a fan of not necessarily figuring out what I’m going to do next, but instead, who am I going to do it with. You have a lot of the right who! I always tell other agents and brokers about it. Gary Keller says it all the time to agents. Every time you hit a ceiling in your business, it’s usually because you’re a relationship away. It’s kind of funny. I started looking at Frank and Vyral as a relationship to get over the database ceiling we were hitting. That was really it. It was more so vetting the who compared to what and how you’re delivering. It’s more of who will spearhead this and if I’m willing to trust my 35,000 or 40,000 person database with that. It’s proven to be a great decision so far.
John: Great! What do you enjoy most about working with Vyral?
Brian: You know, this is going to sound ridiculous. What I enjoy the most with my current accountant, this CPA was doing my taxes for years. I called him one day and said, “Jim, you’ve been doing my taxes for a while. How many times have you called me with a suggestion on how I could limit my tax liability, with a strategy to reduce my tax exposure or anything? Every phone call I explain to you some strategy I read about I reach out to you about, you’re never reaching out to me and thinking forward.” He was always reacting. He answered, “I never call and it’s not something I do.” At that point, I decided he wasn’t the accountant for me. I found someone new and explained how I want them to be provocative, and now we have a great relationship.
I know it sounds like a silly analogy, but what I love most is that you guys are always reaching out to me. It’s not just about the quality of service, but about a message I should consider or a way to tweak my video. I love that. A few months ago, Maddie reached out to me and gave me a heads-up about Frank’s email. It was about interest rates, seller home valuation, and what you need to know about it. Frank wrote it better than I described, but she suggested sending it out in place of a video. I appreciated her telling me and we sent it out. I’m trying to pull up the statistics of that right now, since I saved the numbers from when we ran it. I don’t have it, but we drove about 600 visits to one of my seller home valuation pages from this basic email Frank wrote. I had about 300 people fill out the form on my website. The rate was about 46% of people that visited this page that came directly from Frank’s email. They created seller opportunities for us. 46% was the highest by like, five times, that I’ve ever driven anyone to those valuation pages. I used Facebook, Google, and a variety of resources and the bets I got to was 10%. Frank’s email delivery kicked out nearly five times that. 46% rate -- we killed it. I was ecstatic when I saw that. I think I sent something over to Vyral about how crazy it was, and how you needed to know how well you were doing. I can’t wait for the next email that does something like that.
John: What would you say to someone that’s on the fence about hiring Vyral? A lot of those people are going to be listening to this.
Brian: I think that the first thing I would ask them -- and again, I have the privilege of working with a lot of agents, to teach and coach. It’s always surprising to me how many agents I talk to about the sources of their business. I ask, “Do you know the sources of your business?” Once you know the source of the business, you know the cost that it took to acquire that business. Let’s say you do 50 deals a year. Do you know the exact breakdown as to where each of those leads came from? Can you determine the acquisition cost of that lead? That way you can compare apples to apples.
Number one, if you’re on the fence about Vyral, I would challenge you to look at how you’re marketing to your database. What’s the cost of doing that, and how many leads are you actually getting from it? Then you can assign a cost per lead. Once you know that number, then you can make a more educated decision on what approach you can take. Oftentimes you’re going to sit on the fence because you don’t know your numbers. If you know your numbers, you can make a decision. You should also ask how much time you are spending on your current marketing plan to your database? How many hours and minutes are you spending on all the random tools that are out there? There are so many companies out there, so how much time do you spend driving it and what is your wage? How much does it cost you to do that? Take the hours you’re spending on it, multiply it by your hourly wage, and see how if it’s worth your time.
That was a real eye-opener for me. When I realized my hourly wage was $500 and I’m spending 20 hours a month trying to work on my database, that’s a sizeable number. I can go to Vyral for pennies on the dollar and they can drive it for me. I look at your team as my marketing department now. I’m like, here’s my partner. Then I get to have these weekly conversations with the Vyral staff, with Maddie and everyone, and she’s acting as my chief marketing officer. Again, know your ROI on the current marketing for your business, and know your number. Multiply your hourly wage by the amount of time they are spending on the project and is it really worth it? Once you do that analysis, it becomes a no-brainer. Now you just have to hold Vyral accountable to the results, which is something I love very much about your company as well, is you give me permission to hold you accountable for it. You don’t say, “Hey Brian, hang out and cross your fingers. This is going to work, just trust us.” Instead, you send it all out and follow up, saying, “What kind of response have you had? How do we tweak this message?” I love that conversation. Transparency and accountability are big things in my world.
John: That’s great. Last question. Sometimes, we’ll have clients who are currently with us but might be struggling a bit listen to these. You’ve had success in just a few months. What advice would you give to people on how to be successful working with us?
Brian: The first two things that come to mind for me are I encourage anyone who is working with you who hasn’t gotten success just yet, reach out to Vyral. I know that there’s not a time, there really has not been a time, where I’ve sent an email or called and not gotten an immediate response. So I’m constantly challenging and trying to break the system and asking you guys for solutions, and you always deliver. If you’re not taking advantage of the coaching relationship that Vyral’s offering, you’re really not holding your dollars that are spent on Vyral accountable. You just threw it out there and hoped it would work. They’re happy to be held accountable. You’ve got to be willing to do it. So number one, communicate with Vyral, share your results, and make the adjustments as necessary.
Number two is more of a general marketing, lead generation thing in general: things take time. I don’t work for Vyral, I don’t get anything out of this, but if you’re going into something thinking that you’ll give them two months and if they don’t deliver you’ll be upset, I think that’s a poor mindset. I can tell you that the vast majority of leads that we generate on my sales team, it takes, for phone prospecting, my average deal from the time we first talk to someone to the time we turn them into an actual listing is 17 months. That doesn’t mean we don’t have some immediate business, but it also means we have some people who are three years out. All I’m trying to say is that it takes a year and a half for my internet and phone call leads to materialize. I’m not saying sit on Vyral for a year and a half, but recognize that you’ve got to incubate your database. They have to get used to this messaging. They have to get used to this new brand. For many people out there, the frequency is going to shake some people up. This is a new system and it does take time.
I’ve seen my view rates increase in a short amount of time. We cleaned up my database. My unsubscribe rates are going down each month. It does take time, so that’s no excuse.
If you think this is a magic bullet, I would caution you there and just stay the course. Stay the course. This is a big thing for me. There are people who do this at a higher level than me and they’ve gone before me. Take pride in being a phenomenal copycat. If the best agents in the country are now associated with Vyral, there’s a reason for that. So figure out what that reason is. They’ve probably failed their way forward, like I did with BombBomb, learned from that, and if it works for the best, who tend to be the neediest - I’m sure your staff over there is saying behind closed doors that Brian Gubernick is a big pain, and they say it lovingly because we work together well. They say it nonetheless, and if Vyral is taking care of some of the needier agents out there, I assure you that if they are working with your database, they will deliver. You just have to give it time to let it play out.
John: Cool. Thanks, Brian.
Brian: No problem, thank you.
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