How do you ensure you have the highest chances of success? I may not have the exact formula but I can tell you how you don’t succeed…. That’s by putting all your eggs in one basket and it’s a very risky strategy. Cue “Strategy Stacking”!
So many agents choose to focus on one or two pillars in their business and then they just run with it.
And you may also be thinking “Yeah, but isn’t farming putting my eggs in one basket?”.
I’m glad you asked. The answer is NO! That is, if you learn to strategy stack.
Traditional geographic farming historically has been taught to be pretty straight forward. For most agents, they learned to just send out a bunch of post cards and flyers and then door knock the area. They were told if you do this enough times, you’ll eventually see success. So, if that is your idea of what farming is about, then of course you are going to think farming is risky.
What is Strategy Stacking
You are probably wondering, “What the heck is strategy stacking then?”
I’m glad you asked! The quick explanation: Strategy Stacking is a concept I developed that teaches agents to “layer” their strategy together.
Strategy stacking helps you accomplish a lot when done correctly. With a properly laid out strategy stacking plan you are able to reach more people, protect your business against shifts in the market, it helps you save money and time, and you will be able to reach more people, more often. But most importantly, it helps you create a safety net in your business which will help you stay successful in your farm.
The Safety Net
You create this safety net when to tie your strategies together because you create this almost “spider web” of protection from your strategies. By doing this effectively it not only helps you increase your chances of success but at the same time decrease your chances of failure. It’s a way to hedge your bets, if you will.
It’s one thing to say you should stack your strategies, but how does it help create a safety net? I want to start with an analogy. If you’ve ever played the game KerPlunk as a child, then I’m sure you can picture all the little sticks holding the marbles up. (If you haven’t, Google it once you are done reading this.)If you only have a few sticks in it’s unlikely the marbles will stay up. If you’ve got a bunch strategically placed sticks, you have a much higher chance of keeping your marbles in one place. And thus winning the game! This is just like your safety net approach when you learn to strategy stack in your farm. You can insulate yourself from market shifts and technology changes and other factors that can bring your business tumbling.
Covid is the perfect example. There are many agents who had built incredible businesses based on door knocking and open houses. Their businesses were thriving! A lot of agents flock to these strategies because they are inexpensive and pretty easy to do. Cue covid and BAM… Their entire business plan went up in smoke overnight. Where I live, for most of the last 14 months we haven’t been able to do open houses or door knocking. So what is an agent to do?
Well, if they had a solid strategy stacking plan in place, they would have had a much easier time shifting to the other strategies that they had in place and double down on those. This would have protected them against these changes and keep them in the game.
S.C.O.P.E. It Out
So how do you ensure you have a good balance in your business? You follow the S.C.O.P.E. method that I developed. I’m not going to dive into it fully, as I’m going to save that for another blog, but the general premise of the scope method is to balance your business by ensuring you have a balance in the following areas:
- Self-Promotion
- Community
- Online
- Prospecting
- Education
When you learn to pull in strategies that check off multiple methods stated above, you start to create stacked strategies. You begin to create that safety net in your business.
What if you wanted to create a strategy that was educational based, reaches the community and can be tied in online? This would be great because you could hit 3 of the 5 methods. You could do that by sending a monthly (fun and exciting – not boring) newsletter. Your newsletter could include events and things happening in the community, you could partner with some local businesses and offer some educational articles and you could offer it online and promote is via social media and get them to sign up.
I’m sure you noticed that one strategy just checked off 3 boxes. And what if you added in an upcoming home seller seminar that you were going to run next month, and you also added in a list of off market listings and a list of our buyer’s needs/wants? You just checked off the self-promotion and prospecting methods as well.
Your one newsletter just hit all 5!
Now imagine that was only one pillar and you added in some others. Let’s say you decided to interview local businesses. You jump on zoom and do a weekly interview series with all the mom and pop shops in your area. Not only are you now educating your audience about the amazing businesses in the area, you are getting in front of their audience, so you are self-promoting, but you are also providing online content to your own audience that you’ve built up. You are also engaging the community by offering giveaways and promoting these businesses and getting the community to support them.
Before you know it, your video series just checked all 5 boxes as well. These 2 strategies you just launched are reaching more people, and getting more eyeballs on it because you were intentional about strategy stacking.
If you are following along, imagine if you now had a handful of strategies like this that all tied together? Like your community newsletter promotes your business interviews you’ve been doing and you use the interview series to get new followers and get the community to sign up for your newsletter.
Do you see how you can start tying all these together, and how powerful strategy stacking can be?
Compare Strategy Stacking To Traditional
Just for a quick second, compare that to old school farming where you may have sent out monthly post card saying how awesome you are and then went out door knocking asking if they neighbours are thinking about selling their home. There is no S.C.O.P.E. Method being applied here. And there is definitely not much strategy stacking going on.
Old school farming is the few sticks in KerPlunk… Strategy stacking jams those sticks in there and the marbles don’t even move!
So if you are trying to build your farm, do you want to stack your strategies? Or do you want to put your business at risk with only a few pillars that don’t give you a safety net? The choice is yours. But I know what I’d choose.
Happy Farming!
Ryan Smith – Founder/Creator
Launch Your Farm
Be sure to check back on our blog and show to get awesome information about geographic farming!
Blog – http://www.LaunchYourFarm.com/Blog
Show – http://launchyourfarm.com/category/interviews
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