Bill Savage: Heartfelt Relationships with Heartfelt Cards

Commercial  0:00  
The Whataburger buffalo ranch chicken strip sandwich is back, and it's still bigger and better than any chicken sandwich out there. More chicken strips, more Monterey Jack cheese, smothered in Buffalo and ranch, all on a five inch bun. There's so much crispy, cheesy, saucy goodness. You may find yourself speechless when someone asks, What's your favorite part? Not because you can't find the words, just because it's hard to talk when your mouth's full with this much deliciousness, the buffalo ranch chicken strip sandwich is back for a limited time. What a burger.

Podcast Intro  0:31  
Welcome to Real Estate excellence making lasting connections to the best of the best in today's industry, elite. We'll help you expand your circle of influence by introducing you to the leaders in the real estate industry, whether it's top agents who execute at a high level every day, or the many support services working behind the scenes, we'll share their stories, ideologies and the inner workings of how they run a truly successful business, and show you how to add their tools to your belt. Now please welcome the host with the most Tracy Hayes,

Tracy Hayes  1:06  
Hey folks, it's Tracy here with real estate excellence podcast. I've got a good friend of mine here today, and we're going to talk about a subject that is near and dear to me. And I think anyone in sales really focuses on this, thinks about this, but if you've been doing it as long as I've been in sales, bill's been in sales a little bit longer than I have, but for over 30 years I've been in sales, and this topic has been brought up, and that is staying in front of your clients in a long term play. I'm gonna tell you just a short story how this planted me, and when Bill brought this to me a couple of years ago. It just set off a light bulb for me. And I remember, in the early 90s, after getting out of college, I started selling cars, and they always talked about this guy was no longer there, but there were stories being told about the salesman that sat there, and people would just come in, they choose the car. And he got to a point, actually, in his in his career, where he couldn't even go out on this car lot anymore, but people would go out and pick the car, come down and sit with him. And he was still selling cars, year in and year and year out. And one of the things, one of the things they always mentioned, and this wasn't the only time, is sending out birthday cards, sending out anniversary cards, whatever was, but they were sending out cards. So a couple years ago, when I met Bill. Bill is a an agent with all real estate options in Jacksonville, and he's an experienced industry long term, he introduced send out cards to me. And there are companies, other companies other than Send Out Cards, but Bill and I use Send Out Cards, and it has made a game changer for me. So Bill, welcome to the show. I appreciate you being here. Tell me how you got introduced to send out cards.

Bill Savage  2:49  
Well, thanks, Tracy. I appreciate you having me on. I was introduced to send out cards by a fellow I didn't even know he was an agent in Toronto, Canada, and we were at a conference in Orlando, and he just walked up to me, said hi and all that. We introduced each other, and then he showed me these cards and said, this was a new system he was using to keep in touch with clients. And my first thought was, okay, this is old school, all that. But I looked at the cards, and the cards were top quality. And then I thought I had an aha moment just right then and there. No one does this anymore. And I was looking for a way to separate myself from the herd. And one of the because everybody just text messages, emails, the occasional phone call if they're brave enough to call somebody right, right? Because nobody talks to anybody anymore. And I thought, you know, cards are a great way for me to stay in touch with my clients. Thank them for their business, acknowledge little Johnny's birthday, or they got a new puppy, or somebody got married. And I thought, What a great way for me to just stay involved with my clients. Easy to do. All this is done on a computer. I just create the cards. I hit go, send it. Boom, it was gone. Didn't cost much. Old school meets new school, exactly. Old school becomes technical, yeah, exactly. But it was still tactile. I love the fact that I could send a thank you card or Merry Christmas or Happy birthday or whatever in a solid form, because I know you see it all the time on Facebook and other places, people are always wishing people a happy birthday. And, you know, I always think, well, who remembers who wished anybody a happy birthday on Facebook? Right? Stop for a minute and think, Well, when was your birthday, and who said Happy birthday to you, right? Do you remember? No, no one does right. But if I could same thing with

Tracy Hayes  4:40  
LinkedIn, they actually put the little thing and you just press, press, click, click, yeah, and

Bill Savage  4:45  
you don't. And the person who's receiving that knows it took zero effort. They appreciate, don't get me wrong, they appreciate, and I appreciate whenever somebody does that to me, but to get a nice card in the mail acknowledging something. Nice that I did or said or or accomplished that. I think that's just special. It was a way to separate me again. Back to my original point. I was looking for a way to separate myself from the herd. That's why I do it, and I still do

Tracy Hayes  5:13  
it. You know, it's funny. You tell that story. I don't think you actually told that. You may have told me when we originally spoke, but that's exactly the reaction I got when you introduced it to me. And I wrote down the quote. I actually wanted to look I looked it up this morning, because many people John Maxwell uses the quote. I've heard it in other places, but it's not how much you know until they know how much you care. And I've heard that and I got big in the John Maxwell, just prior to meeting you, and that resonated with me. On the caring part, I'm a big I'm a big guy. I'm from New York. I talk straight. Some people respect it, some people fear it. You get mixed emotions, I think, from everybody that meets me and where they feel I am the biggest. The biggest thing is those are, understand I'm I'm actually really a teddy bear, and I care probably as much as your mother does about you. I really do. I care about the other. And now, do I express it? No, I brought I was brought up with tough love, so when I saw the cards, yeah, I was like, here's how that big guy everyone thinks is a grizzly bear and scary, can actually reach out and say, Yo, I really do care about you. And when I first started, and it snowballed for me when I first started, the great thing about Send Out Cards, if you guys have never been or used it or seen one of their cards before, is you can go on someone's Facebook page, steal their photos, put it in their card to them. So some of the best cards that I made, I have a good friend, his wife, competed high, big in CrossFit, and they and send out cards. Has the six, you know, sided card, you know, it opens trifold card, and I took all the pictures of her competing and put them into this card. And I actually didn't even say anything in the card. I just sent him the card with the pictures, and the next thing I know, a few days later, she literally is videotaping herself opening that card, and she doesn't say anything either. And talk about, you know, pictures are, you know, 1000 words that had six pictures on it. She didn't have to say anything. She was blown away by it. I was blown away by the fact that, you know, things. So I reached out and touched her, obviously. And I've done things with people. They've done their anniversaries and so forth. I've taken their aunt, you know, because there's their photo, it's their special photo. Put that front on the front of the card I've done. I've had individuals, the gentleman who came down and spoke here at my company where I work at, and I took his went on his Facebook page, and he had just done some professional photos of his family. They were walking on the beach. Really greatly done, and I put that photo on the front of that card. I was doing a zoom call with him weeks later, whatever it was, and he's in his home office, and on the shelf behind him, where the books were, was my card, because it had a picture of his family on it. He treated it like it was a photo on the wall. He just put that card on that phone, so that card had his family on there, but obviously my name is on the back of that card, and he always has my contact information,

Bill Savage  8:31  
and you made an emotional impact on his life with that card. Exactly, you know, I mean, people love that. It's just, again, you make people feel good. And you know, I had a client one time. It was just him and his dog. He bought a very small house for me. This is years ago. It was his first home he ever bought. He was literally in tears. This is a man literally in tears when he closed on the house. It was that big of a deal for him, but it was just him and his dog as a shepherd, and every now and then, he would post pictures of the shepherd and him on Facebook, and I would do nothing but take that picture off the front, put it on a flat panel card, which is basically looks like a postcard, only it's a little bit bigger, and it comes in an envelope. And I would just put a picture of the dog on the front, and I would put a date or some short saying on the back. I wouldn't say much because I didn't need to, but I would send him those every now and then, send him a birthday card. And then one day I asked him, I said, What do you do with all those cards I've sent? You? Said, Bill. Every single one of them is on my refrigerator. They will not throw cards like that away. You put someone's child or their pet or a picture of them or some event that happened in their family, they will not throw that card in the trash. It will be in a an important place. And for a lot of people, the refrigerator. They see it every day, so that's where they put the pictures. If they have a mantle, maybe they'll put them up on the mantle. But. They will not throw it in the trash

Tracy Hayes  10:01  
cans. And if they ever Google, oh, yeah, who's that realtor? He's on the fridge. You're there. Yeah, you know, I've seen some impact. There's obviously some people take some great photos. There's some beautiful people, obviously, in this world. And I've put some of those photos on there, and I know it's, it's changed them. It's changed them, what they think of me. It's made an impact, but you're always in front of them. So what I do now? And actually just a step back, just, I want to touch base on a comment you made about the email birthday. You know, corporations today, we're in sales here. Obviously, everyone knows I'm in the mortgage business. We have a system, yeah, obviously, because we pull credit on everybody, everyone's date of birth and all that jazz. So the system pulls the date of birth and obviously the person's name and we know their address, obviously they bought a home. And we send out, it sends out an electronic birthday accordingly every month to those people. And I get some responses where people actually reply when they do, it does come back to me. It's, oh, thank you. Thank you. But I think the everyone knows that I really did not put that. I didn't sit there and think about put that video together. Obviously, the company put the video together. I'm probably not even in the video, but what I've started doing was send out cards as my list and businesses is going so great has gotten so great. I'm sending out birthday cards, and with Send Out Cards, I can actually put it in a small box with a couple brownies. And I just had actually an agent walk in here yesterday and tell me how great those brownies were. And she was upset that her husband ate, because there's two brownies in there. Ate one of the brownies. So it was impactful from that standpoint. But for the few dollars that actual cost for those brownies to send out individually, they open up a nice little box and it's like, oh, you know, they're like, going, Who in the world is this from I got a box? What's this? All you know, they're getting everyone gets excited when they get a package in there, especially when they don't know it's coming, right? And they open it up and it's from me, and on the back is basically my glorified business card. You know, not only did I hit them in the heart, but I also hit them in the mouth too, with the brownies.

Bill Savage  12:08  
The other thing too is a lot of people, I don't know about you, but my mail has been reduced down to vinyl siding, funeral plots, lawyers, lawyers, occasional real estate agents trying to buy any house that happens to come along, right? There's no personal mail anymore. So when you do get a package like that, everybody gets excited when they get what's in the package, right? I don't care what it is. They're just glad to get a package. But you know, it's nice to it's just nice again, make them feel good, you know? I mean, there's an ulterior motive here. You're doing it to be a decent person, but you're also doing it to game business, all right? And I think it's, I think it's probably the most powerful tool that I've seen. I've spent a lot of money on a lot of stuff that didn't do anything complete, web, shopping, cart ads. One time, spent $6,000 on that in one year. No business, but I get a lot of referrals from using Send Out Cards just by being in touch with these folks. There's other systems you can use that are out there. Frankly, I think Send Out Cards is one of the best, because I think it's one of the cheapest things you can do to expand your business and to make your clients know that you care, that you give up darn

Tracy Hayes  13:24  
well. I think, you know, especially in our business, I think someone in the car business, you don't need a lot of we don't. We don't need 1000s of customers for us to make a decent living. A few customers a month on a regular basis, plus new business that we're bringing in, we can make a really great living and to reach out and to touch everyone that you've touched before, that is already in your circle, that just had a transaction. They're talking about their new home. They're talking about the loan they got whatever interest rate, whatever it is, and to stay in front of them when you know that their friend of theirs is now ready to go buy a home, or they're ready to refinance, you know, they're talking, they're sitting there at their social you know, hey, I'm looking to refinance, yeah, or I'm looking to buy, buy new I'm looking to sell my home. And how better to stay in front of them than the reach out and touch them with that personal card. The emails get deleted if they even see the email. Because, you know, I get, you know, people got their spam filters up. They probably don't even see majority of the emails that they get, especially from these CRMs that are just generating, you know, these, these mass emails of birthdays and everything that goes out.

Bill Savage  14:43  
Yeah, I was thinking back when you were talking it just about that. You talk about the gin mill cards that go out. Not gin mill, but the factory produced birthday cards. The only birthday card I've ever gotten from a. Of someone who I purchased something from was my real life, my insurance agent. And it's a little four by five card. I know it came out of some paper mill in Minnesota or someplace. I know he had nothing to do with it.

Tracy Hayes  15:14  
He may have scratched on it. May just scratch the signature on a maybe on a list,

Bill Savage  15:19  
yeah, and that list got into a database, and the database produces the card so but, I mean, it's nice, I get it, but I look at it and goes in the trash. Now I go back to if, if my picture or my house or somebody important to me was on that card, they wouldn't be in the trash. It's just staying in touch with you folks, letting them know you care, that you care. I wish

Tracy Hayes  15:42  
I don't know how I don't never even looked at how old Send Out Cards is. You know, how old the company

Bill Savage  15:47  
actually is? I think it was started in 2004 or 2005

Tracy Hayes  15:51  
and if I actually, because I started in 2005 and I actually kept that mailing list from every client of the 15 years I've been in, in this 15 and a half years, been in this business, and had been mailing those people birthday cards for 15 years, where, where I would be at I just saw the other day, and I and I've got to take care of and why we were talking here, I went, ding. I said, I got, I'm gonna take care of this, because it's a nice young couple, you know, they, they had a but the builder we use. They built a home. And, you know, obviously I remember sending them the birthday cards, but they just had the birth of their first child. And of course, it's all over Facebook. Sure, there's no way to impact them greatly than to take a steal a couple of those photos, put them on that card. Because the thing when that, you know, we get cards from our you know, my daughter just got a her birthday. Her birthday is tomorrow. My aunt, her great aunt, sent her a birthday card. Okay, it was, it was a store bought card. It was nothing, you know, extremely special, but obviously, you know, she signed the inside and so forth. But those cards, yeah, some people keep them and pile them and shove them in the drawer. But if you're there are pictures on the front they they're not throwing they're definitely not throwing it away. And many people will just sit it, will pull it on there, put it on a shelf, or Mandel like it is an actual photograph in a frame.

Bill Savage  17:11  
Well, think about this too. Nobody has picture pictures anymore. They've got digital images that are on a phone or a computer. Yes, probably millions of them. No one breaks them out to look at them, right? You've got pictures of your vacation from three years ago.

Tracy Hayes  17:30  
Never printed one.

Bill Savage  17:33  
I'm guilty of it too. I keep telling myself I'm going to pick out the cream of the crop and get them printed, but I'm too lazy to do that. Yeah, so sending folks these cards with just pictures in them, that's that's almost a photo album for them to hang on to. That's why they won't throw those away, right? Otherwise, they got to go searching through their phone for where's my favorite picture from that vacation three years ago, or Hawaii Five year whatever it was, right? As, I just think it's a great way to help your clients. It's a great way to keep in touch. Like I keep in touch, I send a card. I'm in real estate, so I've got a thank you card that's going to go out, and then from that point on, I'm going to send I do this all the time. I send a birthday card. I send a half birthday card. It's just an excuse for me to send them another card, right? Because who gets half birthday cards, right? You get that from another very successful distributor and Send Out Cards Callie Teagarden, out of Texas, and she sent me a half birthday card. I've never even met Kelly. We've talked on the phone a couple of times and stuff like that. I got this half birthday card. And I said, that's weird. Then I thought, ding, that's a good idea. It's another way for me to stay in touch. So anyway, you've got the birthday card, an anniversary card from when they bought their house. There's the half birthday card. I send a Thanksgiving card because I'm truly thankful for their business, all right? And I send a Christmas card. So that's at least five cards a year from me. But then I also, every now and then, just throw out a hey, I've sent a thank you card out to everyone that's ever worked with me, just saying thank you for working with

Tracy Hayes  19:10  
right is you never know that moment when they get that card that the next person they talk to, maybe in the middle of or looking to get into a real estate transaction, looking to sell their home or buy your home. You don't know who they're talking to next. You don't know who's in their circle. That's kind of the the mystery gift. And when you get that call, because it happens out of the blue, you're like, oh my god, well, I just want to be talking to so and so. And I got your card in the mail, and I gave them your

Bill Savage  19:38  
number, and let's face it, we all say we're going to stay in touch with our clients, all right, send out cards or a card sending program, even email. The emails mean nothing. The text messages mean nothing. They're hearing gone, they disappear. But we all say we're going to do that, but we don't, because things get in the way life happens. And you forget, but send up cards to set up a system where they have automatic reminders that tell you when all these dates are. So you get an automatic reminder that up 10 days from now, it's it's Johnny's birthday or 10th Anniversary. It's the anniversary of when they purchased their home or got their loan right, or bought their car or or signed up with you as their insurance agent, or started working with you as their investment counselor. I mean, if you're in sales, you need to thank your people and who isn't in sales, right? I mean, my dad always told me, when two people meet, one person is selling another person something.

Tracy Hayes  20:35  
I've been watching a lot of Grant Cardone taking his university, and that's one of his subjects. Everybody's in sales on one level another, whether it's a kid trying to sell for mom that he needs to, you know, candy bar, or they need to go to McDonald's, that's sales. If someone is selling somebody something,

Bill Savage  20:52  
you're in sales. 100% if you're trying to get mom to take drive you to the football game, you're in sales, right?

Tracy Hayes  21:00  
So I want to talk about, we've told some great stories. And anybody in the show notes, if you want to contact and I'll put bills contact information in there as well, who wants to inquire about? Send Out Cards. You certainly can. You send out cards. You do get paid for for your referrals. So it's very nominal entry fee. But from the mechanics of it, I think Send Out Cards is designed for anybody's level of laziness or anybody's level of energy. If you have a great level of energy, like I did when I first started, I was pounding, I was I said, I'm going to make Send Out Cards pay. Because one of the great things about it is, for less than 100 bucks a month, you could send unlimited what they call heartfelt cards, birthday anniversary, just want to say hello, whatever. That's a heartfelt card coming from your heart to their heart for whatever reason. It does not matter. Unlimited. So I was going in, and I was just having fun with it, making all these cards and sending out to a lot of agents and so forth. And now, now I've slowed down because my business has gotten so to the point where I'm so busy and don't have the energy so much at night, but I do go in there, and every, about every two weeks, I'll go in and send birthday cards out for the next two weeks, and then go in and go and so, you know, twice a month I'm going in and I'm sending these batches of birthday cards so and lump sur they go out because it obviously takes five to seven days, especially for attaching to brownie, because they're putting them in the box and you know they're out the next day. But if you go in, if I go in there right now to send out cards, and I create a card, it will go out tomorrow morning, bright and early, and you get a little email that says your order went out. But for less than 100 bucks, it includes postage. So they've got so many hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of designs in there. Or you can completely design the car your card yourself, 100% front and back, and then different size cards. I've sent some of the eight and a half by 11 cards, I mean. And really blown away some people in my life, I've sent it to my parents. I've sent it to my son. I sent it to a couple and, you know, there was their, I think, their 50th wedding anniversary, and they had posted some original wedding photos on Facebook, and took that and put that into the I guarantee you, if I walk in their house, that card is there.

Bill Savage  23:22  
Just the other day, I had a friend of mine, they lost their Yorkie, right? It was not a good situation, but they lost their Yorkie. So I thought, You know what I'm going to do is I'm going to get an eight by 11. The large cards right now, those do cost extra. They're like a buck 50, all right? And there's a little bit more postage, because that's a larger card and all that, but it's not that much. Yeah,

Tracy Hayes  23:42  
the pay a buck 50 when you're on that unlimited plan for that large of a card, which you send out very rarely. Yeah, it's the size of a sheet of paper. You pay, you pay $10 for it. Oh, yeah, but, and then it's not even custom made.

Bill Savage  23:55  
Recent pictures they had taken of him put it on the front, both insides, and I just on the back, I said, you know little term of Bentley. Little Bentley is running around in doggy heaven right now. All right, sorry for your loss. Something like that. They're simple, right? With a couple of brownies, just to kind of ease, I feel better, but that's what you do. That's what the cards are for. And I don't. I never sell in my cards. I might send out one or two cards a year to some folks. It just, hey, you know, I love referrals, blah, blah, blah, but I don't sell with the cards. They already know I'm in real estate. I don't need to ask them for the business. And that's another thing I like about it. So I'm this is not it is a marketing tool, but it's more of a relationship tool. You're building a stronger relationship with your clients. How much you care potential clients? That's what you're doing. And people will know that people work with, people they know, like and trust, all right? And two. You establish that trust. You're just another name in the phone book to them.

Tracy Hayes  25:04  
That's right, that's right. So just read so they I, I have the unlimited plan. I believe Bill, that's what you do too. There are larger plans for larger they have things that you can set up to auto send people. Obviously, those are additional you name it, they've got it covered. And it really just takes a few moments in even if you just took 30 minutes a week to send out everyone, maybe you even just spoke to someone who called you on the phone and talked to you about real estate or talk to whatever you do in your business. It's a way to get started and then start loading those, those birthdays, in, their anniversaries and so forth, and you'd be amazed the difference it makes. Because, like I said, It's not how much you know, it's not how much you know until they know how much you care, and that really makes a difference. And I go back to John Maxwell, and he put into a couple of years. I'm hoping you don't see that person open that card on the other end, but, but, you know, they've got a smile on the other end. I mean, they're gonna, you know, they see the brownies. It's gotta, it's gotta bring that little whatever inside you, little smile to their face. And that could change someone's day. Could change someone's whole projection. You know, we don't know where they're at. Obviously, these people the dog, obviously we've cried more over dogs and for humans. Yeah, yeah, crying more over dogs and humans, for sure, when they pass. There's no doubt about that I've done. I'll get teary eyed if I start talking thinking of the two dogs that are great in my life. I you know, and it's been the many years since the first one that

Bill Savage  26:40  
I mean this big old football player, the big

Tracy Hayes  26:43  
grizzly bear the road so but Send Out Cards. Send Out Cards. Calm, like I said, you can read in the show notes and reach out to Bill, or I anything you want to know about. Send Out Cards. Our experience. Try it out. It's not you can. You can send out individual cards and pay for them. Or we do the subscription every month and have unlimited cards because we use it. That's up to you, and if we want to cancel it right now today, I can call them and I'm done.

Bill Savage  27:09  
There is a free account you can get that doesn't cost you anything, and you simply pay per card. I think it's like $2.75 a card, plus postage. So it's

Tracy Hayes  27:17  
still cheaper than buying it. It's cheaper you go buy a Hallmark card, you're gonna spend at least that the $5 easily just for a small card. So send out cards, reaching out to your clients, showing them how much you care and just and really from a marketing standpoint, staying in front of them on a consistent basis, completely. Bill, I appreciate you. Bill, what's the best way to contact you? Well, the

Bill Savage  27:38  
best way to reach me probably by phone or email to bill at Bill savage comm is the email, or you can reach me at 904-654-6470, but contact Tracy. He's the man. He knows what he's doing.

Tracy Hayes  27:52  
I'm just falling behind you. Bill, thanks for coming by today. Bill, sure thing. All right. You have a great day.

Podcast Intro  28:02  
Thanks. May be it for today's episode of Real Estate excellence, but we both know your pursuit of excellence doesn't stop here. To connect with the best of the best and really take your skills to the next level. Join our community by visiting Tracy Hayes podcast.com where you'll meet more like minded individuals looking to expand their inner circle and their personal experience that's available at Tracy Hayes podcast.com

Speaker 1  28:33  
your software needs to be compliant to win deals, but you also need your engineers focused on building your product, not pulling SOC two evidence. Enter a third option, make vanta your first security hire. Vanta uses AI and automation to get you compliant fast, simplify your audit process and unblock deals so you can prove to your customers that you take security seriously, plus vanta scales right along with you, backed by support. That's there when you need it every step of the way. That's why top startups like cursor, linear and replit use vanta to get and stay secure. Don't sock block your best engineer, set them free and get compliant fast with vanta. Get started@vanta.com