Auto-Flow 101: Why Flow Fixes Everything

Subtle skills, big results. Welcome to the Ninja Selling Podcast.

Hi everybody, and welcome back to the Ninja Selling Podcast. I'm Rob Nelson here today with our good friend Eric Thompson. And here's one thing you hear all the time in Ninja. Flow fixes everything. Why is that, Eric? Flow fixes everything, Rob, because people on average know twelve realtors. So all the nice ninjas that are listening to this podcast right now.

The deal is your clients, the people in your sphere, they know eleven other really nice people. They know eleven other nice realtors, not as nice as the people who are listening, not as uh expert as the people listening, but the bottom line is that people have choices. So we use flow to become the realtor of choice.

And people like me are blessed to know tens of thousands of realtors, thank goodness. And one of them is a new ninja named Vincent, who recently posted a question in the Ninja Selling Podcast Facebook group, and he said something along the lines of I'm new to Ninja Selling and I keep hearing about autoflow. What is it? Where do I start? And what I recall, Vincent, is you said,

I think I'm overthinking it. And the truth is you probably are, but we're here to spend the next few minutes talking about autoflow. So Eric, define autoflow by first defining flow.

Flow. Yes, let's start there. So what is flow? Flow simply is frequency of interaction. So when you're in communication with someone, you're in flow with them. So Rob, right now you and I are talking. We're in flow. So when you're talking to someone live face to face, You're in flow when you're on the phone with them, that's flow texting, a handwritten note, an email, something going out through snail mail, all of that counts as flow.

And so when you break that down, there are really two types of flow. There's live flow and autoflow, and they each play a role. Live flow is simpler to understand. That's when you're live with someone face to face or on the phone. Auto flow is when it's a one-way communication. You came up with that definition, Rob. I think that's really insightful. So it's a one-way communication. It's email, it's snail mail, it's social media. Ideally going out automatically. So that's why we call it autoflow.

Today's episode is Auto Flow one oh one and Eric first explained that flow is defined as frequency of interaction and the whole point of flow is that it's the mechanism that keeps you top of mind. And that's true whether you go down the right hand of flow, which is live flow, or the left hand, which is autoflow. Eric, the key idea of ninja selling is that people work with people they know, like and trust. Like you said, they know multiple realtors. So the one

Usually the one that they were most frequently in flow with at the time the decision happens. Let's talk a little bit about the decision window and why that's so important and how autoflow and live flow as a couple. will help that become the decision to use you. Yeah, the deal is the process that someone goes through that starts with Thinking about doing something, buying or selling, until ultimately buying or selling when the moving truck is in front of the property. That's a long process.

And the reality is the time that it takes for them to decide on who they're going to use as their realtor is a short window. So the research is it's anywhere from nine months to twenty-one months. between someone thinking about doing something, buying or selling it, and uh up until ultimately doing it, nine to twenty one months. And then it's only one to three days.

that they pick the realtor. So like you said, what we must be top of mind. We must be the one of the twelve, the one that they're thinking of. First when it comes to that window between one and three days. I would guess people listening have had the experience where a friend, a neighbor, an acquaintance uses someone else.

That can be very frustrating. And typically what's happening there and what's not happening there relates to flow. So you we use flow to be top of mind so that we are the one that they're thinking of in that very short window. Bottom line is this, they don't go back and say, who sold us this house back in twenty eighteen? They say who was the realtor that I was in communication with most recently, and that's Flo.

Yeah, exactly. So they say, gosh, I I just saw saw Rob at the game and and we had a nice conversation. Or I just got this great email from Rob w with a newsletter. I just got a market update postcard from him. Boy, he's really on top of it. He's staying in touch with us. We know a lot of realtors, yes, but my gosh, I can't imagine using anyone other Then Rob, because he's in flow with us. Yeah.

Right hand live flow, left hand autoflow. I look at it a little bit differently than it's taught in the installation and you reference this. I look at live flow as being two way communication. And autoflow being a one directional communication. So for example, if you're responding to the things we're talking about on this podcast today, we're not hearing you, this is autoflow for ninja. Give me some examples of live flow, Eric. Things that ninjas do that are face to face or voice to voice.

So having a a coffee or lunch. And and how often have we heard that, Rob, recently in the podcast, where ninjas talking about their best year yet, it really came down to coffees and lunches. It can be proactive reach outs to people, uh, wishing them a happy birthday, wishing them a happy anniversary. You saw something on Facebook. Hey, I saw that you went to Cabo for vacation. How was that? Hey, I saw that your daughter graduated high school. Congratulations on that. What are her plans now?

Hey, I saw you a few weeks ago and uh you told me you were thinking about getting a new puppy. How's how's that going? Right? And it also includes Things that happen organically. So bumping into people at the coffee shop, bumping into people at the grocery store, bumping into people at the game. It could also include people that you meet for the first time. at an open house, at a networking event, at some kind of community function.

Anytime you're in a live conversation with another person, you are having live flow. Even if you're not talking about real estate. Yeah. You just have to be talking about someone else's Ford, right? Everyone knows about Ford. When you're talking about someone else's Ford, you are having live flow. And the other piece of it is your client service calls, the things that are related to transactions. That's live flow, because those are hopefully face-to-face or voice-to-voice.

Yes. And that's commonly overlooked as an opportunity to attract even more business, to add more value. But yes, absolutely, when you're in live conversation with active clients, that counts as life love. And the guideline for LiveLo is 50 live interactions per week. We call them interviews because they're not sales calls, these are human connections with Ford as the driver. We get.

Autoflow, the left hand of flow. Autoflow is the system that keeps you visible when you're busy or not working. Give us some examples of autoflow. They really go into two categories. So there's art and there's science. You really want to do both. You can think of this as right brain and left brain. We need to speak to both someone's left brain and right brain. So art example.

The first one that comes up for me, Rob, are invitations. Hey, I want to invite you to a backyard barbecue that I'm hosting. I want to invite you to a client event. I want to invite you to the game. I I have extra tickets to the game. Another art example would be a gift. What if you sent someone a book that you really enjoy? What if you find a book that you think someone else would enjoy?

Gifts are powerful because they typically get the other person to respond, at least by text or email, sometimes even a phone call, just to say thank you. Pop eyes are another great example of art. You can have fun with it. So this summer there's gonna be Father's Day. You and I are both fathers. And so I know ninjas out there that have fun with that.

They'd have a pop by of dad's root beer. And I think a lot of people know that brand dad's root beer. So what if you pop by it with a basket of dad's root beer for for the dads? Others could be calendars, calendar of events, one of the most clever examples of art autoflow is sending the school calendar. So you and I both have children. Our lives are driven by the school calendar. How often am I trying to go online to find when's spring break? When's the when's that random Monday day off?

So calendars are sent that are magnets of that. Those are all art and uh satisfy again the the right brain. We can go to science now. So science or left brain. I think these are gonna be really straightforward and easy for people to understand. So the best example for sure would be real estate reviews, any kind of market update that talks about the numbers that stats. what's happening in the market, the the trends, the direction, just listed postcards, just sold postcards.

The new FHFA report comes out from the Federal Housing Finance Agency and we're sending uh charts and graphs on that. Another one that we see as a great opportunity, Rob, is the service provider list. So a list of your favorite service providers, your favorite landscaper, roofer, Snow shoveler, garage door person, babysitter, attorney, financial planner, all of us have those and you can offer that as a way to be in flow with people automatically.

The easy way to remember these is art equals heart. These are the things that make people feel good. Science equals head. This is positioning yourself as an expert in the real estate market.

Autoflow should combine art and science. You need both live flow and autoflow. They work together. So live flow is very conducive to enhancing a relationship. When you're sitting down with someone, having coffee with them, asking questions about their life, you're elevating that relationship. Autoflow is very good at enhancing the fact that you are a proactive trusted advisor because it's your chance, especially on the science side.

to show your expertise and show all the insights that you have about the market. So we need someone seeing that we're both a really great person and that we're an expert at what we do. So we show that we're a great person through live flow. We show that we know our stuff and we're an expert through autoflow. You must have both. And we so often see Rob.

Realtors, agents trying to get away with doing autoflow only because they're frankly d afraid of of life flow and they don't really know how to do it in in the ninja way that's never salesy. So they try to pull it off with only autoflow and it just doesn't work. You you have to have both.

Where did the idea come from? Because autoflow was influenced by research around remaining top of mind. And the best example of this is Gary Keller's research in The Millionaire Real Estate Agent. What was cited in that book that led to some of the foundations of Autoflow.

Yeah, it's it's really interesting. And uh d all respect to Gary Keller. His research showed that you want to have thirty three touches a year based on all the agents that he knew about, the most successful ones, the most fulfilled ones. thirty three touches a year.

And we rounded up a little bit. There's been a lot of other research. We could talk about the Hobbes Herder story that's in the ninja selling book or taught in the installation. Effectively it was a made up real estate agent marketed inside of a neighborhood and they went from being unknown to being the realtor of choice and they weren't even a real person by simply having a

Frequency and duration of mailing that led to being in flow. That's the upshot of that story. But the reality is the whole thing just comes down to three touches per month. Yes, like you said, what we did is we rounded up from thirty-three a year to thirty-six a year, and we said that we're just going to keep it simple. It's three a month.

Now here's the thing that a lot of people initially when they hear that, they react and say, Oh my gosh, that sounds like a lot. The last thing I want to do is spam my people. When you're a ninja, you're never spamming because it's always and only valuable. So it's three value add touches a month. It's art and science. It's also multimedia.

So it's not necessarily and it shouldn't be th three phone calls in a month. What we like to see is two digital, one print. I think that's a really simple, straightforward formula and and framework. for your autofl, two digital pieces a month and one print a month and social media done well can even be uh a part of this. So we never spam, we only add value. And the spam feels to me like another word for inauthentic. And if you bring your authentic self to whatever autoflow you're doing,

It will resonate with your people because it harmonizes with what they know. The most difficult autofl to receive is that that's completely out of alignment with the person you know in real life. So going on and having Chat GPT write some great dissertation about the real estate market when you don't communicate that way is really awkward for people to receive. So Authenticity trumps all in everything that we do. And I think this is true in Autoflow maybe more than anywhere else.

Absolutely. It it's such a great point, Rob. We always find that the best flow is authentic flow. For example, I know of a real estate agent and what she loves to do on someone's home anniversary. is go get one of those giant chocolate chip cookies from the grocery store that we've all seen before that are huge, you know, it's like as big as a pizza. And she delivers them as a Popeye to someone's home on their home anniversary. And it really works for her.

And so when other people hear that story, they think, How on earth would I ever do that? I could never do that. Well, if that's your reaction, then you shouldn't do that. Because it it works for her because it fits her personality. It's very her. So when other people receive that on their doorstep, the giant chocolate chip cookie, they say, Oh yeah, that's so her. So it's gotta be authentic.

Let's talk about digital a little bit because the print is often a hurdle where people overthink it. And Vincent referenced that. I'm probably overthinking it. Let's talk a little bit about digital. You mentioned social media, but what other resources could exist that you could digitally connect with people? Instantly I go to the idea of email, things like that. What have you seen people have success with?

The easy wins here, kind of the low hanging fruit, are first gonna be anything that your company provides. It's very likely if you're listening to this that your company provides some sort of email newsletter. Maybe they produce it themselves or maybe they are using another source to outsource that. and have it written for you. But in any case, it's likely that you can access a done-for-you monthly or at least quarterly email newsletter.

Now, if you don't have that, another go to, another easy win would be anything that your local board of realtors is providing or your MLS. They put together statistics periodically, usually w once a month. They create great infographics. Y you can grab those, drop'em into a newsletter, make it really easy. Even just send that as an attachment to an email that you send out. Hey, here are the uh the newest local market stats. So

This is something that can be really easy, not complicated. There are several easy wins there.

Let's talk about real estate reviews in the context of autoflow and live flow. They're one of the interesting pieces of ninja that cross over both and how you use them determines which they fit in. And let's talk about that specifically because real estate reviews are frequently confused as being autoflow when in fact they're kind of an excuse for live flow. Yeah, exactly. The real purpose of the real estate review is to get you lots.

uh whether in person or over the phone. Now, yes, real estate reviews are incredibly valuable on their own and they're something that you're gonna feel really proud of presenting to another person. But it's really not about the review. It's about the conversation that the review creates. So the fact that you put it together

and you're gonna offer it to another person gives you a reason to get face to face with them over lunch or a cup of coffee. If you're not able to do that for whatever reason, it's a reason to put it in the mail and then follow up. by phone, so it gets you live. So you send in that in the mailed case a one-way communication to someone, but then you can have a two-way communication about the real estate review and then a conversation about their life.

That perfectly parlays into the idea that your auto flow is not necessarily set it and forget it. You have the opportunity to turn autoflow into live flow. by reaching out and saying, Eric, I sent you last week the version of our landings neighborhood report, did you notice that three properties have gone under contract in seven days or less? And then you can have a conversation about what's going on in their life.

Exactly. And and another one that's really easy, um, using that example, is to reach out to people who have been receiving that email newsletter and maybe they never opted in in the first place. So you just sign them up.

Check in with them to make sure that they're enjoying it. Check in with them to make sure that they're still finding it valuable. Just say to them, hey, you've been receiving my email newsletter. I just want to make sure that it's something that you want to keep receiving. The last thing I ever want to do.

is spam you. So is that something you would like to receive going into the future? And and people really appreciate that question. They appreciate the chance to be in control and to and to opt in or out. And it's also super likely to prompt Some version of a how's the market question when you make that recharge? Autoflow one oh one, three steps to it. The first step, Vincent, and everybody else, don't overcomplicate this.

is not a piece of the ninja system that you need to overcomplicate. Go with what you already have as a resource from your brokerage. If you don't have anything, there's a lot available that you can use. Number two is the system is three simple pieces. You don't have to send a whole gob of paperwork to people to substantiate your value as a real estate professional. Maybe a monthly market update, maybe some local events or lifestyle content.

And maybe just a personal note or a small gift. That would be the autoflow simple approach that could get anybody off the ground. And number three, this is not a short term. Plan. Autoflow is in perpetuity. And oftentimes, like all the pieces of the ninja selling system, you never know that it's going to pay off until it does. Right. And the interesting research around what you were just saying, Rob, is the fact that only six percent of all realtors stay in flow.

with their people. And and that's why there's such a large percentage of people that don't use the same realtor that helped them to purchase the property when it it comes time for them selling the property. It's because they fell out of flow.

So what you need to do is have a straightforward, easy to execute flow plan and what you need to do is stick with it because Flow fixes everything and you do and you have to keep going and you have to make sure that you are incorporating your autoflow and connecting it to your live flow because again the two go hand in hand. The big takeaway here is that autoflow does not replace relationships. Many agents

are out there posting daily or multiple times a day on Instagram trying to attract people in a way that's never going to actually work. So if you think of it this way, that live flow builds relationships. And autoflow maintains your presence when you get busy, are on vacation, or otherwise don't have the level of live flow that we know creates results. And together they equal top of mind awareness.

So someone who's only in live flow is gonna be seen as a really nice, friendly person. Someone who's only in autoflow is gonna be seen as just a realtor w without the personal touch, without the relationship piece. So you you must have both. When we say flow fixes everything. Flow really does fix everything, but flow is a combination of live flow and autoflow. And autoflow is the system that keeps your relationships nurtured between live flow events. Fair enough.

Fair enough. And we say in Ninja Rob that you're either visible or invisible. So you must be visible with with your flow. And a really easy way to do it is with your autoflow. And so if you find yourself in a spot Where you're not having the level of business that you want, you find yourself in a spot where you notice people that you know choosing other realtors, your neighbors, your your friends, your acquaintances, go look at your flow and go look at the opportunity to level up your flow.

get those three value add touches going every single month, mixture of art and science. add the light flow to it and flow fixes everything. And just like everything else in Ninja, it's all rooted in the idea that your authentic self is the best thing you can bring to the relationship so whatever you're into can be your autoflow. Absolutely. And just send things that people would feel good about. Is it something that's gonna make the other person feel good? That's the

Eric, thanks so much. Vincent, I hope this was helpful. If there's anything else that comes up that you'd like a little bit of help with, Post in the Ninja Selling Podcast Facebook group. We check it, we respond there, but from time to time there's a big meaty question like this one and we'll come on here and talk about it. Great Rob, thank you so much. As always, we look forward to seeing you on the n next podcast. Take care. If you enjoyed this episode, visit us at the Ninja Summit.

To learn more about ninja selling classes and To get you started or further your journey. NinjaPath Thank you for joining us. Now go have an incredible day.