"Coding Your Area" and Prospecting Ideas with Christian Bartley

We break down the power of “coding your area” and a blended analog-digital approach to dominate local markets:

• dividing a suburb into coded areas to tailor communications and marketing
• keeping homeowners informed of nearby sales, auctions, and price updates
• visualizing property data on council maps to identify relationships and opportunities
• layering communication channels: phone, letters, texts, emails, and QR-code digital links
• sending high-impact, relevant letters like Price Drive, Create Your Own Lotto Win, and Made Money While You Sleep
• converting analog engagement to digital leads via QR codes linking to booking platforms
• building trust and market share through consistent, authentic communication

A practical blueprint for connecting with every homeowner, driving listings, and turning local knowledge into sustained market dominance.

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Discover more:

• Next Events
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• Explore Lee Woodward Short Courses
• The Top 100 Business Stories & Life Lessons Of Charles Tarbey

Transcript

Lee Woodward 0:06

Hello and welcome to the podcast We Are Selling. My name's Lee Woodward of Realtair. Realtair is the one platform of choice of real estate professionals, allowing you to pitch, sign, and sell real estate. By public demand, we have Mr. Christian Bartley back from Bellerine Property. Christian, welcome back. Thank you, Lee. Good to be back. What are we going to talk about today? Well, last time you were on, you mentioned about your incredible market share. And at the end of that episode, I mentioned coding your area. We've had all these emails and texts saying, what is coding your area? In your own words, what is coding your area?

Christian Bartley 0:45

Well, as simple as it sounds, it is what it is. Coding an area. So it's splitting the area up into different codes. Let's just call those codes as numbers. Some people might prefer them as colours. But just as numbers. So let's take, for example, where I reside and operate out of and where our office is and where it all began. For me, going back almost, I'm going to say when I started coding was about 17 years ago. In an area where there's 2,000 houses, but every house value is not the same. Every little area has its own individual value. And what's relevant in one area is irrelevant to another area. So I decided to break up our 2,000 houses area in Bowenheads into 13 areas. And I coded them. I drew a port out of Texto and I drew a map of Barwenheads and divided it up because in certain spots along the river or near the golf course or near the school or near the park or just near them on the off the main road, every property had a different price. And what I wanted to do was I put myself in the shoes of a homeowner. And it was a really simple philosophy that I had. If I had that amount of money invested in shares in 2005, I would be watching the stock market every single day. And I'd want to know how my shares are going. I've invested half a million dollars into something, and I'd be watching that all the time. So I took that same mentality approach into real estate. And I thought, how can I just share how everyone's asset is going, where they've purchased a property in our town and make it relevant to them and keep them informed of how the market is going. So I took that approach, divided into the areas. So whenever we listed a property, and let's call it area number eight, area code, when we list the property in area eight, I just started communicating to everyone in area eight. It started by phone call to all the people that I knew in the area, then it followed by text messages and then emails, and then you can go letterbox drops as well. So all the people in area six, seven, nine, and ten wouldn't hear about a listing or a sale in area eight. Only the people in area eight would. And it just bombarded that area, and they also got informed when there's an first open for inspection, they also got informed when the property was sold, and if it was going to auction, they would all be invited to the auction. And I'll do that for each area code, respective of when there was a new listing and a new sale. And word of mouth just grew, and it just grew and grew and grew. And then from there you can tailor it down to letters. And when you've got a three or four properties that have just been listed or just been sold in, say, area eight, you can create and draft a letter to go to all the homeowners in area eight and inform them of what's happening in their area that's just nearby. You own a home just around the corner with just sold, and you can use that dialogue and those words, and it's very relevant to those owners. So all of a sudden, they're being kept informed by myself from 2005 when I set this system up. They're kept informed of how their asset at half a million dollars is performing. And then the next sale at 550, and then another one that's 650, and they're starting to see that their investment into the market, into the streets that they bought or own a home is going well and it's performing. So I just became that informant of telling people how the market's performing. And then the the side subject out of that was they saw me as the delivery person to who understood the entire market and how to value properties and how to sell them and how to keep people informed, and I became the trusted advisor in the area. And then that just built the market share to where it is today. And we've we've not deviated off that track the last 17 years.

Lee Woodward 5:00

And Christian, you also went out and got the council maps and did colour coding. So that these big maps are on the wall. What are you doing there?

Christian Bartley 5:10

What we've done with the maps is we've got them on the wall. We got a texture out, we coded the areas as we had previously done, but we did this on the on the big maps. Um, drew them all around, and then each little area, because we got them from the council, had a little square representing the actual title property. So it gave us something to little colour in and uh know what number the property was that we colored in. Each colour represented a property that we'd either done an appraisal at, had sold a property to, or we knew the owner of. And it became very helpful from a visual perspective. So if we listed a property or sold a property in a particular area code, we could see on the map the coloured little boxes which represented all the homeowners that we knew and had relationships with. If there was someone that was very strong in there, we could just look at the map and say, okay, we need to call that person, we need to call, call, call, call. Whereas a CRM database held all the all their data and the information, but sometimes visually when you look at a map, it jumps out at you. Whereas a CRM database, whilst they're fantastic, it hides the information behind there and it's not until you type it in to look for it. When you look at it on a map, and if you've listed a property and it would just notify your brain, your signal cells, a lot stronger because it's jumping out at you with all the colour codes, and it will just point out another memory button in your mind. So I need to speak to them, I need to call them, them, them, and you can create a list that way, whilst you've got a long list that you're going to blast out in your communication to. But there are other triggers from doing it on a map, and it highlights all the other places that you haven't got colour coded in that you need to try and get coloured. And if you get every single square in your area coded and coloured, then you know everyone in the area, which is the whole point of having great relationships with the entire town.

Lee Woodward 7:00

And I think the maps give you that gaining visibility moment. And at the recent complete salesperson course, I had you share this with the audience and they just loved how connected that was. And it connects to that conversation I have with people about claiming doors. So if I worked in your brand, I'm walking down the street, I can see a big B for Bellerine property on every door, and it's a it's beautiful blue with white, and I'm walking around the town going, That's my door, that's my door, that's my door. And claiming doors has become, yes, we need to market to them. And with your recent introduction to pitch to the business, you've now got the opportunity of the price update where you're going to get the text notifications. How will you roll that out across the already claim doors you have to get a digital connection?

Christian Bartley 7:48

We will just be uh contacting each person by by phone, um as we are already doing anyway, and just delivering uh just I think it's a courtesy message to all the existing clients that we've done appraisals for that haven't transacted, just to say we're gonna send you a message. It's gonna have a price update in there. If you would like any further details or like us to uh revisit and visit in person because you may have done some renovation since we were last there, would love you to give us a call back. But in the meantime, you're gonna receive a price update from us. Love you to click on the button, have a look, and give us any feedback that you've got.

Lee Woodward 8:23

Beautiful. So that gives you that digital connection, because you've already had a physical connection, you've been marketing to the people. Throughout a year, Christian, a lot of people don't understand the right touch points and what's the best things to send. And when you're active in an area, you're explosive, there's high impact marketing going on. But if an area's quiet or a record or a dwelling's quiet, one of your doors are quiet, what's a typical marketing campaign that you do across the doors for a year?

Christian Bartley 8:53

Look, okay, great question. So one of the uh letters that is just yeah phenomenal in our industry is the price drive letter. So that that has got us into a lot of doors, uh, just sending that out to the area. Uh there's a number of other letters that I've written myself, and it it's a one's one I've titled called Create Your Own Lotto Win. So there's a lot of people that are in a position where they want to downsize their mortgage. Um, they want to just downsize their property, and it's a tax-free asset if it's their principal place of residence. They've got the opportunity, and sometimes it just needs to be spelled out to them that they could own a property worth two and a half million dollars. And at their time of life, their kids have moved out, they might be ready to downsize, and they could change that over for $1.25 million and pocket half the amount of money into their bank account. And that's why I've just titled Create Your Own Lotto win. So we've just got a number of different letters like that. So the typical I have a buyer letter, if you know your database and your buyers well enough, it's always a great letter to send out to a specific street or area of particular types of houses that you know your buyers are looking for. And it's not a random letter. Make sure it's genuine, it's authentic, and it is a real person that would look at their property. So I find those three letters as the most powerful in our business to send out.

Lee Woodward 10:14

Christian, what a simple and brilliant plan. And when we look at your blended approach here, yes, you've got the paper base, the phone call, the courtesy, the just sold, just listed. If we're active in the area, if it's an auction, if it's for sale, you are notifying them. Now you're layering that up again with digital connections, so if they open it, you get notified. That's going to give you that success is about consistency. And it just blows my mind people don't listen to this particular one tip and go, that's all I would have to do, is exactly what this ten-minute tip has explained to me in one go. That's right.

Christian Bartley 10:51

Yeah. Just communicating. Um communicating on a down-to-earth perspective, not being fake or not saying you're the best. No one's there to determine who that is. Uh, it's irrelevant. Uh it's just delivering content and relevant content to your audience or to your market. Another letter that I just came to my mind is another one called Made Money While You Sleep. So you you've done an appraisal twelve months ago um and and you delivered a price of say $1.2 million, and you know today that that's probably worth about $1.4 million. You take the $200,000 and you divide that by $52, um, and you work out what they've uh made every night that they've put their head on the pillow. So it's like $3,846 if your maths are quick enough. That they've made per night, made money while you sleep, but that's the value of their property, how it's increased in value over the last 12 months. By sending uh a letter to each appraisal that you've done in a 12-month period, I don't know, it might be three to five hundred letters that you may be distributing, but it's a powerful personal connection, not just a random letter saying, Hey, it's been 12 months since we did an appraisal on your property, would you like another one? Just going that little bit step further and having that little point of difference and delivering something that's going to trigger them to go, wow, I didn't know that.

Lee Woodward 12:07

And Christian, you've now got this beautiful opportunity with your price drive to be a price update letter, where with a QR code on there to your book your appraisal, which is a great little system that you run on your site, they can fill in their details, but from QR code to landing page to book an appraisal, it gives analog to digital marketing this opportunity. And QR codes, everyone's used to it due to what we know, and what a great result.

Christian Bartley 12:34

So we have Calendly set up on our website that any human can book a appraisal with us automatically. They just need to go to our website and they can click it. We know that in the world of hairdressing, physio appointments, doctor's appointments, so many people can just book uh appointments those these days without having to call. So I thought, why can't they transform into the real estate business? Um people just need to enter their name and details, they pick the agent who they want to have and the team that they want to have and uh can do that. That's on our website, and then from that we've created a QR code that when we do distribute information to our coded areas relevant to properties that are just listed, sold, or come into auction, we give the recipients being the homeowners, the opportunity to scan that QR code, which will then go straight to our Calendly site to book an appraisal. Um we are getting approximately about 10 a week Calendly appraisals from that because we're distributing documentation around our area and we're meeting new owners. So it's been a phenomenal little lead generation system that we've implemented in the business.

Lee Woodward 13:36

Christian Bartley, always amazing information. Thank you for joining us on the program. Thank you, Lee. Speak soon. And that concludes this edition of We Are Selling. If you'd like a demonstration or a conversation regarding Realtair pitch, sign, or sell, please go to our website at Realtair.com or call our service centre on 1300 367 412. I'm Lee Woodward. Thank you for listening.