7 figure Attraction Agent

Daniel Lee│From First Click to Listing: How Smart Agents Build Trust & Win Business

• Tom Panos - Real Estate Coach & Trainer

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You will learn:
✅ Why Speed Matters: The agent who responds first often wins – and how to make sure that’s you
✅ Why chasing only “genuine sellers” is costing you listings
✅ Showcasing Success: How to prove you're the local expert – without bragging
✅ Building Trust Before the Listing: Strategies that allow vendors to feel like they already know you
✅ Play the Long Game: How to nurture relationships and stay relevant until the property hits the market
✅ Standing out in a Competitive Market: Practical tactics to stand out and be the agent of choice


WHO IS DANIEL LEE?

Daniel Lee is the Principal of Plum Property and one of the most recognisable digital personalities in Australian real estate.

With a unique blend of creativity and authenticity, Daniel has built a powerful personal brand that both entertains and generates results.

From viral listing videos to market updates, Daniel’s social media content cuts through the noise — proving that you don’t have to be loud, flashy, or fake to stand out.

From years of experience being a sales agent, Daniel understands what it takes to win listings in a competitive market — and he’s here to share what’s working.


This webinar is sponsored by LocalAgentFinder: localagentfinder.com.au/tompanos

Tom Panos:

We are here presented to you today by our great friends and partners, local Agent Finder, which I now call LAFF. And I've got to tell you, dan, local Agent Finder, I remember 10 years ago there I was walking around the expo at ARIC and people were staring at Local Agent Finder saying they're the mob that take 20% of my money. They weren't the favourites, but I've got to tell you, over the years Warwick, there at Local Agent Finder, has been partnering up with agents and I do work with them. And he said to me the other day he said Tom, who would be a great person to have on. I said, well, listen, let's focus it on Queensland. So the whole thing's national. But I said let's look at a Queensland agent. And he said, well, listen, dan Lee does a lot of deals with us from Plum.

Tom Panos:

In fact he actually sent me the latest numbers Plum. In fact he actually sent me the latest numbers. I think you're doing 65 sales and nine leases through Lath. So I just thought it would be really, really good to have a bit of a conversation about some of the things that are different when you're dealing with Lath leads, when you're dealing with Lath leads. So, if it's okay, can I just ask you a few questions, dan, by the way, because some of the people weren't on the four o'clock real estate gym webinar that you were on with us. Just give people the big 60 second version of who Daniel Lee is and who Plum is.

Daniel Lee:

Yeah, sure Thanks, Tom. Guys, thanks for joining. So, Dan Lees, my name. I've been in real estate 18 years, started off as a junior, went to high performing age and eventually opened my own business, Plum Property, in 2016. In 2022, we opened Plum Partners, where we help agents to create, run and grow their own real estate business as well. So that's a nice 20-second summary for you, Tom.

Tom Panos:

Okay Now Dan, first question how would you describe your approach to building trust, getting people to like you, believe you when they're a vendor well, a potential vendor before you even meet them?

Daniel Lee:

right, yeah, well before you meet them, right? Yeah, well, before you meet them. That's a good question. So, if we're talking about local agent, finder leads.

Tom Panos:

Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Lee:

Well, if you're talking about local agent finder leads, I think the most important thing is speed, because if you're talking to a local agent find a lead, this is someone that doesn't have a solid relationship with an agent. All right, four out of five vendors, before they put their property on the market, have an agent that they have got in their head that they're going to call. Okay, from previous experiences. So, generally speaking, the ones going on local agent finder, they don't have someone to call, they don't have a solid enough relationship with an agent to say, well, I'm going to reach out to that agent, get them over. They've done something for me in the past. So they're jumping online, they're typing in you know, sales agent to Wong, to Ringle, whatever your suburb is, and then they're finding the local agent finder link. And they're finding the local agent find a link and they're going through that process, right.

Daniel Lee:

And so what's going to impress someone when they're first reaching out and getting to know agents? Who's got the best service, who's getting onto them the quickest? It's speed, tom, you've got to be really, really fast, right? They're generally going to engage with the first agent that reaches out. So and I had a meeting with our local agent finder a couple of years ago and she was saying you guys are not doing very well, you're only converting about 9% of the leads coming through. And I thought, oh, that isn't very good. And we looked at the time that my agents were making the call to the prospective seller and the average was 20 minutes plus. Now we've got that down as a company to. I think now with most agents you know less than three minutes, I believe, and you know I.

Tom Panos:

Dan speed's in. Hey, like you're so right about that, because I think when you like someone and you trust them, man, if they come back to you the next day you take that right. But when it's like one of these catch and kill listings, there's no relationship and listings are not won 48 to nil. They're normally won 22-20. And speed is a big part of that scoreline, isn't it?

Daniel Lee:

Oh well, that's the first impression. You know that's like you don't have. You don't have two years of relationship with this person where you've appraised, you've been to their house, they've possibly done some business with you and if they called you and you missed their call and you called back four hours later and said sorry, I missed your call, it would be totally fine, right, um, because you've got that relationship. But when you don't have that relationship, the first impression is how good are you, how quick are you to call me when I've made that inquiry right and basically the first agent to call is going to be they're going to have a head start. That's all I'll say.

Tom Panos:

Okay. So, dan, what do you say to the agents? And I've got a few real estate gym clients and I've got to tell you there's a few agents that write high GCI, that are even bad at this, and that is that they seem to their follow-up on, like the internet. Referral leads, like from Local Agent Finder, might not have the same intensity, and I don't know what it is. Is it the fact that they've got to give 20%? Is it the fact that there's no relationship? But what do you say to agents who only follow up when they think the lead is a hot, genuine seller?

Daniel Lee:

Well, how do you say to agents who only follow up when they think the lead is a hot, genuine seller well, how do you know? How do you know before you've made contact? That's the question. Like every single lead should be treated the same until you know what. What's wanted, right? Um, so you know that you just got to do it on everyone, and I know that they're not all brilliant leads. Some of them are just some of them, you know, to be quite honest, have already engaged with an agent and then they jump on there and they lie about that not meeting other agents, just to get commission values and you end up finding out that they were just commission shopping after they've already signed up with someone. That happens time to time, but you don't know what the lead is until you give it a go. So I just think you've got to go in hard, you've got to go in quickly, and if you do that you're going to win more of them. And we got our.

Tom Panos:

I had an agent yesterday and I was talking to him about it and he goes. Anyway, he goes time to get some rubber on the road. I go. What do you mean by that? He goes. Oh, it's three o'clock to four o'clock. I go out, I do my door knocking. I said, hey, you're going out and doing door knocking right, that's a good thing. But you're going off to interrupt strangers who don't know you, who, quite frankly, might not be home, who might be a tenant, it might be housing commission, and you're telling me that you actually think that this lead that's come here is not as important as going out there knocking on doors. I found that bizarre.

Daniel Lee:

Yeah, well, another thing you mentioned that a lot of agents treat the local agent finder leads as if they're all selling right now, when a lot of them are kind of at that stage of just checking things out. They might not. They're like any lead. You get an obligation-free appraisal from someone. Generally it's three to six months until they're selling. Well, the same goes with a lot of these local agent finder leads. They're not all selling today, but they're selling sometime in the next three, six, possibly 12 months. And you just got to treat it like everything else be quick off the market at the beginning and then nurture, and I'm telling you you can be converting a lot of these leads in three to six months that you didn't get immediately.

Tom Panos:

And I'd go as far as saying what one agent said to me. He said, tom, whether it's a price update and they want to sell in nine months, not now, or whether they want to be an immediate seller to me, they're exactly the same. And then he went on to further say in fact, they're probably a little bit better if they're a price update. I said why is that? He said very simple. He said because if it's a price update, the competition is going to be less fierce because they're going to drop off, because they're terrible at the follow-up. They're going to be there. They want it now. They're like the pokey player. I want to win now, right? So what he said is they'll drop off, I'll be the last man standing and then I will earn the right to do business on my terms, because I've proven it to them.

Daniel Lee:

That's exactly right. I mean, the longer the relationship it is, the stronger chance you have of getting the listing and getting it with your largest advertising package with your highest commission right. Largest advertising package with your highest commission right.

Tom Panos:

If you're going into the Dan, what are the small touches you reckon you've found that are effective when nurturing these longer-term leads who aren't ready yet? I mean, put Local Agent Finder aside for a moment. There's a lot of listings that actually feel into that category. They're not coming on the market in April. They're coming on the market in November, right.

Daniel Lee:

Yeah, exactly, I think really importantly is just trying to categorize different people in your pipeline. I would always, as an agent, categorize people as an A, b or a C. An A was listing in the next 30 days, a B was listing between 30 and 90 days and a C was listing 90 days plus, right, and so I would move people from a C to a B to an A and, depending on which category they were in, they would receive different levels of communication from me. If you're an A listing in the next 30 days and you haven't signed, you're getting, at a bare minimum, a weekly call, right, and I'm trying to engage, I'm trying to provide some value, some insights, some updates, some price information or whatever. I'm trying to get my foot back in the door.

Daniel Lee:

If you're murmuring that you're 60, 90 days away, it might be fortnightly, every three weeks or something like that. But on top of that, those categories would get other. Basically everyone gets a monthly suburb report if they're in my core area and easily generated through RP data or even Realtair these days, and you can get your assistant to just set that up on autopilot so that these leads they're getting monthly email, something in the mail, right? Add them to social media. Hopefully they follow you back if you can find them, and then they'll get sent your leads and your ads and things like that. And then the phone calls. So you're just trying to hit them at every angle beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Tom Panos:

Now, dan. Um, the next question I was going to ask you. I'm trying to think of our audience and thinking to myself the things that would be of good use. Right at the moment, there's a lot of noise going on. The noise well, right at this moment we've got the federal election. That's noisy. We've got Easter, school holidays, anzac Day We've got a melting pot of events going on. There's a lot of noise going on In a world of noise, and this is more noise than ever at the moment.

Tom Panos:

How do you stand out without being over the top or inauthentic? Now, I mean, real estate, and social media predominantly, is clouded with agents showing success and affluence to the point where, in the worst ways, it can be actually sick to look at and so sick that people make fun of it. Outside of real estate, I mean all you've got to go look at the jobs that they make fun of on TikTok, and real estate fits in there. They laugh at us for the way that we quote prices for the stuff that we say. You know, you are amazing at the way that you laugh at the own industry, right, particularly when you were listing and selling and doing your own property videos yourself. You were in the videos. How do you, yeah, have those touch points, have awareness be seen, have the attention, but, at the same time, not be over the top or inauthentic yeah, okay, well, I guess.

Daniel Lee:

Yeah, real estate's cringe as fuck. Um, to be honest, most of the marketing out there in the marketplace is I've sold 100 million dollars of real estate. I got 200 grand over, uh, reserve price. I'm suburb record holder, blah, blah, blah. Who gives a shit? What does even any of this stuff mean?

Daniel Lee:

And and you know, it's pretty easy to look at that stuff and cringe, right? So anything I look at and cringe and go that's fucking stupid. I'm not doing it. That's pretty. It's like use your brain. Do you really want to look like one of those Muppets? If you want to look authentic, don't talk about yourself. Get someone else to talk about you. That's probably the easiest way. So focus on testimonials from your sellers that you've done a really good job for and get them to tell the story about you rather than you telling the story about you. That's a really good way to be authentic. And when you're doing that, don't sit in the camera with your vendor and say, hey, can you tell everyone how good I was? It's like you're holding a gun to their head. So you know just different ways in which to say the same message. I'm very successful at what I'm doing. I'm providing a great service, but without being the, you know, cringy real estate boaster.

Tom Panos:

Okay, While we're on that, to the audience that's watching, if you're not on a mobile phone, pull out your mobile phone, because what I'd love you to do is take some ideas of things that I think you can be talking about. That will make you look like a community agent. That will give you credibility but, at the same time, not have the hashtag look at me hashtag. I mean this whole hashtag. Hashtag number one hashtag million dollar mom hashtag. Killing it, Like the equivalent in other industries would be for a painter Hashtag 10 units painted this week. Hashtag $10,000 a week. Right Dentist hashtag for root canals today, it doesn't happen, right?

Tom Panos:

So, let me bring up on the screen just a couple of slides that I think can give you ideas of content, that you can be doing it. The first one is take your cameras out. Local neighbourhood content very easy community hotspots, events, highlights in your area. This is how you can stay aware with people and be looked like a community agent. Best place for hey, it's Daniel Lee here from Plum. The best place to start your morning.

Tom Panos:

I started here at this beautiful cafe in West End, whatever it is. Then we've got content. Proof of success. This is your just listed just sold client stories, testimonials, life, successful auctions. Proof of authority market summaries, economic updates. Then I like the client questions. I love those ones. These are the ones where you turn around and you've got a question in a red banner and then you answer it. Example should I auction on election day? Example should I put my home on the market when rates come down? Example should I buy first, then sell? What's the next suburb that's going to take off? The stuff that's trending in people's minds? Create the thumbnail and that stuff. There you're not closing people, you're educating people, which one day will give you the right to close people, but first you've got to educate them. There's so many things, but I reckon, dan, what you did really really well is you made people. It's not mandatory that you make people laugh on every video and every social, but it was very entertaining, wasn't it? You enjoyed that. You did your style. You did you.

Daniel Lee:

Yeah, I did me. I did my style, which was unique, and I was always trying to make it entertaining because you're going to get more likelihood of people watching. But you know, like there's some really easy ways to be doing entertaining videos. Like you know, I don't even make up all the ideas for some of the funniest style videos that I do. Honestly, like you go through trends on TikTok and Instagram and find videos that are very easy to make. Like if you go through my profile and just have a look at some of the recent funny ones, like I didn't even come up with those ideas, I just copied them. But I just did it in my way and it could be a little short video about a different industry, but you can relate it to real estate and literally some of the videos that take me 30 seconds get the best views because it's a copied trend video from someone else.

Tom Panos:

It's funny you say that, dan, because I was watching on TikTok this guy that he's not fit right, he looked overweight and he went on fit right, he was a, he was a little, he looked overweight and he went on there and he turned around he says I'm training to become a professional football player. Have a look, me training and he's, and he's, and he's running, and you can tell the guy's unfit right, but he's trying to run like he's a, he's a pro. And then it just had like millions of views because people were finding that hilarious and I thought to myself you, you know what I'm going to do. I'll do some push-ups, but I'll do push-ups that look shit right, and you wouldn't believe it. It went crazy.

Tom Panos:

Oh, do you call that a push-up, mate? That's not a push-up. Look at the old guy. He can't even do a proper push-up. You can actually get a lot of ideas of things, as you said, if you look that they've had millions of views in one area, you could easily copy and duplicate it in your own way in your own industry.

Daniel Lee:

Yeah, absolutely. But it's also important not to get too caught up on those sorts of big numbers on views and followers and things like that, because at the end of the day, a lot of real estate agents they don't really like doing social media. They want to do as least as possible and just get results. So if you want to just get results right, the best thing to do think about your audience, right. We all work in a particular area or suburb. There might be 10,000 people that live in a suburb. That's a big suburb. There's probably 2,000 to 5,000 people in an average suburb.

Daniel Lee:

We all get caught up with how many followers you got, how many views you got. Mate, I'm telling you, 1,000 views from people in your area is worth way more to you than a million views from all over the world. Okay, 1,000 views in your local area is worth more than a million views from all over the world. So, and how can you get those thousand views? You can sponsor 50, 100 bucks to little educational videos about your suburb, about the market, a story about a great sale, a great auction result, a testimonial, a local business review, a school event. You know there's a thousand things in one. You can chuck it in chat GPT and just grab ideas. But the best thing you can do if you just want to get off the you know, do something. Do local stuff right, where you're highlighting your neighborhood, highlighting results in the area, don't big note yourself and sponsor a hundred bucks to your suburb through you know meta business and then retarget people over and over and over and over again Right.

Daniel Lee:

And then when you get VPA for your property videos, you absolutely slam the area and make sure every screen is getting hit with that five times in the month.

Tom Panos:

Dan, have you ever had a situation I'm sure you have? Well, you'll tell me when someone's called you months after calling you like calling you in, no, so nothing happens. And then, out of the blue, 10 months later, you get this random call Come over, you had a chat with us, right? So this is your typical price update thing. You covered it a little bit, but can you tell me in that 10 months, is it mainly emails that you're sending out to that people to stay on top of them? Obviously, if you make an impression on them, the view is that they loved you so much that they just feel I've got to go with Dan. But you know, there's a saying recency trumps loyalty and if someone's very recent in their face, that can change things.

Daniel Lee:

Oh, absolutely. And how many times have we had a buyer who's bought a property off us and we were so helpful. They got the property, they loved it, we had a great relationship and then settles and you're like, if you ever sell, if you ever need anything, let me know. It's all you know. It's all hugs and kisses. And three years later you see that poppity pop up online. You're like what the fuck just happened there? I thought I was, we had this, but then you think I haven't talked to them in over a year. Right, and why should they be loyal to me? I haven't done anything. I forgot about them and they forgot about me. So, yeah, it's so. The nurturing process in real estate. I reckon the real experts in real estate are the ones that really know how to nurture a database properly. They're the proper expert. And I'll tell you what you never go hungry If you've got a pipeline and you nurture, you're guaranteed success.

Tom Panos:

I guarantee to all our viewers live and those that are going to be watching this on replay, if you simply incorporated, sharing is not turned on. I'm going to send a request. I'm hoping I can share a slide I have. I've got it now. Thank you so much. Every agent, I don't care who you are if you, on a Monday morning, have a simple plan and make the main thing the main thing being the main thing, chasing the listings, the hot buyers that you've got and your current vendors, by simply writing out this action plan on a Monday morning, you're going to be able to focus on the important, not the urgent. The urgent is, oh shit, the booking deadline I've got to get it in.

Tom Panos:

The important is the stuff that needs to get done on an ongoing basis. The world won't fall apart if you don't do it. But guess what? Your money will fall apart if you don't do it, because the real money in real estate is your chase list, your next 10 listings, your hot buyers and your vendor management. The reason I show this is that you obviously are treating the listings you're going to chase in the next 30 days different to the listings that you're chasing over a 10-month period. Right? You can't be ringing up Dan, the person that's coming on the market in 10 months, going are you ready Next week? Okay, Are you ready? Right, you can't do that. That's called commission breath. We don't like commission breath people, do we? Because it smells. We've got to be anti-commission breath, right?

Daniel Lee:

Yeah, we'll be providing value along the way. However, you can do that. It's not all you know it's. Sometimes you want this stuff to kind of be on autopilot. But you know, have some strategy around it. But you know, have some strategy around it. But easy things like you know, making sure that those potential sellers are getting a monthly you know sales report that you can refer to if you give them a call. They're getting a text or an email about a sale that's happened in their street, even if it wasn't from you, if it was from another agent. You know, don't be scared to highlight other sales in the area that weren't yours. It's first to notify them about it, not who did it. Okay, the relationship is in the communication. So, yeah, all sorts of stuff like that.

Tom Panos:

Okay. So, dan, we've had a question that's come in here that might be relevant to a lot of people. What do you do? As soon as you have received the lead? You call, left a voicemail and a text message and they don't respond. And I've got to tell you, with Local Agent Finder I notice a lot of softer type agents say, oh Tom, I rang him. They never rang me back. Right, listen, team, we're in sales. We don't ring once, we ring again.

Tom Panos:

And if we don't ring the right way example to the Shah that's asked this question the first thing I would say, the first thing I would say to you is when you leave a message, a really nice way of leaving a message is hey, the Shah, tom Panos, here, 0419 916 503, 0419 916 503503, 0419-916-503. Give me a call, I have some news. Take the word real estate out of it, short, sharp, fast, give them your number and basically say I have some news. When they ring, you make sure you've got some news. Don't say ha ha, ha, tricked, you got no news, but you rang me back. I think it's a faster way.

Tom Panos:

The second thing I was going to say, dan, is that, listen, you know, if they haven't responded to you once you know have another one or two goes. I don't think it's a bad thing to actually go doorknock on someone and say, hey, listen, I'm not sure if it's for you, but I have been trying to reach you. I don't think you may have got my message or you may have and you don't want to speak to me, but I wanted to cover my bases and make sure and then talk to them. But is there anything else that you know, like people that don't respond to your voicemail or a text message, which is quite yeah, it's common.

Daniel Lee:

It's common Sometimes, these local agent final leads, you don't get a hold of them, and you know. But if you want a true salesmanship is great follow-up and not giving up after the first time. So I would call, I would leave, I would have the same text message template and I'd have three of them, okay, so, whatever your first one is hi there, sally, it's Daniel Lee from Plum Property. I got your details from local agent finder. I'm really looking forward to talking to you the next day. Try and calling again. No answer.

Daniel Lee:

It would be a second text. Hey, just checking in again, really interested to help you out with any information about your home, daniel Lee. And then maybe a third text on the third day, if you've tried calling for a third time. Hey, I don't want to be annoying, but I'm really interested in talking to you. Please give me a call back when you're free. I'll, you know. Maybe something softer, like I won't bother you any further, if you're okay, you know. And maybe something softer, like I won't bother you any further, if you're okay, you know, but at least three attempts before you, you know, throw in the towel.

Tom Panos:

Well said, Dan Lee, we're coming to the end of this presentation and I've got to tell you, by the way, everyone, by the way, pretty excited. I spent a lot of time with Dan Lee this morning because we did one training session with Plum, we did one training session with the real estate gym and we've done this and I'm going to be spending four or five days with him, including my birthday, because I'm going to Plum to Bali on the 10th of June, 8th, 9th, 10th of June. Can I ask, Dan and we've got plenty of my real estate gym members that actually work under your platform I just want to ask what do you say to the people that are watching this live or even on replay that is not using Local Agent Finder?

Daniel Lee:

Oh, I think you're crazy. Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you? I mean, if an agent called you up today from out of area and said hey, I've got a listing for you it's a mate of mine, but can you give me 20%, what would you say? I'd take it. It's a listing. I never would have got that listing. I might get 80% or whatever, but you know it'll help me to get the next listing. Market share will get you more listings anyway. So if I'm getting, I know some people think that local agent finder are taking our money but they're only taking what hasn't been. You haven't earned right. You haven't earned the respect of that call from that seller, who may have called you directly if you'd done your job properly and got in touch with them and became their agent before they were at that decision point, but you haven't done that. So I think it's a personally, I think it's a very fair commission split to be working with the local agent finance, a lead that I never would have got.

Tom Panos:

Listen, you keep 80, they take 20 thereabouts. I think it's maxed out around 5k. So, basically, you don't pay unless you win, right though. Having said that, there is a tool. I'm just going to touch on it quickly. They've got a prospecting tool where they'll give you the list of 25 people. They can't give you the direct house because it's against privacy, but the 25 people that have inquired uh, that haven't gone the next step and it actually becomes a more targeted approach in your prospecting. This has been very kind enough to put in the chat box the local agent finder URL for those that want to either explore local agent finder or look at the prospecting tool that I mentioned. That's also signed up by suburbs, so it may or may not be available. It's best to check with local agent finder. Daniel Lee, thank you so much.

Tom Panos:

I've got to go to an auction believe it or not, on a Tuesday, Is it Tuesday? It is Tuesday On a Tuesday night because of the Easter, a lot of auctions being brought forward on weekdays. I want to thank you so much. It forward on weekdays. I want to thank you so much. It's been a pleasure spending time with you on a computer.

Daniel Lee:

But it'll even be better spending time with you at Bali. No problem, tom and anyone that wants to follow me on Instagram. I've just put my handle in the chat and if anyone wants to know about Plum Partners how we could help you to grow, create, run and grow your own real estate agency I'm only a phone call or a DM away. Slide into those DMs if you want to have a chat, and thank you for having me.

Tom Panos:

He's a saltman, he's not ashamed, he's proud, he's putting it out there, absolutely.

Daniel Lee:

I'd love to talk to any of you about it. Thank you so much, daniel.

Tom Panos:

You're welcome. Thanks so much. Thank you everyone. Have a good