Convert online leads for Facilities

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i have a question are you seeing a lot more activity from people looking at homes on your website if you have idx on your site i bet the answer is yes ever since the pandemic hit headlines have told us that people are spending more time than ever looking at homes online is some of that just casual browsing and people passing the time of course it is but many agents i've talked to in the past couple months say they are getting more online leads now than they have in a long time and anecdotally i can share that my wife has picked up more idx leads in the past two months than she did in all of 2019 that's why we're talking and teaching online lead conversion this is part two of our series with jackie soto and elmer morales two of the best in the business when it comes to getting and converting online leads so if you want to take advantage of all that extra online home search activity you are in the right place this is the walkthrough hey everyone i'm matt mcgee editor of home lights agent resource center and your host every week right here on the walkthrough on this show you'll learn what's working right now from the best real estate agents and industry experts in the country at home light we believe in real estate agents that's why we created the walkthrough we're on a journey to find out how great real estate agents grow their business stand out from the crowd and become irreplaceable you can get in touch with me anytime by calling 415-322-3328 just leave a voicemail at that number or you can send an email to walkthrough homelight.com i do read and hear all the messages that come in and it's great to be back after taking last week off for the holidays i hope you and your family had a good and safe fourth of july as i mentioned earlier this is part two of our conversation with home light elite agents jackie soto and elmer morales and some breaking news by popular demand we're going to add part three to this series next monday several of you sent in great questions last week after part one jackie and elmer have agreed to answer those questions plus any new ones that come in after today's show i'll have more on all that how you can contribute get your questions in at the end of this episode so stay tuned if you missed part one real quick intro elmer morales and jackie soto run the e-homes brokerage in southern california last year 38 of their business came from online leads this year they expect it to be about 60 to 65 percent they are home light elite agents which is a program reserved for the top one percent of agents on our platform they're also best of zillow so they know what they're doing with online leads in part one jackie and elmer walked us through their systems and processes how they bring accountability into it they told us exactly what happens when a new online lead comes in and they shared the alm script that they use in the first call with a new buyer that's appointment location motivation listen to this from part one the opening line goes exactly like this hey matt this is elmer with the ehomes team you inquired on 123 banana street how soon did you want to see it but they didn't call it and talk about financing or anything they want to talk about when i can go see the house so it's appointment then it's location so matt what is it about 123 banana street that has you moving to this neighborhood you'll share that i'll gather that information and then matt the next question is we're shooting now for motivation right and then matt so what has you moving to one two three banana street and then you'll give me motivation and then that's it that's it we're not trying to collect any more information we cut it off right there and we're off to to the appointment so that's a taste of what we covered in part one if you haven't listened to that yet definitely recommend you go back and catch up when this episode is over it sets the stage for what we're talking about today which is how e-homes nurtures and converts online leads so listen for jackie and elmer to explain the vip program that they offer to buyers and sellers to convert those leads if and when they ever stop communicating with leads and what they had to change in order to do a better job of converting home light leads as you listen jot down any questions you have and then before we wrap up today i'll let you know how to send those in for next week's show but first here is part two of my conversation with home light elite agents jackie soto and elmer morales when an online lead comes in chances are they are getting replies certainly with home light they are getting replies from yourselves and then other agents as well so what do you guys do to convince the buyer or seller that you're the ones they should be working with that's funny you say that so i think um it goes back to providing value up front you want to provide as much value up front you want to be an expert in that neighborhood when we were on a podcast recently with brad inman he said you want to tattoo that zip code on your forehead especially in this market so you know that that lead when they're shopping online they're connecting with multiple agents they're not just connecting with you it's likely that they're going to call someone someone else or they have already called someone else so how impressive are you going to be to be able to connect with them to show them that you're going to be successful to get them into that home also i'd say leadership so coming down i wanted to circle back to elmer's script about getting them to the um home sooner than later because of the current market i think a lot of agents aren't brave enough to be able to push for that and to lead their clients when you become the leader in the relationship i think that's when you're really able to establish the trust and the value that the consumer needs just two years ago we plugged in a vip buyers presentation and we did the same for the sellers as well so with the buyers vip buyers presentation we're able to sit the buyer down on the first appointment we it's it's a seven page seven to eight pager we keep adding to it but we're going we're going over the benefits of working with with our agents the e-homes team so we break it down for the consumer the value in working with us because the the other issue that we're having with online leads is we come just door openers when we didn't have a presentation we were just opening the door for the consumer and we were letting them walk through the home and we were we weren't really presenting any value to them so with the vip buyer presentation we're talking about home warranties we're talking about home inspections we're talking about the pre-approval process and why it's so important and we just really dig into the process and by the time we're done with that 10-minute presentation all the value has been presented to them so you've then given them value at the appointment in regards to your neighborhood knowledge you're an expert in the area but then you've also sat them down and given them the commitment as an agent to them what are the expectations so at that point you've empowered them to make great decisions you've kind of laid it all out on the table which is what everyone really wants you want clarity and transparency so some leads that come in obviously we're talking about this you know get them to the appointment right away they're interested in seeing a house but sometimes you get a lead right that is further out in the process maybe they're not going to be ready for what six months or eight months or a year when you have a lead like that do you still want to meet with them right now let me say that happened to me yesterday so yesterday um i i'm not really out on appointments very much now but one of our agents had a big appointment and it needed to be moved up because they had multiple offers and they couldn't wait until saturday so they moved it up and unfortunately the agent was busy so i showed up we showed up we got them into the home uh they aren't necessarily ready right now they're trying to find the one that they love right before they pull the trigger um that is going to be a very tailored lead that we're going to nurture because when they are ready they are going to come back to us and the way that that process works i will let elmer talk about it yeah so we again like jackie just said you absolutely want to force what you want to press for the face-to-face because most stages it's been it's a proven fact that most consumers use the first agent that they meet so if we want to go off of statistics then we want to take our chances and meet with the consumer no matter how far out and you also have to have confidence in your nurture process that you're gonna do you know make all the right phone calls you're gonna send all the account the right the right amount of text messages to stand from the consumer so when they do decide to make the move that you're the first person that they're gonna be calling you mentioned the nurture process tell me what that looks like when you get one of these leads that isn't ready to buy or sell right away okay so the nurture process it's really simple so number one we have to the agent has to be the agent to talk to the consumer or met with the consumer has to decide is this a lead i want to hang on to and i want to nurture or is this the lead i want to hand off to the isa department either way the nurture process is going to look the exact same way they're still going to be receiving text messages from us just not as frequently as they might have if when they first came in because when they first come in they're getting text messages like every day so maybe it's a text message once every 30 days it's definitely an email once every 30 days and then the agents are expected depending on how far out they are to either to contact them once every two weeks or once every 30 days at the end of the day we need to see notes input into this into our crm that tells us what's going on with the consumer with with the consumer and we tell the agent when you're writing these notes i want you to write it like you're explaining it to a five-year-old i want you to be as detailed as possible that way when you jump on the next phone call you know exactly what's going on with the lead and you can maybe pick up on something that uh you know help you build quick rapport on the next conversation let me jump in here for just a moment elmer made a really important point right there about agents leaving detailed notes in their crm about every client that's huge for helping to convert an online lead and keep a deal moving forward one other thing about using your crm heavily before almost every conversation i do for the walk through i do a prep call with the guest or guests in this case to sort of set the stage for what topics we should discuss during the prep call for this episode i don't remember if it was jackie or elmer but one of them shared a great tip about crms that unfortunately didn't come up again during the actual podcast conversation if you're using your crm correctly the agents on your team or your brokerage should never wake up in the morning and not know what they need to do that day ehomes uses commissions inc as their crm with that and many other crms you can set up daily or weekly tasks that are tied to each lead or client i know a lot of you are already doing this so keep it up i hope it's helping your business grow for those who aren't doing it it's like adding reminders in your crm so an agent as they're working each lead can set up a task that says something like call sally about financing on tuesday and then when you start your work day on tuesday boom all your tasks are right there in the crm so you don't have to wonder what to do that day it sounds so simple and again i know a lot of you are already doing this for those of you that aren't it's a really powerful way to make sure you're not letting leads slip through the cracks we'll talk more about tools later in this episode but let's get back to the conversation elmer and jackie are walking us through their process for nurturing leads what are you saying in the email or text that goes out are you is it just hey just checking in with you what's going on or are you sending out like actual content like a monthly market update or anything like that yeah so on the emails it's it's like market updates and they're getting property notifications that are tailored to what it is that they inquired on and then on the text message is a little bit more personal hey hey matt just checking in with you um you know this property might have come up that i think you might be interested in i know you're not ready for the home search but i just wanted to check in and see if there's anything i can do for you so again we know they're six months out but you still want to plug in um you know like the dangling carry just in case they're ready to pull the trigger now and how long does a nurture program last for a typical lead that comes in are we are you is there ever a point at which you say all right we're done with this person it's just not going to happen not until they ask us to stop calling and stop texting if they have to stop calling we'll probably email them yeah so most our programs do end at the six month mark but what we do is we'll we'll put them in a pool and then we'll have a drip campaign that we'll plug that pool into to try to revive the leads again so there's always something going on with the leads like no one's ever just put in a place where they're not going to be contacted again unless they've asked us not to and you'd find that usually if you're providing value like you're tailoring the experience for them there's automation but there's also some personalized touches there has to be personalized touches in the throughout the process right to let them know that you care but you'd find that if you're providing value they're not going to ask you to stop calling or stop texting they're going to want to see that stuff because they do want to get there somehow some way our record is a 1263 day old lead that we converted so no 12 that's quickly my math skills that's like three and a half years or so yeah three and a half years i believe that we converted everybody's trying to beat that so we dig into the old leads um to try to revive was that a buyer or do you remember was a buyer or seller or i actually closed it it was a buy a seller needing to sell and then buy so there was two transactions 1263 days well so the folks that are listening to this if that get frustrated after you know 90 days of no contact if that isn't inspirational to like never give up nothing will tell you to never give up right like 1200 plus days that's incredible oh wow okay so we so we've talked about we've talked about sort of the the internal structures you've had we've talked about the culture that you're trying to set up we've talked about i mean you just walked us through the the what you say and what goes out when a lead comes in and then how you nurture them now as i mentioned leads come in from different sources so how much of this is customized versus you know for a home like lead versus a zillow lead versus an idx lead do you have to do a lot of that is it just in the scripts i'd say the script is the same across the board except for maybe something like facebook where your ads may not be listing specific you may just be putting kind of something you know get prepared to purchase your home or you put your vip buyer program out there they're kind of just inquiring to get started you know those are a little further out so you're not trying to set an appointment there right you're not trying to meet them at the home you're trying to educate those people and you essentially nurture those people so when they're ready but otherwise we are trying to set the appointment and we're going through alm on pretty much every lead even on the listing facebook ads that we put out you want to set that appointment as well you guys uh and and jackie you mentioned this a little bit earlier in the conversation you guys were on um a podcast with brad inman a couple months ago and our founder drew was there with you two and you mentioned that with home light leads and i don't know if this was just home light or maybe it was all leads but you mentioned that you had to sort of change in the beginning how you worked those leads in order to i guess convert them better do you recall what that was about and what you had to change the one thing we did we did have to change with home like is we had to we had to step our game up because i found out that home light was sending the lead out to two other agents so when i was going to listing appointments i was interviewing against you know two of the local experts so i had to show up better prepared i had to have a better understanding of the market and i had to show up and deliver the best presentation i could possibly deliver so i had to up my game for my listing my listing presentation had become better my sales skills had to become a lot better um and and just you know just be better prepared in general um so and then we started adding a package delivery prior to my showing up so and just to improve the overall experience and that started getting me better results when you say a package delivery you're sending them sort of uh you know a listing presentation type package you're sending them information about yourself yeah we do that before the listing appointment you'll get that package but he's talking about um kind of after the appointment we have different touches that we do that we think other agents may be forgetting just to improve the experience so after the listing appointment every consumer every uh potential client gets a cookie they get a cookie contestant from send out cards something super simple right but it's kind of above and beyond when you go to like double tree and they give you the cookie how do you feel right it's all about the feeling and the emotion and then when your listing sign goes up uh we we curated this little cute sellers box that has some e-home swag it has a list of what to expect in your listing process it it's above and beyond i'd say for what average agents are doing in the area and that's where we were able to improve um because everyone can generate their sales skills they can yeah they can learn different tricks but it's what are you doing that's kind of outside the box that we went above and beyond to do and and that and to discuss the package that we deliver prior to the appointment we deliver this bright orange envelope with just some marketing items in there and again it discusses our relationship with home light to create credibility depending on where the lead fro come from we we tailor it to the lead source on the items we put in there but we keep it simple and this circles back to how everything's going to a referral base so these larger companies are realizing that they have to connect with the top agents in the area so you're no longer just up against you know someone's uncle or brother you're up against the top agents that these companies have decided to partner with yeah and let me i wanted to share matt just a quick uh story so when i started sending out that opening package that big orange envelope i sort of you every appointment that i showed up to that emblem would be sitting on the dinner table so i knew it was being open and i knew it was being read which again creates credibility credibility and rapport hi everyone if you're enjoying the walkthrough we'd appreciate it if you tell the real estate agents in your network about us even more please rate and review us on apple podcast spotify or wherever you listen your feedback helps us get better and in some cases can also help new listeners find and hear us and when we get around to having you on the show the more listeners the better right [Music] it's interesting that you mentioned the the gift idea um we just had uh abby walters on the podcast a couple weeks ago and she was talking about her referral business and she's also using send out cards uh to for her referral leads and here you guys are using it for your online leads which i think speaks to the fact that yeah you know we're calling home light uh an online lead but it is kind of it's a it's a referral based online lead like we have already talked to the person we send them to you so it's sort of this this the kind of blend of onlinely it's not true online lead it's a referral base anyway let me ask you this this question um because abby mentioned this on the podcast and a couple other agents that we've had we just had rob henderson on the podcast and he sort of talked about it too there are a lot of agents that don't like the online leads because the online lead is you know maybe they're just looking or they're not serious or they just wanted to see the pretty pictures of the homes and all that sort of stuff and they just get you know they look at it as a bad experience or a quote bad lead what's your guys's response to that that's why we set the expectation way ahead of time when we're interviewing the agents because we're huge on mindset if you don't have the right mindset walking into it i believe in the law of attraction if you're walking into that conversation any conversation negatively you're gonna have a negative outcome so walking into when you answer that phone expecting this person on the line to be ready to write an offer that's how i pick up every single phone call that's how i connect with every single client they're ready to buy right now um setting that expectation is huge for me personally yesterday i played a call on our huddle i mean that in fact does happen some of these leads are ready to purchase a home right away but you got to take the good with the ballot right you got to be able to service every single lead if these companies are going to trust you with their referrals you know online leads is something we've been working on for seven years now so the one thing we discovered is an online lead is only bad if you're you're you're not prepared to deal with the nurture and how to answer phone calls and speak to lead if you don't have systems in place matt then that leaf source is going to be really bad just like if i was door knocking and weren't weren't following the proper guidelines to doorknock like i'm not going to get the results i want so i'm going to hate it you got to be prepared you got to have systems in place to get the results you're looking for we have a saying here and it's there is no bad lead there is no bad lead at the end of the day that connection is so valuable whether they're ready right now whether they're never ready if you had a connection with a human being and you serviced him well guess what that human being has a mother of fathers sisters brothers that are friends co-workers that may want to buy or sell and if you met this person and provided value at that appointment or on that phone call they may think of you if you can nurture this relationship well enough as a professional to refer business to and i know with homelight you have you have a representative that uh is in charge of working and partnering with you i assume well my wife used to advertise on zillow so i know that that you would get a zillow rep tell me about what you do to to nurture these these relationships that you have with the representatives and is that important very important so our relationship business i'm doing air quotes i know you guys won't see this on the podcast but our relationship business is not just with the client our relationship businesses with our referral partners and at the end of the day these bigger companies are our referral partners so making sure that you have clear expectations um from them and then you're able to meet those expectations that you and you ask for help too you know if you're confused about something that you have that great communication with this person who has been put in their place their job is literally to help you succeed with their platform so i think one thing that is a huge misconception in our industry is that you can't change your rep um so i'm sorry for any rep that may get fired because of this but you know you can ask for another rep if they're not serving you at the end of the day this bigger company wants to switch you out to someone that's going to help you grow with them yeah i mean it's important it's a relationship and you're going to be in touch with them in on a regular basis and sometimes it's just you get matched with a person that may not be the right uh the right fit so that's yeah if you can ask for somebody else that makes perfect sense one thing that i haven't asked you about and i i hope we can get into a little bit before we wrap up to make all this possible i'm sure you have a number of different uh tools that you are using so we talked about the automated text and the automated emails um obviously there's crm involved can you give us sort of a snapshot of some of the tools that you use to make this happen i think listeners would find that kind of interesting the cr so the crm that we use is commissions inc and we've been using them for over uh three years now for the automatic automated texts we use my good buddy jesse b's company of call action and they uh they do all the all the automated tech scene and and they help us route the lead into our call action system i mean our commissioning system we use closio for transaction management and we make the best of our did you catch those tools that elmer just mentioned i'll recap real quick in case you're writing them down they use commissions inc as their crm they use call action to handle the automated texts that get sent to new leads and then that also gets routed back into commissions inc as well their crm for transaction management they use close.io closio which recently rebranded as close.com and then the last tool that elmer mentioned is broker mint which is a back office management platform and obviously their tool belt also includes specific mobile apps like the home lite app for managing home light leads the zillow app for managing zillow leads and so forth so that's a look at the tools they're using and now back to the conversation which is just starting to wrap up what final words of advice would you give for agents that have struggled with online leads in the past what you know what would you say to them to maybe give them some encouragement to try again and perhaps do it differently things from me and it's going to be the first one back to mindset get your mindset right you need to get that out of you get your mind out of the gutter you need to treat every connection as a high quality connection you need to know that if they're not going to buy a house today they're going to know someone that's going to buy a house or they're gonna buy a house later on at the end of the day you're the professional in their eyes so connect with these people and guide them if you can change your mindset walk into the conversation that's number one number two is find a team that you can learn from so there are people out there doing this and doing this successfully so mirroring finding someone that you can shadow or mirror and learn from them that's going to be key too and i would tell you um having an understanding of what the cost of an online lead is i hear this all the time um agents will ask elmer what's a better lead is a facebook lead better or is a home light lead better and i would tell you a home light leads better and they're going to tell me but i got to pay them a 25 referral and the facebook lead i can generate a thousand facebook leads for two dollars a lead but you have to take into consideration the cost of the nurturing that lead to having to hire an isa for eight hours a day to nurture those thousand leads the cost of that lead went from five dollars now to ninety five dollars so you gotta you have to measure and you have to track every all your spend to really determine what um you know what the cost is of a certain specific type of lead source so i think that's where the misunderstanding comes from agents when they say hey facebook is the way to go because it's two dollars a lead no it's not it's not two dollars wait till you have to spend you know the rest of your summer uh calling those leads and nurturing those leads you'll realize that it's not just two bucks takes a lot of your time our jobs to talk to people yeah yeah so you gotta you have to understand what's gonna be better use of your time so there you go two episodes dedicated to converting online leads and we're not even done yet jackie and elmer are coming back next week to answer your questions about online leads and i'll discuss more in just a moment about how to submit a question first how about we do some takeaways from this week's episode here's what stood out to me number one jackie and elmer talked about bringing value to the lead from the very first contact because it's so easy to just become a door opener for the consumer right an agent who just lets people into this house then lets them into the next house and then lets them into the house after that and so on and so forth ehomes has a vip buyer and seller presentation they go over it during the first meeting to set themselves apart from other agents to have a better shot at converting the lead number two their nurture process runs for about six months and then after that leads go into a long-term drip system they don't stop reaching out unless the lead specifically tells them not to and did you catch their record for the oldest lead they ever converted elmer says he had one who took 1263 days from the initial contact 1263. boy if that isn't a testament to uh sticking with it and not giving up on a lead boy nothing is number three i liked when they talked about even if the lead isn't planning to buy or sell soon you still want to meet them right away why is that well because most consumers will use the first agent they meet and then number four i asked them about you know quote bad online leads people who aren't serious buyers or sellers and did you catch what they said elmer talked about how having the right systems and processes mean there are no bad leads and jackie said the same thing but she came at it in terms of mindset when you first talk to an online lead go into it expecting that they're ready to write an offer she said if you expect a bad experience you'll probably get one okay if you have questions about today's show or about part one jackie and elmer have agreed to come back next week and answer them on what will be part three of this series on converting online leads but here's the deal we're going to record that part 3 conversation tomorrow tuesday july 14th that's tomorrow if you're listening to this on monday the day that this episode comes out if you're listening to it later in the week i'm sorry but the window is probably already closed so get your questions to me as soon as possible okay there's two ways you can do it and i'll repeat both of these number one leave me a voicemail at 415-322 or you can send an email to walkthrough homelight.com let me give those out one more time the voicemail number 415-322-3328 the email address is walkthrough homelight.com we'll take the questions that come in and ask jackie and elmer to answer them for us and that will be next week's episode so that's all for this week thanks to jackie soto and elmer morales for joining me thank you for listening my name is matt mcgee remember at home light we believe in real estate agents that's why we created the walk through we're on a journey to find out how great real estate agents grow their business stand out from the crowd and become irreplaceable go out and safely sell some homes we'll talk to you again next week everyone [Music] bye-bye you