From Bad Phone Numbers to Ratified Contracts: Mastering Online Real Estate Lead Follow-Up

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Transcript

Tiffany Christian: [00:00:00] We pride ourselves in surrounding ourselves with people who are really high achieving and really professional, good people. And that was why we were blown away with the support and the training that we were receiving from CINC. 

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Tiffany Christian: I work for The Realty Group Coastal Virginia. We service clients from Virginia Beach all the way up through Richmond. So there's seven main cities that consist of Hampton Roads. So Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Poquoson, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Chesapeake, Newport News. Hampton, Yorktown, Williamsburg, and then New Kent, Quentin, Richmond. So the last three: New Kent, Quentin, Richmond, we service those less but we do have agents just Based on how however far up the peninsula people will go.

I think the interesting thing in our [00:01:00] area is that we have a ton of military bases. And so we have a lot of movement in and out of our area on a pretty consistent basis because of that population that we serve. Our team is we have four agents who are all unbelievable and they're fantastic. And I am The director of operations. We also have a CEO. And we did have a marketing specialist for a summer internship as well. 

Jennifer O'Connell: Awesome. So I know you're relatively new to CINC. Do you know what you guys were doing for lead gen or a CRM before to manage your database?

Tiffany Christian: Yeah, so we are actually brand new to CINC and we are a brand new team as well. So I started working with our owner of the team. I was the first official hire, so I started in May. But the Our CEO and three of our agents came [00:02:00] on July 1st and we inherited a team with a top performing agent as well. He started with us June 1st. So, we are a brand new team. The first couple months, we were doing a whole bunch of research starting to work with different online leads, tried a whole bunch of different things, very quickly realized that CINC was where I wanted to be. Just based on the support and the training and everyone that we were interacting with. And the responses and results that we were getting pretty quickly. So that's where we went to start, but we have tried a bunch of different lead sources as well.

Jennifer O'Connell: One of the reasons we were so excited to talk to you is because you have some great CINC stories already, I think in your three months. So we're hoping you could share a story about a memorable CINC lead, or yeah, maybe those bad actor leads that other [00:03:00] people might cast aside but you guys were able to do something with. If you could share one or a couple of those stories, that would be great.

Tiffany Christian: Yeah I think that the first two CINC leads that we converted into ratified contracts, they both came into our system with bad phone numbers. One also came in with a bad name as well. And so I've been trying really hard to follow the CINC playbook. And I make the six calls in the 14 days. But what I was realizing is right off the bat, there's a lot of bad phone numbers. And truthfully, like I never give my real phone number out ever. And so I started trying to engage with some of those bad phone numbers as well, just via email cause I could tell that they had opened the initial email or they had opened a property alert.

And so I'm just using a generic CINC email that says, "Oops, I got something wrong" [00:04:00] for their phone number when in all reality, I didn't get something wrong. They gave me a bad phone number, right? But just I love the language of it that it makes it sound like I'm not saying you gave me a bad number.

And One of them, our client from Germany responded right away. And he said, "Hey, I'm abroad. That's why you can't reach me." And so he said you can call me on WhatsApp or we can do this via email. And I said what's your preference? And he said, email is probably best. And so we started our relationship just via email, connected him with a realtor on our team who started doing virtual showings with him. And they actually closed today on their home back here for him, his wife, and his two daughters. So they just came back stateside. Military family. So that's our Germany family. 

And then [00:05:00] our second and the lead is actually closing on Wednesday. So almost a week from now. And She came in with a bad name and a bad phone number. And it wasn't until she put in a property alert request. Like she wanted to see a property. And I responded, I tried to call her again. It was a bad phone number. So I responded via email saying, Hey, I'd love to give you more information about this property, but I can't reach you. What's the best number to reach you at? or give me a call at this number. And The property she was requesting was under contract. It had just gone under contract the day before. So I didn't want to share that in the email, but she immediately called. And she was disappointed.

It's actually a great story. Her stepfather was surprising her mother. They lived out of state and they were retired and wanting to move to the area to be closer to [00:06:00] their daughter. And so she and her stepfather Then went out with one of our realtors, found a place, put in an offer and surprised her mom with a house down here. And they are moving in two weeks to come down and be close to their daughter and their two granddaughters. And it all started just because I had just continued to follow up and say, "I want to help you, but how, can I reach you?"

Jennifer O'Connell: So I guess those talk tracks for leads it with bad numbers, or just ones that you guys don't know personally, what are you finding works in the outreach? 

Tiffany Christian: Yeah, so I would say I personally have gotten really good at just talking with people. Most people will say, "Oh, I'm just browsing," or "I'm not really that interested right now." And I like to tell them that [00:07:00] full transparency, our website set up to send them daily emails. And I can sense people start tensing up, and I tell them, I don't want to spam you like that's not my intention. I hate it when I get spammed. And so then I go into trying to figure out what is it that you'd want me to send? And once I mentioned not wanting to spam them. People generally start to open up. And just they feel like I'm on their side and I'm helping them. And I think truthfully it helps to a certain extent since I'm not a realtor. I let them know that I'm I'm not trying to force anything on them. We're really here to just help them, and it's a privilege to be a part of their process. And whatever their timeline is, we are good with it. And so I've gotten a lot of positive responses from that as well. And saying as soon as you're ready to go and look at a house, I will connect you with someone who will be able to show you that house. [00:08:00] But until you're there, like we can hang out, and we'll make sure that we continue to service you. In a way that adds value to you, but it's also the way that you want to receive it. 

Jennifer O'Connell: Yeah, that's perfect. So obviously there's a different perspective with you as the director of operations, which we love. Do you know, or can you speak to like how you work in the CINC system, versus how the agents work, versus how the team lead works? 

Tiffany Christian: Yeah. So when all of the leads come in right now, they come directly to me. We are about to hire a full on staff ISA. She'll start in a couple weeks to help me with our call volume and the client nurturing. We're actually calling the position a client care coordinator because that's really how we view it. They're here to help the client get to the point of working with a realtor or an agent But then also continue to help servicing them once they're with that [00:09:00] realtor agent. So they'll continue to make sure that everything is going smoothly. That any new houses that come on that might work for them, that they're making sure that the realtor knows it for them. 

So we will see everything. We take detailed notes and we use all the tags. So we have tags for what number call we're on to try to track to make sure that we're hitting the six calls in the 14 days. Based on the call that we're on, that also will trigger a different email that we'll send acknowledging that some of the numbers that we have still might not be their number. And we don't know that yet. And we take detailed notes about everything. We'll put a tag on once we know it's the correct number, right? The name is confirmed either by someone answering, even if they hang up on us. Or if it's a voicemail and they identify themselves by name. So that, that's just another piece of information that we know [00:10:00] about them. When we pass them off to a realtor, we've transitioned to where we're actually setting the appointment.

And so when we set the appointment, we then assign it to them. It'll go into then the agent's dashboard. And at that point, they'll be able to see all of our notes. We take notes exactly how the clients are answering sort of our questions and how our conversation goes so that if my answers are long and rambly and all over the place, that was probably how the conversation was as well. Compared to someone who's like very short, like two or three words our agents then know the type of client that they're coming into to begin working with as well. But when we do that handoff, we're really excited. We're telling the, client why we think this agent is the right person. And we're sharing some personal information about the [00:11:00] agent as well. 

So one of our realtors just went out the other day to help a family. They just got they called it their gateway farm animals. They just got chickens. So they're moving they want more land and they want some farm. And so as I was passing it off, we have an agent who has some pet ducks. And so immediately I shared that connection that, you know, Hey, Tracy is going to be able to help you best. Like she's got some animals herself. And so our agent was able to just pick up that text conversation right away. And it felt like it was a very seamless transition.

So our agents use it from that aspect. But the nice thing about it being on the operations side is that our CEO and myself, and then our soon to be client care coordinator, we're able to see it all at the same time, right? So we're able to track and be like, it looks like you've tried to call so and so this many times, and you're not connecting. Do you want me to try to set up a [00:12:00] time for you guys to connect? Or I noticed that you keep calling first thing in the morning. They actually work third shift. So try calling again after three.

So providing that sort of insight as well to just help both sides of the equation. 

Jennifer O'Connell: Thank you. That was awesome. And then obviously, as you guys grow your database, it's harder to reach out to the leads in a timely manner and keep up with them consistently. What CINC tools are you leveraging now, or do you plan to start using more to make nurturing a little bit easier? 

Tiffany Christian: When we increased our CINC spend, we tried the dialer. I can understand how the dialer on our initial level would have been, and, it wasn't necessary. I can either use the app. I prefer to call from my computer so I can take notes better. But I could also call right through my computer as well. 

As soon as we started trying to hit a lot more calls [00:13:00] each day, the dialer was huge for us and I recommend it. And so that's been really helpful. It, Almost doubled the amount of calls that I was able to make in the same amount of time which was huge. And I didn't realize You know, how much little clicking I was doing and how much more efficient it made me just letting the dialer go. 

The other thing that I'm looking forward to once we have our ISA on board is really evaluating all of the templates that we've been using and getting pretty sophisticated about those. So making sure that they're actually in our voice, trying to change some of the language. We have lots of bridges and tunnels. And if you're not from our area, you don't realize that you don't want to go through a bridge tunnel. Like people don't know how to drive on Fridays. I'm not sure why, but it doesn't matter. They just can't drive through a bridge and tunnel on Friday, Monday [00:14:00] through Thursday is totally fine, but Fridays we can't do that. Some language that makes it a little bit more personal to us, but then working to set up the automization. So once I say it's an attempted contact and this was my third call, I'm looking forward to building it so that the third email automatically goes out without me then having to go and select the third email.

So things like that I just know will make us that much more efficient. And will allow us to continue to make the calls as our numbers continue to grow so that we can continue to nurture our clients. 

And then the last thing that I know that I need to do, and I haven't done yet, is I have to sync my reminders from CINC onto my calendar because we do set up the reminders. So when we say we're going to call someone back at two o'clock on Friday to make sure that we're actually calling them back at two o'clock on Friday. As opposed [00:15:00] to just calling in that time block and calling at 2:30. I'm a firm believer that if we say we're gonna call at 2:00, we need to call at 2:00. So looking forward to just doing that. And I know that's a super low hanging fruit and I should have already done it. So that will get done soon. 

Jennifer O'Connell: No, it sounds like you guys are crushing it. And I'm going to go back a little bit. You mentioned, obviously there's a lot of military bases around you and we've been hearing a lot about out of state buyers or in your case, you mentioned somebody from Germany. Does CINC help you better collect those leads that are out of state, and how do you work those differently than somebody who does know the area better? 

Tiffany Christian: Yeah, so that's one of the initial questions that we ask. You know when I'm asking what area they're in or what area they're looking in a lot of people will start just with Virginia Beach. It's our biggest city. It's our most well known city, But there's four cities that literally are right up next [00:16:00] to it. Then you cross the street and you're into Chesapeake or you're into Norfolk. And so we try to gauge how well do they know the area? And a lot of times people will say, Oh, I don't know the area at all. And then that's where we branch to see where they're coming from. I personally have lived all over myself. And so where, when there's a commonality we try to bridge that right away.

But I think that the thing that's been really helpful for us is setting up our virtual tours. We'll schedule the appointment through CINC. We'll share the Google meet with them. And so our clients and our agents will walk through the house. And they'll do the full house tour as though our clients are there, right?

And the only difference is that sometimes it takes twice as long because they're measuring every room to make sure that the furniture will fit, like that sort of thing. But we are [00:17:00] finding that because people are finding us through our Google searches, right? A lot of our Google searches are out of town clients. And so we're able to then get on quickly with them. Talk to them about the different areas. Tell them about our bridges and tunnels. And really be able to add value and help steer them in the right direction to then get them in focusing in the right area for their search.

Jennifer O'Connell: Thank you. I think that's good for me, Richard I don't know if you have something to add, but thank you, Tiffany, so far this has been great. 

Richard Kaiser: Tiffany, one of the things that we heard that raised some eyebrows of three months in and you've got three people at the closing table from fake names. That was pretty interesting. What are they? What are they doing differently? And so one of the things somebody had mentioned was door knocking with partial seller leads. Can you speak to [00:18:00] some of the more unique tactics that you guys are using and have found success with? 

Tiffany Christian: Yeah. So I'll be honest, I still have some PTSD from our partial leads and our seller leads in general. We pulled out of that because I wanted to get really good and have success in one thing before I try to go through that again. But I think honestly, Richard, I think what makes us different is I'm brand new to real estate. I come up from a higher ed background and, we pride ourselves in surrounding ourselves with people who are really high achieving and really professional, good people. And that was why we were blown away with the support and the training that we were receiving from CINC. And so it was like, what are we like, I don't know right from wrong, but if they tell me I'm going to do it this way, then that's how I'm going to do it.

So I think honestly [00:19:00] one of my pain points at the beginning was I couldn't tell if I was succeeding or failing at calling six times in 14 days. There was no way for me to really be able to tell that. So we created a system and we tag it and it's slightly annoying, but I change it every single time. So I can tell you that this person I didn't connect with them until my 6th call, right? Which means that I call them six times. I sent five emails and they got anywhere from 1-14 or not, 5-14 property alerts depending on the days that I called. So it was just that ability to just say, okay, I need to figure out how to make sure that I'm doing this right. 

I think the other thing that we do differently is that [00:20:00] I'm spending four hours a day and I really appreciate our CEO and our team owner that allowed me to essentially not do my operations work that I should be doing to really dedicate the four hours a day to these calls. So I'm calling frequently. I'm calling on the weekends, and if we say we're gonna call someone back on a certain day, we call them back on a certain day. 

I will say that so we did go out with our full seller leads and our partial seller leads, right? And our our partial seller leads are the same as our leads with bad phone numbers and emails, right? Most of the other realtors that got that same information, they stopped there, right at the bad phone number. So that means our competition just dramatically decreased and so the acknowledgement of that. We're [00:21:00] going to then take advantage of those those little parts of the market that other people don't have the time, frankly, to work and follow up on because they're busy working with clients to sell the houses, right? Or to buy houses. On the operations side that's our job, right, is to support our agents. And so we're going to put in that work to try to find those people.

Richard Kaiser: It's interesting how you guys have taken taken a slightly different approach. I think it's really impressive. I think the other thing is right as the market has changed a little bit, have you heard any feedback from your realtors or even yourself and I guess how you guys have had to change up your approach a little bit in the current market?

Tiffany Christian: Yeah. So I, and again we work with such great realtors, but I'll come back to our [00:22:00] weekly meeting and say hey, I'm hearing a lot about X, Y or Z, right? With the interest rates changing, I brought it to the team meeting and I was like, coach me up, tell me what's another way that I can hear them and acknowledge them. And one of our agents brought up the fact that now at 7% 7.5%, that's normal, right? What was three years ago, that was the once in a lifetime going out of business sale, right? And so we, can't go back. But what we can do is acknowledge that this is the new normal. So using that language I've had some really good responses, right? And people talking about their favorite store that went out of business and they love the clearance sale, but now they can't get it anymore. And they're like, that makes sense. So that's where we are for interest rates. [00:23:00] And so that's been helpful just to have that collaboration with our realtors.

I think that we're seeing, our CEO comes from a background, she owned a real estate photography business. And we were talking about how the inventory is significantly lower going into these months. And she made the point, she's like yeah, it's significantly lower. The photography company is still having five appointments a day per photographer. And that's just instead of 12. And so when she put it in that perspective, I was like, Oh there's still quantity out there, right? There's still homes out there. We just need to do a better job of listening and then finding that right for the clients and saying, I know that you said that you only wanted to live in this city, but I found this [00:24:00] house that matches everything else. In this other city that's right next to it and it's two minutes away. What do you think about it? Like that's on us to help find them that. 

Richard Kaiser: And have you guys as part of that like the new type of inventory? I know some of the different agents we've been talking to they've been leaning a little bit more on new construction. Has that been playing a bigger role for you guys?

Tiffany Christian: Yeah. I'm trying to think one of our CINC leads actually he just ratified a couple of weeks ago. And he will be closing in beginning of March. he's new construction as well. And it's the same thing of his initial desires were to close before the year's end. And we could have put him in a center town home before the year's end. But if you waited until March, he gets the end town home with [00:25:00] the view. That's like the perfect view. And so, yeah, so we are seeing that. We're fortunate that we do have a lot of new construction, but we also have a lot of inventory in that single story ranch style housing, which it seems like what I'm feeling or receiving right now is either the new construction or they want single floor living. And so we have still a big inventory of both. And for our ranch styles, they're either going to be really outdated because the original owners have it, or they're going to have been gutted and they'll have the open floor plan, but just single floor living.

Richard Kaiser: That's great. Jenn those are the only questions I have. 

Jennifer O'Connell: I think this has been really great. I don't know, Tiffany, if there's anything else you want to share, [00:26:00] but we appreciate all the questions you've answered. 

Tiffany Christian: I just want to express from our team, right? We've loved working with everyone in CINC. Eddie, who's our account manager now. Actually just got our team owner meeting with Alvaro next week, which is exciting, right? We want to do really well, and we're always happy to jump on a call and learn from other people and share the little things that we've learned along the way, but Yeah, thank you.