.svg)
.png)
Denise has been serving the Crestview and surrounding areas for five years, helping clients find homes along Florida’s beautiful Emerald Coast. When she first entered real estate, she wondered how she’d build her pipeline beyond friends and family referrals. That’s when she was introduced to CINC—and everything changed about how she approached lead generation.
Here’s what's stood out in her journey so far:
- One CINC lead turned into seven transactions, totaling over $4 million in sales and more than $80,000 in commission.
- Denise expanded her reach beyond her immediate market, connecting with buyers and sellers in other submarkets and out of state.
- Her success came from consistent follow-up, using CINC’s tools like reminders, notes, and the mobile app to stay engaged—even on the go.
- She makes real connections by picking up the phone and having conversations, turning online leads into lasting relationships.
Her story shows how persistence and smart tools can create opportunities that keep paying off.
Watch the full video here or read the transcript below.
Transcript
My name is Denise Mitchell and I'm with Harrison Lilly, Emerald Coast. I have been in real estate for about five years. I live in Crestview, Florida, and we are near Destin. Navar, Freeport, Pensacola. So I pretty much service all those areas.
So the brokerage I was with provided a CRM and I had not been in real estate, so this was all very new to me and I went through a coaching program.
Which introduced us to just basic lead generation, and I'm those, one of those strange people that I like to get on the phones and call people. So I found that for me, just getting into real estate, I was like, how am I gonna get my leads?
CINC brings a steady flow of buyers and sellers that I wouldn't have access to.
I get [00:01:00] referrals from friends and family and network, but it does, it exposes me to other areas too, quite honestly. That. You end up selling where you live a lot of the times. And so this takes me into Navar, it takes me into Pensacola, it takes me into other areas, and it just gives me just a, it helps me build my pipeline.
Most of the people I work with are, living here. This is their home. But I will say that we are a vacation area, a lot of the CINC leads that I'm working right now are people that I'm looking for. They want to have a rental in the area, but also come in the winter months. And so I have quite a few right now that I'm actively working like that.
So this particular lead I had tried calling her, I tried sending text messages and never connected and just, I would just continue to go through them. Faithfully, the ones that I hadn't connected [00:02:00] with and I got ahold of her one day she answered and we just started chatting on the phone. We just had a connection I would say, and so we set up a listing appointment for two weeks out.
And she actually had to cancel on me 'cause of health reasons and said, she'd get back to me. So then you always think, oh, sure, she's gonna get back to me. But I continued just to follow up and check on her, make sure she was doing okay, and we got that initial appointment. We went ahead and I was putting the sign out in the yard after I got, I got the listing, put the sign in the yard, and the neighbor came out next door and she started talking to me.
Of course, I, was engaging with her and she was asking me some questions about the house and when we're putting it, what we're doing to sell the home and things like that. And about a week later I got a call from her and she's I want a listing appointment. I wanna sell my house.
We wanna move outta state. I was like, okay, I can come by tomorrow. And [00:03:00] she's oh, no. She goes, I want you, like today, I, we really are excited about this. Can you come today? Now, I was still a fairly, a new agent. It's my first year in real estate first year and a half, I was like, all right, get it together, Denise, and work up a, a the numbers for her and a listing presentation went over.
We went ahead and decided on a price. And got that house on the market. So now I had two side by side in a beautiful neighborhood in a bar beach that I was really excited about. So then meantime, we went ahead, I did an open house and through that open house I had a gentleman contact me prior and said, Hey, I'm gonna be coming by.
I'm gonna bring my wife. We're super interested in this house. Okay, great. I thought he was gonna purchase this house. I was just, for sure he was gonna do that. So he went through the home and he called me back afterwards and he is you know what? He [00:04:00] goes, that's, it's just not the house for us.
But he said, I'm still interested in buying and so great. I'd be happy to help you. We went and looked at some homes and his price point was in the million dollar range, now I've got a house on the market that's in the eight hundreds. The next door neighbor that was right around 500,000 and he's in the million dollar.
So we went ahead found him a beautiful home in Navarre that was over $1 million. And through that then his daughter decided. That she wanted to sell her home. Okay, great. And he recommended me and we met and I helped her sell her home. And then they bought a new build. So I was like, great. Let's see.
So that was that one. So I'm trying to think. There were seven [00:05:00] transactions out of all these. Then my initial, oh, okay, so now we're going back to the very initial home, right? That one, it was overpriced to start 'cause she wanted to start in the million dollar range. We lowered that, ended up selling it in the eight hundreds, but that one took months to sell.
So in the meantime I'm showing her homes 'cause she wanted to buy another home in the area. We finally did get her home sold and then she bought a house. So that was just, it just kept on coming, and then I had this year another client call me from that group and tell me that they wanted to sell their home, that they had purchased through me, and they were moving outta state.
Okay. So it just, it has kept on, it just keeps on giving, and. Let me just say, so that was over $4 million in sales. So to date and commission I went ahead [00:06:00] and added that up. Just a little over 80,000 in commission from those sales and all from one CINC lead. It's crazy. I find it's super easy to use, and.
And that's what I like about it, is that I can just get on, if you have a dialer, use the dialer. 'cause that does help go through 'em a lot quicker. But don't be afraid to get on and just start clicking and calling people and find out what they're all about. One of the things I really like is that you can put it there so you can see.
Who's viewed recently, so I could see that. And I'm always looking, I was on last night looking as well. You can see that people are going, oh wow. They're starting to look at houses. So that tells you they're still interested in either buying or selling. That was one of the things and that I do regularly.
But and then it was just through keeping in touch with these people, I don't give up, if they don't answer the first time. [00:07:00] Always follow up with the text that same day so that they realize I'm a real person, and I just try to get 'em on the phone rather than just a text message because then it becomes personal.
Can always find a reason to connect with somebody about something. The reminders, that's one of the features I use a lot right now. At first, I didn't see value in that, so I didn't set any reminders. And now I try to set a reminder so that I don't forget about them, so they'll pop up on my phone. You have, six people to call.
I love putting the notes in. For example, again, I had reached out to this one lady, she's probably the past 60 days. And all of a sudden last night, pop, I get this message from this lady. And on my phone I wasn't quite sure who she was because I had, I guess I had just called her and so I went ahead and got on CINC and I was at a baseball game.[00:08:00]
I got on CINC and I looked her up. I had my notes in there that I had tried to reach her, what house she was interested in, looked up that house. Unfortunately it had already just got pending two days ago. But I responded back and told her unfortunately that house is under contract. Is there anything else that, she interested in moving to the Emerald Coast or what are her goals?
And she didn't respond back last night, but today I got another response from her. So I'm trying to get her on the phone and engage with her so that we can talk for about five minutes just to see, what it is that she's looking for in the area. During the day when I'm home generating, I use my desktop because there's a little bit more I can see.
But one of the things I really like about using my phone is because I can just dial directly from there. So if you're sitting in the car and you're just, waiting on something and you've got some time in the car, even if it's just 15 minutes, you can just get on [00:09:00] CINC. I'm not getting paid to do this, but it's true.
You can just get on sync and click on your leads and dial directly from the app and, you can get in maybe 10 calls just going through that and put your notes in. It's super easy to pull it up and then just click on notes and you can see every conversation, anytime you've tried to reach 'em.
And it just makes it really easy to be on the go and see the history behind the call. Really for new agents, I would say to find other agents that you can practice and role play with, find a brokerage that actually has a great training platform because that really helped me.
It's not real estate's a contact sport. You can't just, oh, I got my real estate license and start selling homes, learn the contracts, read the contracts. I know everything's sent through. A lot of people sign online. You're not [00:10:00] taking paper contracts. People don't sign those much anymore.
But you still, sometimes people still want you to explain those contracts to them. So you need to learn and really be consistent, set aside time, every single day, even it's just a couple hours to lead generate, to get on the phone with people. My cell phone (850) 758-0857. That's the other thing. That would be the other tip is answer your phone.
People want a live person. Don't make 'em leave messages. You see that call coming through? Pick it up. Talk to people.