Hunker Down Or Double Down? How to Wisely Invest in Online Real Estate Leads

Transcript

Richard Kaiser: My name is Richard Kaiser Director of Demand Gen and Sales Ops here at CINC. And we're excited for today's webinar, Hunker Down or Double Down, How to Wisely Invest in Online Leads Now.

The background on why we did the webinar today. We all know we've seen a bunch of stuff on mortgage rates and lawsuits and the headlines out there. And the conversation that we at CINC were having with Ro though is when you dive in behind what's going on beyond those headlines, there's actually a lot of opportunity out there. And the question both of our companies keep getting from a lot of our clients and prospects in here is okay, what do I do now? As it relates to online leads with everything else that's going on. And so we wanted to take a pause as we're heading into [00:01:00] 2024 and just share our perspective on what we're seeing. And with that, Ro, I'll kick it off to you. 

Ro Malik: Yeah, thanks, Richard. I appreciate that. Hey, guys just for those that I don't know, or don't know me. My name is Ro Malik I'm the CEO and co-founder of a company called Conversion Monster, which is an ISA company, helping agents with online leads. I'm also a real estate agent, team leader. I have a team in Chicago that I still run and for better or for worse, I've been around internet leads for 20 plus years now, I actually started in the business way back when as a mortgage banker working on lending tree leads.

So unlike many of you, I've actually built my entire business over years and years and years with internet leads. So I understand them. I've been around them for a very long time. I've converted them and I've made an entire business out of them, which is part of the reason that I [00:02:00] started Conversion Monster so I could help other agents convert leads and leverage theirs themselves as well. 

But today I am here not just as the CEO and co founder of Conversion Monster, but as an agent who is deeply passionate about the transformative power of online leads. So today I have the privilege of unveiling a game-changing tool that I created, which has the potential to change the way you approach your real estate business. The power of online leads can be the key to unlocking unprecedented opportunities for your business. However, as we all know, that journey from leads to conversions has often been challenging and elusive. 

So that's precisely why we're here today. I've developed a powerful Excel calculator. That will hopefully reshape the way you view Internet leads and more importantly, how you scale your business. This tool is just not a calculator. It should be a compass for you for the coming months and years. And over the course of the presentation, [00:03:00] I'm going to walk you through the insights the calculator provides. It's not just about crunching numbers. It's about optimizing your strategies and achieving unprecedented growth.

And so I didn't know if you guys knew you were coming here today for a math lesson, but you're going to get one and I hope you find it really helpful and useful. So I know we're all used to multitasking, as agents got a lot going on at the same time, but I'm hoping that you stay with me and try not to multitask too much because I want to go over this and I think it's pretty important.

Matt Hart: I'll just throw in too, having gone over this information with you. I'm so impressed by the work that you guys have done over the last 10 years and understanding, the data behind all of this stuff. And really, it's, it was so funny that when you and I connected on this originally. It was funny how we had also just concluded a 7 year study on over 10,000,000 leads from 2000 clients and how similar our numbers were in [00:04:00] terms of conversion rates and things like that. So I'm really excited to walk through this. With you today. 

Ro Malik: And man, I have discussed some of these things at length and it's, there's just a lot of consistency with both of our research, right? In terms of what we were looking at. And I'm really happy for those of you guys that are joining this webinar, because I know there's a lot of times you join webinars and there's a lot of fluff and and it's, You may not get as much out of it and I think you're going to get a lot out of this one.

So stay with me. There is a little math. And it's not the most user friendly. It's an Excel spreadsheet, which we are going to have a much more user friendly version of this. It's being coded by our developers, but I'm just going to give you the peek behind, screens so you can see the actual spreadsheet.

And then again. I've gotten feedback that people are like, you got a more user friendly version of this? So we're having our developers code it and I'll give you a sneak peek of what that looks like. It's almost finished [00:05:00] and we'll be able to send you guys a copy if you want. So without further ado, let me go ahead and share my screen.

Okay. All right, cool. So what I want to take you guys through is basically what people what first we're going to start with is what agents normally do when it comes to online leads. What they do with Internet leads when they first signed up for leads.

Okay. I want to give you a little bit of information, a little bit of a reality check as far as expectations are concerned, and then show you what we have discovered over time. And really the strategies that you can implore that will provide you with triple digit. Really ROI and potential for six figure, profit.

Now, for some of you guys that are solo agents, that's going to look different than if you're a team or a team leader or a market center or a brokerage, but we'll go through both examples. And I'm going to go [00:06:00] fast because I know our time is limited here. But again, you'll get a copy of the calculator, you'd be able to play with it and plug in your own numbers to see how this all pans out.

So let's run through this. So what we did is I've broken this down into the initial 6 months when you're first starting with online leads. Then we're breaking it down into after your sort of your ramp up period, your first 12 months after that, and then the 3rd category is your next 12 months after that.

So basically from day 1 to month 30, right? And what does that look like over the course of 2.5 years? And I think what you're going to find is pretty staggering difference in results. So let's start with this. Over here I wrote, NAR has stated that internet lead conversion rates are between 0.4 and 1.2 percent on average.

Okay. And actually when I was showing this to Matt, I even started out with a conversion rate of 0.4 over here. I went even a touch [00:07:00] lower. Just to show you guys right to so you can look at these numbers and not think that they're unrealistic. I went, even more conservative than NAR. 

Okay, so let's start off with what the normal agent or normal team or normal person does when they sign up for online leads. What they generally do is they pick a package 50 leads a month, 100 leads a month. 150 leads a month and they just stay with it. Okay. That's what they're getting. it can be at times a bit of an afterthought. It's just I've got 100 leads a month. I'm just sticking with that. And what we have discovered, what I'm going to show you is if you double down on your leads at specific inflection points, you dramatically change your income, your profitability, and your ROI. Okay, so let's dive into this and, let, us know if, something is not making, any sense along the way, and then Richard can can chime in here. 

We're starting with the first 6 months. Like I [00:08:00] said, most agents are getting 100 leads a month. And what I did here is I put in a conservative conversion rate, 0.35 of 1%. Okay, the average home price in America fluctuates a little bit. It's up again. It's probably higher now than 425. the new reports just came out, but I put the average home price at $425,000. I put a commission rate of 2.75%, we have to be careful not to call that an average commission rate anymore. And then this 1 is for a team leader. So if you're a team leader, or you've got a split with your team, or even if you're just on a 50 50 split, then this is what your gross income is going to be. Okay, so this 1st breakdown is your income.

The 2nd breakdown here is your expenses. 100 leads a month. I'm putting an average of $10 per lead for Google PPC. When I've talked to Matt and CINC, that's actually lower. It's $8 and we'll [00:09:00] plug that in as well. If you're using Conversion Monster as your ISA company, then this will fluctuate too, but ballpark about $7 a lead.

And then you have CRM costs. In this example, we're using CINC ballpark around $1500, $1400 dollars a month. And that gives you your gross expenses of $3,200. Okay, so what are we going to see here? Here's the reality check. Guys, look at your monthly net income, look at your first 6 months and look at your ROI.

That is the thing that almost all agents miss because they have these very lofty expectations when they sign up for Internet leads. That it's just going to happen very quickly. They're going to sign up. They're going to get some things under contract. They're going to close very quickly and they're going to be off to the races.

And while that can happen, sure. You're going to have those people that call in, there's a cash deal and they need to write. [00:10:00] And certainly we're playing the averages here. And the averages are saying your first six months, just like it was in sales, is a ramp up period. Now, why most agents fail with internet leads is this.

The reality of those first six months, I'm taking you down right here. The reality of those first six months are they're not planning for that runway. They're not planning for those first four months of potentially from the first time they get a lead to their first closings. They're not planning their expenses properly.

I think many agents and teams, we see it all the time. They just have very lofty expectations, right? Very optimistic about what's going to happen. And the reality is, it's the averages aren't playing in that favor. And so you have to plan, you have to have enough runway to cover your investment for those first six months.

So I wouldn't plan on a closing if I were you in those first four months. [00:11:00] Okay, and then by month 5, this is your 1st, if I go back up here, this is basically your 1st closing, right? You got 1 closing right here. In month 5, your 1st closing comes in and by month 6, you've got 2 closings, right? This example, based on a 0.35 percent conversion rate in your 1st 6 months assumes that you've got 3 closings. And again, I'm here as an agent, Educating you guys, right? Like your net loss in those first six months could be $7,000 on those hundred leads. Okay. So you've got to plan for that. And that seems scary at first, right? Like it seems Oh that's a scary number. I don't want to lose 7, 000. Of course no one does. We're not here to get rich quick. We're building a business. 

Matt Hart: One thing I would add to that too Ro is that this seems to be the reason why so many people [00:12:00] are eager to jump into the aggregator pay after close model with Zillow Flex, right? They say it doesn't cost me anything up front, right? And I've got a slide later that will walk through how difficult it is to actually scale that model versus scaling the SEM model like you and I are talking about, the cost per lead model. But, exactly spot on. That's what we see. People are oftentimes eager to jump into those not realizing that they possibly are going to scale themselves out of business in a couple of years.

Ro Malik: Yeah, great point, Matt. And we discussed that before, too, which is I look forward to that. So now let's move. I'm gonna move a little faster in the essence of time, but let's assuming you understood that what we just ran through in those 1st, 6 months. Now, we're going to look at your 1st, full year after that ramp up period. Okay. So this is your next 12 months.

[00:13:00] The only things that are changing is by this point, once again, staying conservative. You're at a . 7 of 1 percent conversion rate. Still staying very conservative. Okay. Average sales price is the same commission rates are the same. This is all the same. What you'll notice is your expenses aren't increasing at all, right? Because they're the same numbers and now you get down here. These are all the same calculations your monthly net income. This is annualized for that year.

Your ROI on this 12 months is 28%. Okay, that's not exciting either. Right? $899 a month. Now, let's get over here to your final 12 months, which is taking you to the 2.5 year mark. Still 100 leads. Now, you've got, I'm just staying with this formula of 0. 35 plus 0.35 plus 0.35, right? So just keeping everything in sequence still well below 1.2 percent [00:14:00] conversion rates. All the numbers in the calculations are the same. Your monthly expenses are the same. Here's your net income here. It is annualized. Here's your ROI for that time period. And when you come down here and look, you go, okay that was a 40 percent return on my investment. My net profit was 38, $39,000 over two and a half years.

So not that exciting, right? That's about $12, $13,000, per year, that's not going to get you that excited. But at least that's what's happening guys. Because people are just looking at this and they're keeping their leads they're saying online leads don't work. Internet leads don't work, not having success. I don't know what's going on. 

Now let me show you the difference. You start and here's the only change we're going to make. You start with 100 leads a month. In these first six months so that all everything over there stays the [00:15:00] same. Now you come to your next tier. And here at this inflection point is where you double your leads. You go to 200 leads a month. And then again, when you get to month 19, and you're not your final year, but you're in your, and we can scale this out 5, 10 years, but this is for the purposes of this example, your final year of this example, we double our leads again to 400. Now, I want you to come down here and see what the difference is.

$225,000 in net profit, 128% return on your investment. And the only thing I did differently is double your leads from 100 to 200 and from 200 to 400. So you could scale slowly along the way. Now you're at 225,000 dollars. [00:16:00] Not in income, in net profit. And that is really the only change we made was just understanding at what point in this process of building your business, do you double your leads and then double them again?

And if I take one more example, so this is this could be for a solo agent who's growing. But if you were a team and you started at 200 and went to 400 and went to 800 here. You're almost at half a million dollars in net profit. And that seems insane, right? Looking at these numbers and understanding this, but there's nothing in here. This is all transparent math and what we're looking at. And guys even if, you change this to zero in your first six months, look what happens, look where your net profit is. Even if I'm wanting to be, if I [00:17:00] say, you know what, I'm not going to have a single closing in those first six months, on a single closing from these leads.

But over time, with still sticking with the formula of doubling your leads, look where you end up in terms of profitability. Look where you end up in terms of income. Staying conservative with your closing rates. And there's a lot of room in here with these conversion rates. If I dial this down, I'm still at 447 if I'm at a 1 percent closing rate 2 years into the future.

Okay. What is the message here? The message is 2 things. 

1. Agents usually give up too early because just, we're generally speaking, no one on this webinar, but generally speaking, we're short sighted and we're like, we're anxious, right? We want things to get working and get working quick. We have opposing forces because we're a hundred percent commission, right? We need things to work. We need things to work fast because that's the way we earn our money because we're a hundred percent [00:18:00] commission. But the reality is when you're building this type of model and business. You have to treat it as such and create these systems and processes and understand where to increase your lead volume and your lead count in order to achieve these kinds of results because your SOI business, your sphere business, that should be 70 percent of what you're doing anyways, right? Your database, your sphere. That's exactly what you should be doing every day. Anyways, right? We are here to help you supplement and build this business into an entire business unit. To produce amazing ROI and income for you. 

I've got a much more user friendly version of this. That doesn't look like this specific calculator, which I said, I'll be able to bring out to you guys. If you're interested in a copy of it, anybody that's on the webinar I feel like it's been a game changer for this business. You can use this as a solo agent.

You can use this as [00:19:00] a team. You can use this as we're doing teamerage model. We don't probably have enough time to get into it today, but when I was talking to Matt, it's like, showing solo agent examples where these broker splits are like 80%, right? They're much higher than you need fewer leads. Because you're on an 80 20 split with your brokerage. If you're a solo agent or an 85 15 or whatever it might be. Then that's broker split. You're getting a higher percentage of that anyways. So you can start a little bit smaller. It's just about scaling. 

Matt Hart: That's 1 of the number 1 things that we see people come in. They make the mistake. Of wanting to just dip their toe in to online lead generation, the challenge with that is that your fixed costs are your fixed costs. They don't increase as you scale lead gen, right? And so the variable piece, which is the lead gen is what's providing the revenue for the business.

So you've always heard it said, right? You got to spend money to make money. This is a prime [00:20:00] example, right? Of where dipping your toe in the water is the worst thing that you can do, because you're basically setting yourself up for meager returns and leaving on the table, the most scalable and profitable part of your business, which is investing in leads, right?

And that's, we see that time in time out people, especially in these markets when things are a little bit a little bit lean, right? Like people want to naturally figure out how do I start to reduce my variable costs? And they go to leads because they said there's not as many people looking, but I've got some great examples, real life example to show of how we've actually seen the differences, right? The diverging mindsets. Between those that said, Hey, I'm going to pull back when things get tough. And those that said, no, I'm going to continue to invest in lead gen. And then [00:21:00] those that said, no, I'm going to double down. And I get it. That's a scary thing to do in this market. But no Ro, I really appreciate you walking us through that, calculator. Again it, falls perfectly in line with the same data that we're seeing over here at CINC. 

Ro Malik: Yeah. And what Matt stated, which is like your, it's your startup cost, right? You're getting your, you're getting your CRM, you're getting your leads, you're getting everything, all of that is going into generally a fixed expense. So once you already have a hundred leads to go from a hundred to 200 is a much smaller Percentage, right? Because you already have those fixed overhead costs that are going into it. And so to scale, it doesn't scale the same rate, which is why you saw on the calculator, your expenses are only going up 2 times or 3 times, which your income is going up 10 X. That's where the scalability happens. 

Matt Hart: Yeah, a small investment on leads will yield exponential returns in your total overall net profit. 

Ro Malik: [00:22:00] Yeah, and Matt will be the first to tell you that CINC doesn't make a penny right off of whether you do 200 leads or 500 leads or 800 leads, right? 

Matt Hart: Yeah, that's not where we're making the money, right? We're not making that's passed through to Google for the most part. There's very little that we're actually taking off of the lead gen spend. For us, the reason why we encourage people to spend more money is so that they'll be more successful. That's it. We're not making money off of the lead gen spend. So for us, what we want to see is people setting themselves up for success and future success. We always say that the, biggest challenge in this business. Is not is, not price. It's not all the other things you would assume.

It's changing people's mindset from where's my next deal to how do I build a scalable business for the future? If we can get over that hurdle, sky's the limit, right? And those are our best clients. And those are the ones that you see leaving [00:23:00] the testimonials on Facebook. The ones that dove in and said now's the time for me to invest in my business.

Ro Malik: Systems and processes behind it, right? Having a road map that calculator, for example, is a road map, right? To let you know, like, where you should, increase your, lead volume, right? To help you get to those returns. I know, Matt, you got a couple of sides that you want to share some success stories.

Matt Hart: I do. And I appreciate that and yeah to your point, right? That playbook that success methodology that you use is critical and so many people come into it blind without knowing, right? A lot of that I think is frankly on the lead gen providers, right? There's not really been a lot of information given or analysis done, I think, from thlead geion providers on here's what to do with the lead, right?

And there's Mountains of [00:24:00] data that we're sitting on, right? And one of the things that we've done here at CINC over the last three years is we've done an analysis of about 10 million leads from the last seven years over 2000 clients to try to really understand. All the things that go into making a transaction, right? So from the initial lead generation all the way through to the closing table, what is it? What are the steps that take place? How many calls are made? How many appointments are set? How many showings all that stuff? And we built a playbook. And we're actually in a couple of weeks going to be doing another webinar.

Sharing some of the details of that success playbook that we built, right? And part of it, I know you and I have talked in the past. I don't know. Everybody's probably not heard of our guaranteed sales program. Maybe you have. Our guaranteed sales program at CINC basically is a risk free program that we built for agents to [00:25:00] guarantee their initial ROI in year one at minimum and in year two to see six figure returns, right?

And Ro as you and I just walked through in the ROI calculator, easy to see, right? Most people are not going to be making a lot of money in the first year, if at all. We're guaranteeing an R. O. I. In year one at minimum. And if not, we pay for it. And so that's how confident we are based on the data that we've analyzed from these 10 million leads, right? We know exactly what it takes to get to a transaction. And if you follow those best practices, we're able to guarantee success, right? I don't, know that there's a lot of companies out there that are doing it and even us, it took us longer than we wanted to. We knew this was a project that we had to get done and would be extremely beneficial to those in the industry to understand what it takes. And what they need to do and then to have someone that can help hold them accountable to [00:26:00] those things. 

So I did want to walk through a couple of these slides here, just to highlight some of the takeaways from that study that we've done. Again we've done the analysis seven years of 10 million leads. And so I think the, biggest takeaways are going to come in some of the data points here. In that 1 percent right when we tell people there's a 1 percent conversion rate, and that was the math that NAR uses for the most part, the math that Ro was just using in the calculator. A lot of people when we tell them 1 percent is a great conversion rate. They're like, how's that possible? And when you look at the math, right? And that's the beautiful thing about math, is that it's math is always true, right? And all we're looking at is data. So this isn't a big sales pitch on why CINC or a big sales pitch on why you should do one thing over the other. It's just the [00:27:00] math, right? What we're doing is showing, showing what we've seen. From these 2000 clients and these 10 million leads. 

So our best converting clients are converting at, 2.5%, 3%, right? For the most part, what we did in this analysis is we actually took out most of those highest performing converters because we didn't want those anomalies to skew the data. We took out the bottom level as well. Those that never even made the 1st dial, right? Because you don't want that skewing the data down either. And so what we did was we tried to take that middle tier people that your average agent that is putting in the work. They're doing their best to follow up that sort of thing. To come up with with the analysis that we've had.

So what conversion should I expect from online leads? We believe that 1 percent mark, and as Ro is showing you 1 percent is enough to start dumping fuel on the fire, right? If [00:28:00] you're converting at 1%, you can scale that almost infinitely, right?

So one of the things that was the biggest surprise, I think in this analysis was the time to close, right? If I were to ask people, and maybe this is a good opportunity to poll the audience, what are you guys seeing or what would you, believe is the average time to close most of these leads from initial lead generation to when you get your first closing? How, long does it take? Cause that's a question that we're asked all the time, right? How long is it going to take me to start showing profitability or to start getting closings? We were shocked to see that 40 percent of all closings happen in the first six months. Now you got to understand a little bit. There's some context behind that, right? Which is that's if a thousand leads, for instance, are generated on day one, right? You're going to see 40, 40 percent of those within the first six months. That doesn't [00:29:00] mean that you're going to get 40% Conversion rates all the way through. We just talked about 1 percent being the benchmark, right?

But 40 percent of the closings that do happen within the first six months, right? So if you're on average generating 100 leads a month, 100 leads a month, 100 leads a month. You have to look at each cohort individually, each monthly cohort of leads. And that's what we've done in our analysis here, but absolutely a thousand leads today will generate you 1%, which is 10 closings. This is the math on what that looks like. This is an example. And I think probably the most telling, about the diverging mindsets between, am I going to double down right now, or am I going to hunker down right now? 

And in client A's example, you've got someone who hunkered down, right? You can see as things started to get difficult, they started pulling back in 2020, they pulled all the way back to 13,000, they almost reduced [00:30:00] their lead gen spend by 40%. In that time, and you can see that in coming out of that downturn coming out of 2020 on the back half of 2020, it actually cost them pretty significantly, right?

If you look at client B's example, they continue to invest at the same level when things got tough. And they were rewarded for it in their GCI. You can see they ended up getting almost a 20 X return on their ad spend from that investment continuing to double down and invest even when things were tough because the conversion rates net out when the cost per leads dropped in 2020, you can see they were able to generate a significant amount of leads over that time. And if they had pulled back... even in client A, you can see if they continued to invest at that same level they did in 2018, even with a [00:31:00] slight drop in conversion, they would have had a net profit of significantly higher, right? Their GCI would have been in the $300,000 to $400,000 range if they had continued to invest at that same level, right? So I think these are the two perfect examples of real life clients that one pulled back and one continued to invest at the same rate. 

Reallocating resources, to where you can maximize profitability. I know there's a lot of numbers on the page and we'll send this out as a part of, the follow up as well. But one of the things that makes it and we had touched on this a little bit earlier. The aggregator referral model, right? And how people are super eager to jump into that, especially when times are lean because it's okay, it doesn't cost me anything, right? But what it does cost you is the ability to scale. And when you look at the, at these four different models, right? Your [00:32:00] referrals always are going to be the highest percentage of your business. As Ro mentioned, 70 plus percent of your business is going to be coming from those referrals, right? So obviously those are going to be the highest profitability deals you can possibly get. 

Richard Kaiser: Hey Matt, real quick question. Can you define conversion in the chart?

Matt Hart: Yeah it's the same conversion we were talking about in terms of so you generate 1000 leads, you're going to get 10 closings, right? That's 1%. So that's the conversion, right? So the number of leads to the number of closings. Hope that clears that up. 

And so what you're looking at here in this model, and I think the thing that obviously is most notable is the owner's total take, right? So if you're a team leader and you've got your split with your agent on this business. But you're paying 30 percent plus. Now, [00:33:00] 40 percent with Zillow Flex, right? I believe these numbers were based on 35%. Now it's 40%, right? So that number is actually even lower than, what it's showing in this graph. It's easy to see how you can scale your way out of profitability if you're building your business on that. Now I'm not, here trying to disparage Zillow Flex or the aggregator model. In fact, CINC actually owns a business called Agent Pronto ProLink that does the exact same thing, right? But what we believe is it's a way to supplement your business, not the backbone of your business. If you're building your business on the backbone of that referral aggregator model, that's pay after close, you're going to be giving up so much of your profits because again, your fixed costs remain the same, no matter what you do. No matter how you're investing, those fixed costs remain the same. But if you're only growing through that method, what's going to happen over time is very [00:34:00] quickly, your agents are going to start to realize, number one, what's the value of any team leader? Most agency, the value of their team leader is the opportunity that they're able to provide me. After closing a couple of deals on Zillow Flex themselves, they're going to start going, what value are you providing me? I'm just giving you half of my commissions on all these deals, right? So soon those agents are going to start to leave you and it's a team killer. Again, it's great for supplementing for getting those new agents, some deals, some quick wins, psychological wins, not great for building the backbone of your business.

We firmly believe that the high performance SEM leads. Like what Ro and I are talking about today here is the best, most profitable way to scale your business. Referrals are obviously great. Problem with referrals is they're not infinitely scalable. You can only sell homes to people that you know and people you don't know. And so the people you know at some point runs out and you've got to be able to sell homes to people you don't know.[00:35:00] 

I would say 1 other point on this slide, I would add in is the conversion effort. What it takes the amount of energy it takes to convert does have a direct correlation. So the lower the effort, usually the lower the return, right? That's what you're seeing with the aggregator model, even with the hand raiser model through traditional Zillow. And it is obviously you've got to put more effort or more money one or the other into the high performance online leads. That's why a partnership like CINC and Conversion Monster makes so much sense, right? Because you've got someone that can do that extra effort. To put in those extra dollars, right? To put in that extra effort to get those conversions. 

Ro Malik: That's great, Matt. I think that's made a lot of sense to me. I hope it did to a lot of the group too. I got a couple of other things that I wanted to share about just calling cadences [00:36:00] and why it's so important. And okay like you were saying the, effort is higher, right? But your return, especially longer term, and we call longer term these days, a year or two, is so much greater.

And so let me just share one more slide with you guys here. 

Richard Kaiser: While you're going through there. We've had just a few other questions on the Conversion Monsters side, is there an extra charge to have a custom ISA style that might be separate? Or is this more of a set it and forget it type of service? And then initially, is there a platform fee to Conversion Monster similar to CINC? 

Ro Malik: Sure. So we do have two different services. We have our core service and we have our premier service. So with the core service, that's you're fitting in a box, right? We have a standard cadence. It's our scripting. It's, our emails, text messages, voicemails, et cetera. We also have a premier division. And the premier division you can customize your what the agents are actually saying you can actually [00:37:00] customize your text messages, your emails and things that you want going out from us. Those are there are 2 different divisions that we have. And then additionally. As far as a platform fee, there is not a platform fee. It's just a cost per lead basis. 

Richard Kaiser: The figures you had earlier... Were those monthly spend figures?

Ro Malik: Monthly spend figures. Yeah. So we're looking at if you're doing 100 leads a month or 200 leads a month that is a per month cost for each 1 of those. And then obviously at the bottom, that was the aggregate from day 1 to day 30. But in those 1st columns, that was a monthly spend. 

A couple of things I want to share very quickly with you guys, right? Like why it's so important to follow up on your leads. When we did our analysis, we found out that the average agent that was coming to us at Conversion Monster was only calling their leads one and a half times. They were missing out on nearly 70 [00:38:00] percent of their opportunities. Because they're only making an average of obviously one to two phone calls at max. And then another thing through our study, we found out that nearly a quarter of the opportunities that were coming in would come in after the fourth phone call.

So when you start multiplying that, what's your average home price and a year and sales volumes, it is just a lot of money being left on the table. So it's really important whether you're using us, your own ISA, or calling these leads yourself. Got to understand how much is being left on the table by you not calling your leads enough.

I'm going to skip through this and just, I think everybody knows this, but if you don't, then the 3 keys that you need to understand about internet lead follow up is obviously speed to lead, getting to them in 5 minutes or less. You got to have, a if you're going to use us or not use us, you're using CINCs platform, got to have systematic follow up. You've got to have systems and processes in place to follow up, And then [00:39:00] lastly, long term lead nurturing. The biggest thing that happens is when somebody says they're a year out from buying, we just go, okay. And like as an agent, you need to put food on the table.

You're looking next 30, 60, 90 days, right? But there's so much gold in those leads that are a year out, right? You're starting with them. They come in through CINC, you talk to him in those first few minutes and you've established a relationship with them. The point is to stay along with them in that buyer journey, to establish yourself to be the first to meet them at the top of the funnel and stay with them through the process. And when people say they're a year out, that's where everybody fails. They just fail on staying in front of those people that are a little bit further off from the transacting. Why? Because you're just busy. You're busy with your current business. You're 100 percent commission. You're trying to put food on the table and feed your family and pay your bills tomorrow, right?

We get it. But there's so much that goes into that long term lead [00:40:00] nurturing and so many people miss out on that third key as well. And so this is just high level sort of what our cadence looks like, and you're welcome to copy it and use it yourself. But obviously calling leads within 5 minutes or less, you should be touching your lead 17 times. In those first 10 days through calls, texts, emails. We also use ringless voicemails. And then ballpark, we have some different cadences, but call it 75 touches over the course of the year. . That's what we used to before we consider a lead cold. Okay, so that's a little bit of a background on what our cadence looks like.

And then finally, before the Q and A I just wanted to let you guys know that we've got a special offer today. If anybody is interested we don't normally do this, but if anybody's interested, we're going to waive our onboarding, which is normally a 1000 dollars to get signed up with us. But we're waving that for anybody that's on this webinar. And Matt also has an amazing [00:41:00] offer. I think that he wants to share with you guys as well. 

Matt Hart: Yeah, we're going to offer for everybody on this webinar, the promotion we're running is, free leads for six months, so $3,000 worth of leads. But I will tell everybody who's here on right now, if you go to CINCPro. com and schedule a demo with us over the next couple of days, we'll do even better than that. Come on over and, get on, with the product specialist and we'll hook you up. 

Ro Malik: Yeah, there you go. And I wanted to address a couple of things that these headwinds that we're facing also as an.

Richard Kaiser: Hey, real quick we had a follow up question on guaranteed sales program. Spend per month to take in the first year to take part in the guaranteed sales program. 

Matt Hart: Yeah. $1,400 is the bottom line, right? And that's going to be lead gen spin. So with the guaranteed sales program, we actually [00:42:00] include 500 a month in ad spend. On CINC, we actually pay for your leads for the first year. All 12 months. So that's actually a $6,000 value with that. So you're all in cost is $1,400. And, you don't have to spend anything on leads to qualify for the guaranteed sales program. Now, again, based on the math that we just walked through, we certainly encourage people to invest more money into leads to be more successful. But yeah that's, the net out of it. 

Ro Malik: Awesome. Any other questions, Richard, before I dive into a little bit of our, market headwinds? No, okay. 

So just want to address a couple of points guys. We know that there's a couple of no secret, right? There's a little bit of nervousness. Uncertainty is better than nervousness, a little uncertainty in our industry right now. The lawsuits is number 1 is it's been on everybody's minds. Number 2, [00:43:00] obviously the market and inventory and what's happening and home prices and where are things going. The 1st thing that I want to address is that people look at this and they say I'm going to start. This is all great. But I want to start in January or February next year.

And, I think 1 of the things that we all have to understand is that, when things are shifting, when things are moving, regardless of any of this, you have to double down on your lead gen. I don't know during COVID when this all happened. Just to understand that there was a there was 2 divergent mindsets.

During COVID, 1 mindset was scarcity and 1 mindset was abundance. The scarcity mindset was cut cut, right? The abundance mindset because we talked to all kinds of agents and teams all over the country. We've got clients everywhere. The abundance mindset was. I'm going to go take market share. I'm not going out of business. This is my livelihood. This is what I'm doing.[00:44:00] I'm going to go grow. During those times when we were all very uncertain, like we are now, these team leaders and agents were like, this is what I do for a living. I'm going to go out and I'm going to double down, I'm going to triple down. And that's what they did. And they took market share and they increased their business and they did great. 

And now here we are again, and we're in this moment, right? We've got commission lawsuits and. Uncertainty again about what's going to happen in the market and what's going to happen with buyer agents and we don't know yet. We're not exactly sure. But the point is, nothing's happened yet, right? Nothing's happened yet. The 1 thing that we have heard over and over again is get your buyer agency agreement signed. If it's 1 thing that we've heard repeatedly as agents are like now, just make sure that's part of your presentation. And you better make sure as a buyer's agent, at least that you're able to show your value. And that's more than just setting people up on a drip and an MLS, [00:45:00] you're gonna have to prove to them that you got some value and get them to agree to sign those agency agreements so that you get your commission is protected. And for now, nothing else has happened, right? These appeals are going to take a couple of years.

There's things that are happening in the market. There's a lot of uncertainty. At this moment in time, it's all noise. It's been like go get, your business, go get business, double down on your lead gen, double down on your SOI. You're going to have to put a lot more effort into what you're doing if you want to be really successful in 2024, because most people were down 30 percent in 2023.

That's just the reality. Why? It's 30 percent less inventory to sell, right? There was less homes, home prices are still going up, right? And mortgage rates have settled back down a little bit. Why have they settled back down? We were creeping up at 8%. And for those that don't know, like I watch every Jerome Powell FOMC meeting and then I watch the Q and A and maybe some of you guys do too. Maybe not. [00:46:00] it's not in his prepared remarks. That moves the markets. It's in the press's questions afterwards, and they asked the same question 10 different times to try and get him to trip up and he tripped up. So what happened last time was they basically the question was positioned as well rates were like near 8%. Question was, I'm paraphrasing, if you don't increase The rate for the next two meetings, would you see any reason for the fed to keep raising interest rates? And basically his answer was no. And so the market took that as really good news.

And then secondly, we got some inflation data a couple of weeks ago and it came in lower than expected. And just like that, interest rates dropped 60 basis points. We were probably like 80 at 8 percent and down to seven, still a lot, 7. 3%. But guys, I've been around a long time. I was around when interest rates were six and a half percent. We're like, this is amazing. Like this, is great. They got into low sixes. We're like, wow, this is never going to happen. We're just getting to a new normal. [00:47:00] We're going to be in a higher interest rate environment. Interest rates are going to be the low sevens, upper sixes. The market, we can't predict what's happening, but the market believes. That by Q2 of next year that we might be in a rate cutting cycle. 

So where are you going to be? Like, if you're getting your leads now, the stuff we're sending you, the stuff you're building right now, like those people are getting ready to look in the spring. Are you going to start then? Are you going to start in January when you know it takes 3,4,5,6 months? Are you going to start now? Because you need to have business for Q1. You got to have business now for the spring market. Too many agents just brush this time off and then they wait and they start in Q1 and they're like, Oh shit. Like I got nothing in this whole first quarter and now I got to try and make it up for in the rest of the year, which is we're a seasonal business for the most part, right? You do a lot of business in the second and third quarters. 

Matt Hart: The best business people always make money, more money in the disruption, right? [00:48:00] Because they're willing to do what others aren't willing to do. They're willing to double down when others are Cutting back and, being afraid.

Richard Kaiser: I'm on mortgage news daily. Like today's just hit, it dropped another 20 basis points today. We don't have the crystal ball, but you don't know when it's going to drop. And it's a big opportunity. 

Ro Malik: Like that. It was like 8 percent and in 48 hours it's just it went down. 

Matt Hart: If you don't have the pipeline, if you haven't been generating the leads, you're not going to get the business. 

Ro Malik: You're not going to be ready when they're ready to pull the trigger, you're going to start too late and you're going to miss the opportunity once again, right? You don't want to be a day late and dollar short. You got to just keep lead gen and you got to be consistent with your lead gen efforts. You can't slow it down. You get a double down, you get triple down in the shift. That's just the nature of the business. And if you want to have an amazing 2024, you can't start January 2nd. You should have started last month. That's the reality. 

Richard Kaiser: Thanks so much for joining us today, Ro. This is really good.

Ro Malik: [00:49:00] Yeah, I appreciate you guys having me on. I hope that everybody that was here, I don't know if they knew they were in for a math lesson from me, but we were nerding out on the data and the proofs in the numbers. Right? And when you, look at the math, we can talk here all day and try and convince you or sell you on something, but it's just like. When you look at the actual math and you're conservative with your numbers and your figures, and it still proves out to be a successful formula, it's hard to argue with it. Hopefully, we just showed you that, and we showed you what every other agent is doing wrong and what you can do to change the trajectory and actually be successful with your leads.