Two key elements stand out when it comes to building a great real estate team: generating a lot of leads & converting those leads effectively. Master these, and you'll lay a rock-solid foundation for your team. With a steady stream of leads and a high conversion rate, recruiting becomes easier. You can make the critical hire that scales you out of production.
Join Troy Mixon, Director of Strategic Partnerships at CINC, Zac Muir, VP of Sales & Marketing at Sisu, and Josh Rumble, CINC and Sisu client and Team Leader as they cover:
Watch the full video here or read the transcript below.
Zac Muir: [00:00:00] All right, we are live. What's going on everybody? Welcome to this webinar. We put together this topic which we're gonna get into and brought some of. I think the most knowledgeable, most in the weeds, people on this topic, but also some of the funnest people to talk to that I've ever personally talked to.
And this webinar, if it if it is anything, it will not be boring. We are gonna, we are gonna have some conversation. We're gonna have some fun with this one. I got two of my good friends here and I'll let them introduce themselves. But what the topic of this webinar is. Building a team. So if you're in the process of building a team, you have a team, you're thinking about building a team.
In fact, I'm gonna put a little poll out to everybody and I would just like to know, we check back on this, but just like to know like, where are you at in your journey, right? As far as building or thinking about building a team. And how lead conversion and lead generation plays into that. Right?
So I got Troy here from [00:01:00] CINC. He's an industry veteran when it comes to lead generation, lead conversion, all things leads. And then we got Josh, who's a good friend, good client of CINC and Sisu who has done the thing, built the team and actually runs a call every single week around lead conversion.
So Josh, maybe to start, I would love a little intro from you. Give us a little background on you. How'd you get into real estate? Tell us about your team and what you're focused on. Yeah,
Josh Rumble: absolutely. I had I was a panelist a couple of months ago on a state advisory board, and I I got to looking at all the people that I was paired with, and I got to thinking, okay, you've got different types of people and how they got into real estate, right?
I would consider myself. A legacy, right? So the, I say that by saying my dad was a land developer built homes for lack of a better word, here was like a track builder, built 40, 50 homes a year. And I fell into it by default. It was like, okay, I'm gonna get into real estate 'cause nobody can sell my product better than me.
That was absolutely stupid. I had no idea that I didn't know how to sell real [00:02:00] estate. I knew how to build homes. I didn't know how to sell real estate. When the market shifted down in 2008 and 2010, I thought, you know what? I need to learn how to sell something. So from that point in time, it become my mission on how do I.
How do I learn how to sell? So I started diving into every aspect of that in the way that I could. In 2014, I'd been going through for a few years. I partnered with my partner now, Christie. We ended up got CINC and then we were off to the races from there. We really never looked back.
So we've we've just kept bolting things on and bolting things on, and CC was a fantastic bolt on for us to try to track our business. We opened a mortgage company, which was also another fantastic way and great bolt on for our business. And I think that when I think that when you're looking at operating a team.
There's only so much market share you can have. I don't care what market that you're in. So we started to reevaluate what the total value of the client was once they were prospected. And in that way [00:03:00] we've tried to get into more avenues of what that was. One of the things that whether you're, your aspirations are to build a team, whether your aspirations are that you wanna work as a husband and wife duo, whether your aspirations are you wanna work solo.
This is an exercise that I do a lot to really put that into perspective. If you have a buyer and a seller and a buyer's agent and a seller's agent, and you're getting a mortgage on that house, let's say FHA, do you know how many people get paid on that transaction? I. So instead of letting a bunch of people put things inside the chat, I'm gonna be a spoiler alert here, it's 37, there's 37 different people that get paid on that transaction.
So the reality is, if you don't think you're on a team, you're very wrong. You're just not the head of the team. So I think that when you start to look at it in that way, then it really puts a redirect focus on kinda what. What team means inside real estate, so you [00:04:00] can have a team like what what we do, we have 27 agents or so that work inside our real estate team.
We have a mortgage brokerage team that is nine agents. So that understanding that was the catalyst that really propelled us to where we are now is that type of mindset to understand how much cooperation it takes. To be able to be successful in this business.
Zac Muir: Super cool. I got a ton of questions I wanna ask you, and we'll dig into some of that.
Troy, I'd love a little background from you. You've been in the industry a long time. A little background on CINC too, right? Obviously you're here. Yeah. Ting CINC. One of the reasons at CC we wanted to bring CINC in is because you guys. You've been in the lead generation game as long as anyone you've generated.
Millions and millions, maybe millions. I don't know if it's billions yet, but yeah. Millions and millions of leads. So you guys have a perspective on lead gen and conversion that none of us have. So I'd love to, to hear a little bit more about you and about CINC.
Troy Mixon: Yeah. Appreciate it. Zach known you for years.
It's always good getting on with a familiar face. Been in the [00:05:00] industry now for about 12 to 13 years in the PropTech lead gen specifically been at companies like BoomTown, kvCore have been here for six months at CINC. Was really what led me here was lead generation.
That's why I'm so passionate about this title. Really the only ones that focus on hyper local lead generation, can get in details. Really a whole call around that. Not really for what we're talking about today about. Helping team leaders grow helping them change their business.
But I love that no matter how long through that trail, the 13 years that people want to say no, it's about listings now. Or it's about just buyers. If we've seen what people estimate has changed, it really hasn't changed. Like it really is. Still the following up the keys and metrics, monitoring what your team is doing.
'cause as you grow just now at Tom Ferry, Alvar, our CEO was given a speech on this specific topic of over 2 million leads. We looked at. And basically 1% conversion. There was some four percenters, there was some 1%, but if you're doing 1%, you're [00:06:00] doing pretty good, right? But it was watching that, those four percenters, sometimes they don't necessarily grow to huge teams because what happens when they keep getting bigger and bigger is they let things fall through the cracks, right?
They let things go unaccountable. And then don't realize how that hurts their bottom line. I'm, I've been fast fascinated on how much things have stayed the same though we, in the industry, and I'm sure we're guilty of CINC and everyone else, on our side of the tech world of trying to get keywords I'm gonna say ai, not that, AI is very important.
I love it, and our product and everything, but it's just like people get enamored with AI's gonna take over, AI's gonna do this, or the buyer agreement's gonna do this and that. And it's guys just stick to the focus of, recruiting for, as a team leader, right? Making sure people are hitting the metrics, but making sure you're also feeding your agents.
That was the tag that stuck with one of our sales leadership retreats is a couple months ago at CINC. I was like, end of the day, I. I would love our marketing campaign is Feed the Agent, because in that's what they like, right? Zillow's proven that this time and time again that they love to eat the sandwich.
But but yeah, so [00:07:00] to me it's sticking to that message of I. As much as don't listen to the noise, like things are pretty much still the same. And these processes that we've taught for over years, you follow 'em, that they're gonna, they're gonna still be true today.
Trey Willard, Zach, a big fan of Sisu. It was funny. He was, buddy of mine sitting right in front of me. I snapped a picture, I'll text you afterwards where it was funny to watch him go through the talk and ER's got the stats up of like lead sources, what you should be getting return. And it was cool to see.
Systems working together with with accountability slash you know, what's performing and not, but. But yeah. Yeah, and always let me know too, Jo Zach's got the radio voice. Me and Josh have got the the country radio voices. So if you can't understand, happy to repeat whatever.
Zac Muir: Yeah.
Let us know if anyone needs a translator in the chat. Let me know. Country. Yeah. No, you guys you guys got the radio voices for sure. All right, so getting in the meat of this thing I love what you're saying, Troy, the topic of this it's a tricky balance between like when you get further along in your journey, kinda like [00:08:00] what you were talking about Josh, and you get really good at.
Generating and converting leads, right? That is the table stakes for even thinking about starting a team, right? Once you get good enough at generating and converting leads where it almost becomes overwhelming I, at that point, I think that's where you have the permission to start looking and bringing people into your world.
And kinda what Troy's saying feed the agents, right? Feed the people on your team because you're proficient enough at it. There's also a balance of if that's the only thing you're recruiting on, like if they join you for a lead, they'll leave you for a lead type thing. And one of the reasons we wanna have Josh on here is because your retention is through the roof like that.
You haven't just built a team, you retain a team, which I think is really cool. But Josh, maybe talk us through some of this, like how do you make lead conversion part of your value, pro lead gen and lead conversion part of your value proposition and bringing these 27 agents to you, but. Also, how do you think about retention and making sure that's not the only thing?
Josh Rumble: Fantastic question and I think that is something that a lot of people I [00:09:00] think it comes with a definition, right? So I think that there is an inherent difference between building a team and building a lead share cooperative, if that makes sense. So there's, most of the people that have built what I would consider a lead share cooperative it does not operate like a team, so what we're gonna have is we're gonna have, we're gonna give you this person, and then if you can do whatever, we'll give you this person and, and if you do whatever, I'll close it at whatever rate. And if you do this so that, I think that the reason that we have. The amount of retention that we have and that we have, the draw that we have in the places that we have, it is because we embrace the idea of a team, right?
So I think that, everything we do is team centric. Now we also have a division of our company that is a solo agent. That's not that's a horse of a different color. We also have another division of our company, another brokerage that is a referral based only. So you needed to get out of the business instead of making your license [00:10:00] inactive, you can move them over to this company.
And, so what we've also tried to do is understand that. Every business and every, not business, but every industry has seasons, right? So we've all seen what a season, three years ago, four years ago looked like. And now we see what a season today looks like, and then there's gonna be a totally different season a year from now, or two years from now.
So I think that being able to, if you want to build something that people are gonna find a place in and feel like they're at home. It has to be team centric and it also has to have levels outside of that to encompass when people graduate from the team, or God forbid they fell out from the team.
So based on whatever their plight is I. For us, the cornerstone of our business has been based around CINC since 2014 because there's one thing that every single real estate agent on earth has in common, and they want more opportunities. They want more leads, they want more opportunities, they want to know and then.
When [00:11:00] you give somebody that opportunity, it's not enough just to give it to 'em. You absolutely unequivocally have to work with them in a strategic way so that they understand how to convert a lead. And it sounds so simplistic, right? Don't, all I have to do is just call and like they want to go see 1, 2, 3 Main Street and I go show 'em.
And is that not it? And that's I think that people get beside themselves on what does it take to actually convert a lead, and I think that when you start talking about conversion, it's con conversation, right? So it's, we do more conversation training than we ever do conversion training because our business model.
Exclusively is built on this one premise, and it's that we're going to be relational, not transactional. If you want to be transactional, then you can go to the Big Z and you can pay them all of your money, and then they can just send you something and you can go lock your kids in a closet for 30 minutes and go show a house and come back.
That's not what.
Zac Muir: By the way, [00:12:00] 18 months old would not appreciate that.
Josh Rumble: But that is the that's the difference in being able to convert at a high rate is the premise of how do you have conversations. And I think that for us, we, what we try to do. Is every single piece person that comes in, yes, CINC is a super intricate part of what we do.
We look at there's a chair that I have in the office now. I ask them when I'm recruiting them, why do you think that chair is so stable? It's because it has four legs, right? It has four, four legs. That's why it's stable. Now go over here and get on a pogo stick or a unicycle and see how difficult that is, right?
So you want to have all of these different, avenues and ways to generate business and CINC is one of the best platforms for us, and it encompasses probably 70% of our business. So being able to teach these people at an extremely simplistic but super engaging level, what it means to be able to have a conversation and convert somebody [00:13:00] is completely is it's surprising to me how completely, like people can't do it. Yeah. Yeah. They just can't do it. So if you take Troy's a fantastic conversationalist, like he can pick up and you, he can run into a tree and have a 30 minute conversation, right? Some people, they just can't do that. They don't understand like what what you mean by have a conversation.
And no offense to anybody that's under the age of 30, but if you were, if you're under the age of 30, you were raised with a. Phone in your hand and your conversations were six pictures of a guy dancing and a girl dancing, and then three watermelons and a explosion emoji. And then you're supposed to know what that means, right?
So that doesn't sell homes, unfortunately, and it doesn't sell you. So being able to help people with what, what conversion looks like for us has been a big intricate part of kind of what we've done, and that's, that in itself helps with retention.
Troy Mixon: And just so people, 'cause Josh don't even know if you touched on it, 'cause you got so many businesses, Mr.
Entrepreneur, like you, [00:14:00] you even see this in multiple parts of. I know a lot of times some folks might listen to someone and go, oh, they don't know that. 'cause they don't know my market. That's one of the beau beautiful things I love about Zack having your own here. It's like you, you know about the different areas and I always even just tell realtors and Josh you would know on from your end.
But from my end, seen it over the years, I'm like, hey. So how many times have you changed Rover? Just since I've known you, right? Just you, the client or you the person wanting to start your team and think about what led you to change. Stuff as simple as that, right? Don't overcomplicate it.
Try to fill in those gaps that made you change those those companies before. 'cause we know that most industry has right at least changed once, if not twice. And if you fill those gaps in, you'd be surprised how that could, help your retention. And, culture too, to me, I know it's like the corny word and I'll speak for Josh.
His agents, they love working for him, right? Like when you have that culture of like them feeling ownership of it, that goes a long way. And I think if you look at the teams that. Typically rival the top two 50. They are [00:15:00] on that kind of, a lot of like family oriented things.
I've had people over the years tell me Troy, my agents don't trust me to put their database in my database because I own it. Or the broker tell me that about the agents. And it's again, that's something software can't solve for you, right? That's something that if there is no trust there, then you're always gonna have to just.
Be recruiting constantly and filling, those holes because they're going to continue to leap no matter what you do.
Josh Rumble: Yeah. And to add to what Troy just said there's only two reasons that people leave brokerages, right? One of those is because they think they're going somewhere that has something that you don't have.
90% of the time you haven't. You've done a very poor job of. Just reiterating that over and over. Hey, actually we do have a mechanism that can help you with that. Actually, we do have X, we do have y and unfortunately for me, I've fallen victim to that before. It's Hey, I'm gonna go over to X, Y, Z brokerage [00:16:00] because they have this, whatever this shiny thing is, right?
So it's we actually have that too. And they're like why didn't you tell me that? I thought I did tell you that 90 times, but undoubtedly I didn't, the, I think that's a big part of it too, is you gotta, if you're gonna be a team owner and you're gonna be a team operator, I.
I heard something one time that I thought was the most foolish statement I think I've ever heard in real estate, and it was, you can't work on your business if you work in your business. And I thought that was the most backward way of thinking I'd ever heard of anything in my life, right? So I don't know that there's a way that you can work on your business if you don't work in your business.
So if it's a CRM, if it's a transaction management software, if it's any of these things and you don't work inside that yourself to know what it looks like when somebody brings you an issue or a problem then there's no way that you can address those things and fix 'em, right? So if somebody comes to me and they're like, Hey, I had a lead in the dashboard and it was doing X and y and z.
I know everything there is to [00:17:00] know. I stay in it every single day. I still make dials myself. Christie still makes dials herself. We know everything there is to know about that, and I'll fix it in two seconds. So that's, yeah.
Troy Mixon: They throw keeping them engaged in that, like with a sisu, right?
Yeah. It's because if you don't that's they don't have ownership of that. Like they don't feel that they don't, most of those people are competitive. Sure you have those that don't have what's the word? I don't have that. Maybe competitive vibe.
But most of your. A to B players are gonna wanna see what others are doing, where they're at. Having the accountability for you, the owner, knowing where good spend is really succeeding. But also activities and promoting that that's where you know, that gamification and bringing that to the forefront with a cso I think even helps you with not just growing that but keeping it maintained.
Zac Muir: You said something really interesting, Troy, and you hit on the same topic, Josh, which is if you are thinking about starting a team. You as an agent have left multiple brokerages, think about why you left and what you were after. At the same [00:18:00] time, Josh is saying. If your team's not adopting the tech or saying the leads aren't bad maybe go call a few, right?
And come up and you'll know the answers. It'll be right there if you can taste it. And that's, I think what you're talking about Josh, is like getting into the business a little bit. You got to do that so that and you can solve the problems for your agents because you've experienced it, right?
And just having that personal experience that you can then, solve at scale and provide value for your team.
Josh Rumble: Yeah, I think that so many people get enamored with outsourcing, right? That the only way you can scale is to outsource. Okay. No that's not the only way you can scale.
That
Troy Mixon: was a, that was a radio voice.
Josh Rumble: Yeah. That was, yeah. So the the reality is that some things need to be outsourced and some things absolutely do not need to be outsourced. And I think that. Someone that is trying to develop a team, having a serious reflection point of what of these things can I outsource or what of these things [00:19:00] can I make automated?
'cause I think a lot of people look at automation as the same thing, outsourcing, right? Certain things you can and certain things you cannot. And we could get into a list of a thousand. 'cause we have a tech stack that rivals anybody in the country. So I think, and that's when people come in.
Zac Muir: I see your little
Josh Rumble: yeah.
So that's all the things that we use and it. And it all works together, and it all works in integration. And we simplify all of it because here's one thing. This is the grand like when they pull the veil back, right? If you think that you're gonna have a team and you're gonna have them doing 20 hours of busy work just to fulfill all of your tech stack, then you are very sadly mistaken.
It is not going to happen. Like team agents I've had some of the best that I've ever had. It was something that I learned early on. Nobody likes busy work. There's and if you I used to have [00:20:00] somebody that tell me this about sisu. They're like, if you don't put your deals in Sisu, then you're not gonna know where all of your deals came from, and that was their only selling point, right?
You're not gonna know where your deals came from, and then when you go to try to do your reflection, you're not gonna know this and that if you close 10 to 15 deals a year, which is a pretty good number, right? Where all 10 or 15 of your deals come from. You don't have to reflect back to Sisu to find that out.
So if that's your only selling point to your tech stack, then you've lost, right? So I think, and that's what somebody that doesn't know what everything does, that's the kind of that, that's the kind, conversation. It's not on
Zac Muir: value that they could be. They could be driving.
Josh Rumble: Yeah. So they're like I can do that without that.
So you lost me. You lost me. And why I should have to try to do that. So I think that for us, one thing that was extremely important is the things that we track inside sisu. We made sure that it was extremely germane to what. The agents wanted what the agents needed, and then the parts that I need outta sisu, just [00:21:00] about, unfortunately, for my transactional coordinator, a lot of that falls back on her, right?
So it's her responsibility to fill in the gaps, so instead of giving a ton of busy work to my agents about, you need to do this, and you need to do this, and put this here, and move this around and do all this. That's what the transactional coordinator's for. And then we've got for them, we've got a core of 7, 8, 9 things, and this is what you want to do.
And it's non cumbersome. We made it super easy. And I think we did the same thing on CINC, right? The more simplistic you can make anything, that's how you make something scalable. Simplistic equals scalable, not automation. Now there's certain things that can be automated and God knows I use a bunch of it, but the ability for you to be able to scale your business comes from being able to simplify your business.
Troy Mixon: And Zach, you mentioned and not to bring, you said something earlier about when folks leave, like I almost think our industry. I remember first selling, 20 13, 20 whenever 12. That [00:22:00] was like, and it was like people, we talked about impressions. Like it wasn't, we didn't really even talk about the end deal.
Until, like you talked about everything that, like having a website, having people come to websites. 'cause I'm sure you're paying radio ads, I'm sure you're paying billboards and it's like we almost forget to even discuss that nowadays. Interesting. That we just say, Hey, let's just talk about the end deal.
And I think that can sometimes translate for team leader. Then your agent is missing all the stuff that you're actually doing. Branding and having people put eyes on them that are outside of just that one transaction that like your tech stack's doing for them. So then they might make the mistake of, 'cause they only hear deal.
They're like, oh, I can just by myself 'cause then I can just get this deal from that same thing. It's no, you don't understand like the. The, what goes
Zac Muir: into it, the whole, yeah. Yeah. You just see the cake, but you don't see all the Yeah.
Troy Mixon: That was actually what Alro used. He goes the big thing this was like yesterday's speech.
He was like, the big thing is we've, we started on steak and potatoes, and now we've [00:23:00] moved to cake. If you give your child a choice with, Hey, here's cake all, all over the table, here's steak and potatoes. They're gonna go straight for the cake.
Zac Muir: Okay you said something earlier, Josh, that's really interesting and I think this kind of brings together some of the concepts because you got CINC and you've got Sisu and Josh, you're you've been a long time client of both.
And I think it's really interesting the way that they come together. But any, anyone. With the credit card could go buy those systems. I, if I. Want to have leads, and I want to, I'm building my team and I know I need more leads and I go talk to Troy. I can get a, I can get a CINC set up probably pretty easily, and I can start pumping leads in there.
And Josh, you, what'd you call it? A lead cooperative versus a true team, right? If you're not careful, you end up with just a very transactional relationship with people where it's kinda I'm giving you leads and that's the value, right? And we're talking about building something that's a little more.
It's deeper than that. And I think one of the ways that you can make it deeper is [00:24:00] simplicity. Josh, you talked about, right? So simplicity of. Not just giving someone the leads, but helping them see like a formula for success or we call it math of sales, right? Because there's a lot of math that goes into sales and if you focus on the fundamentals or the ingredients, I.
You're gonna get a lot further in. I'm gonna stick with steak, Troy, 'cause I like, or I'm gonna stick with the cake 'cause I like cake. If you focus on the ingredients right then you'll be able to bake it. But if you just focus on the cake itself, you're just gonna, you're gonna miss parts of the equation.
And I just wanna show one thing I. I didn't have a full like demo ready to go, but I wanted a really quick view that people could see what this looks like, right? Because I think this is what this is what a lot of agents don't get, right? So I might come into Josh's team, I. And or not Josh's team.
'cause Josh's team operates well, but some other team and they're like, yeah, we got leads and we got all this stuff. And then day one I'm like, okay, what do I do? What this is, and when you're like an agent coming [00:25:00] into Josh or some of our Sisu clients businesses is we're giving you the exact formula connected to your CINC CRM.
So not only are we pumping leads in there, but we're saying, look. This is about how many conversations it's gonna take, right? You should be having about four 70 a month based on our conversion ratios. This agent's at two 50 they're a little behind on their conversation goal. What percent of those conversations are turning into appointments?
All right. We're doing pretty good on the on the buy side, right? But on the sell side, we're lacking a little, right? All right. What's our hold rate on those appointments? So it's just so much. More simplified than just giving them leads and saying, good luck. It's, I'm giving you the leads, I'm giving you the.
Formula to convert them. That CINC has the leads and then the actual place you work to convert them obviously is right there in CINC too. Curious Troy, from your perspective, from like a tech stack perspective, 'cause you've probably seen it all. You've seen the people that go buy a platform and pump leads into it and then.
Three months later that have grown tremendously. So I'm curious your [00:26:00] perspective on this stuff.
Troy Mixon: Yeah. No it is a great point, Zach, and it led me to this past week at the conference. I, like I was saying earlier, I heard Chase Hughes speak, and I even think he made a point of nowadays, and this is like for all of us, right?
It doesn't matter what industry you're in, but nowadays we are like we hear. Like we hear the it's not the, like we hear the symptoms and we think we're the doctor, right? And it's and he made great. I don't remember exact examples. 'cause the examples are spot on where just because you go to the doctor and you were able to Google what it's like to get a cold and you've got three, those three things that get really, that, that doesn't mean you're the doctor, doesn't mean you have the antidote then to how to get rid of 'em, et cetera.
And I think if a team leader has that analogy that it even shows that just because you have these great tech stack and you get to see 'em, you are the doctor and making sure they understand that they can go a long way. But but yeah, seeing it over the years, like I, I like to pride myself on throughout my years that I didn't sell it to the folks who couldn't and would [00:27:00] recommend them other options.
That were not, something like a good fit maybe for them at that time in place. Because I do think that if you find yourself a true partner that you, they should, advise you accordingly. Those that are stubborn and those that are like, Nope, I know that all these real, these Josh rumbles out there have it, and if his country butt can do it, so can I.
And they don't realize how smart the boy is. And, he, because he makes it look simple. And then they try to do it themselves, and then three or four months later they're like this isn't working, this isn't doing, and we all have like great account managers that help you without, throughout system.
And it's buddy, like how do you think it's gonna work? Did you're not calling them leads or you're not, like all the stuff that you probably did. Before you're not doing again. And like money just can't solve it, and fortunately though I've seen it the opposite way, where there have been those that have proved me wrong.
The, there have been Sharon, way back before his real days was out, brokerage in California and I remember. He was talking to me about platform I was at that time, many Moon ago, and we were discussing what was needed. I was like, I just [00:28:00] don't think it's a good fit for you, da, because basically I was worried about the activities, not the money side.
And sure enough, he got it, did the activities, so there's been plenty of times that I've been proven wrong. But or the one agent that then creates, Trey Willard guy we were speaking of earlier. I met him, it was just him and his wife. Now they're up to what, 50 or 60 agents, I think, top team in Louisiana, et cetera. And maybe at that time I'm thinking, oh, I don't know if this is right. Are you sure you understand? But I think that end of the day when I think of what makes a true like team leader that's starting go to that great long lasting team leader over the years and not fail out or go rope over the industry is they treat it like a business.
Like Netflix didn't always, go in the red or go in the black or, I was like, which one is which? Red's bad. Yeah. They were probably in the red one month, like like Josh mentioned earlier, people get so transactional and oh, I don't wanna mess up what you said about the.
They get where they want basically the deal, right? And they just want to give up their split of the money. And that's different than actual team or actual business owner. [00:29:00] So I was, I gotta have that mindset correct. Or you really shouldn't be doing it.
Zac Muir: You were always there. Did you have to switch that mentality at some point?
Like specifically when you started on your team building?
Josh Rumble: Oh yeah, absolutely. We went through so many evolutions of what we have now. One thing that Christie and I pride our ourself on, we're an evolutionary business, right? So tech changes, people change, things change. The market changes.
There's so much variable in what, this is the only way and I always say this and I have a con when I'm having a conversation with somebody, your average franchise agent. Closes between three and six deals a year. We close 300 deals a year. So what It takes you a year to see? I can see in a week, right?
So I can make a very quick pivot. I can make a very quick change, I can make a small adjustment. I can do all of those things because I have the data of the baseline of what that is. And you take something like what you were showing Zach, preview of what Sisu is. I couldn't tell you how many times [00:30:00] I went back in and I'm like, okay, Craig's making this many dials and he's having this many conversations and he's closing this many transactions.
All right, Mandy, you're here and you're having this many conversations and you're not, so where was her pain point at? Her pain point was she could have the conversations, but she couldn't close. So where did we need to? Where did I need to focus on what you needed help on? It wasn't that you weren't trying, it wasn't that you.
You were being lazy. It was the fact that we needed to work on what your conversion. Conversation, training look like. And I think that for everybody that's on this call, I would encourage you to stay on this until it's over. 'cause we're gonna get in some real technical ways to make these things work super emphatically well, and it's gonna be worth the money you paid for this times three, wouldn't it?
Free? Yeah. So it's gonna be definitely worth the money, guys. I promise you. And when you're able to break your, that's the things inside your business that you automate, right? So now I can take a report and I can look at it and I can say, this person's here, and okay, I can see that this is where your shortcomings is.
What do [00:31:00] we need to work on so that you can take this number to this number? All right? Your efforts here. That's what we coach more than anything's effort. So when people start to put in the effort and they don't see the results, then we can drill down to find where the shortcomings is or where the bottleneck is to where we can get to that point.
So you go back three or four years ago, about four years ago, to when we started to build the mortgage branch and bring that up. The entire premise behind that had zero to do with making more money. It had nothing in the world to do with, I'm gonna open mortgage so that I can make more money. What that was for is because we identified here that through the millions of conversations that Christie and I had, that most of these people, the next step in their journey from being a PPC lead was to have a conversation with somebody about mortgage.
So it was like. We were trying to go a bridge too far. It's Hey, why don't you come in and sit down with me and let me tell you all the things that you already know. Houses have walls, and I heard some have windows and doors and all these [00:32:00] things. They're like, I don't care about any of that.
So the most logical next step for 99% of the PPC leads that we had talked to was that they were at the milestone of, they needed to have a conversation with somebody about mortgage because of the uncertainty and the volatility inside of what mortgage was. That's where we developed the plan of every single, we were mortgage first.
Every single person that we had a conversation with, we were gonna lead them down that path. And then that path was, this is our resolution. To me, when you're having a first contact conversation with a lead or even a follow-up conversation with a lead, you can give that lead gifts inside that conversation.
So the first gift that you can give anybody is the gift of understanding, and it's not enough for you to understand. Lord knows that's not enough. What you have to do is you have to make sure that they understand, that you understand. That's truly what understanding is. 'cause if you understand but they don't understand, you don't understand, then they don't understand, right?
[00:33:00] So that is the absolute first gift that you can give 'em, is the gift of understanding by asking good qualifying questions. And the best gift that you can ever give anybody is the gift of recommendation. The way that you make that recommendation is what solidifies the recommendation. Like with a CINC lead, and I would have a conversation, Hey you guys thinking about you gonna pay cash or take advantage of some financing options?
Right there, how soft was that? How coy was that? That was a very good lead in. Instead of you're gonna pay cash, you're gonna have to get your broke ass alone. So you don't, you gotta have coy when you're saying these things, right? So you know, you're taking advantage of some financing options.
Yeah, I'm probably gonna have to get financed. Hey, I completely get it. Me too. So you're trying to build a little commonality. I think for us, the next step is let's have a conversation with a mortgage advisor and let them lay out a plan full of programs and what your payment comfortability is.
Does that sound fair? And they're like, yeah, you know why that sounds fair? Because it w we, that was the next logical step that we were at. We just hit the milestone and then we queue up as a team 40 lending consults a week.
And [00:34:00] let that CINC in 40 a week and is. Almost exclusively from CINC, and then that's just our team in the two markets that we were in.
You take all of the rest of those, and I think it's in the hundreds, right? So we hundreds of these things a week all off of CINC leads. And the reason that works is because my mission has always been to understand how this works. If you can understand if a lead is inside the buy cycle, if they're not in the buy cycle, all of these different things, then you can truly understand what the next milestone is.
That, so that when that next proposition from you comes, it really makes sense. That is how you convert. Google leads. That's how you convert Facebook leads. That's how you convert Zillow leads. That's how you convert the guy you met at the grocery store. That's how you convert all of these, and one of the biggest things that we Preach after preach is be interested, not interesting.
You're not trying to be the guy from the Dos Equis commercial, the most interesting guy in the world. They don't [00:35:00] care. They don't know or trust you. You've only been on the phone for three minutes. What you need to do is you need to be interested in every single thing that they're saying because they're telling you how to sell them.
'em as they talk, they're telling you how to sell them. They're telling you what their pain point is. They're telling you what their pleasure point is. They're telling you what the catalyst was that got them to get online and look at homes. And then if you can discover that, then you can drill back into that, and then somewhere in between there and there is a problem, and then you can solve it typically with that recommendation.
Troy Mixon: I think it's, that's a great point, Josh. I think that's the difference in buying and selling a home. Like people when they are selling a home, the person looking is looking for an agent. When people are buying a home, they're looking for the house. Oh, not the agent. Yeah. And it's like it gets lost.
Like it gets lost in translation sometimes. 'cause they try to either apply both mindsets or. They want to rely on what all they've done. And I and it's great. And I'm not saying it's not important, 'cause it's, it surely has a time and place. But like you said, [00:36:00] not when you first meet, I don't, I didn't walk up to my wife at the bar and just say, Hey, I'm gonna marry you.
The first words outta my mouth. Yeah. Had to give her a whole bunch of BS first.
Josh Rumble: And I think too. That's the reason that so many people were so up in arms about the NAR ruling, right? So they're like, and it really didn't make sense because when you have a conversation with somebody it's just like what Troy said, you're dating back and forth, Hey, you should get these people to sign an agreement with you that they're gonna work with you exclusively.
Like you have not had the opportunity yet to even. To even try to see if you mesh or any of those things. And I think that's why you've seen such a opposition and pushback on it. And I say that I've closed 2,700 deals and we never closed one without a buyer's agency agreement. So I understand implicitly what that is to the nth degree, right?
But there's a time and place for everything. And the reason that people didn't like that is the same reason that you can't do one call closes on every single person. There's no [00:37:00] way for you to put something out there and develop rapport and try to find out what somebody's pain point is and to find out why they need to move.
If the only thing that you've done right off the bat is tricked them into signing something that they didn't want to sign to begin with. So I think it was counter, I. Productive to people that wanted to build relationships versus being transactional. So people that were PR transactional probably had no cares about that.
Good. That's just another guy that I can get to sign, whatever. But if you're trying to be relational and that's your business model is relational over transactional, then that was something that you didn't care for, because that's a. Another thing, like we're trying to be coy. We're trying to, we're trying to make you feel good about the situation.
We're trying to, become your friend so that we can help you in that way.
Zac Muir: Josh, what I'm hearing, you laid out a little bit of a framework that sounds like it's really worked well for you, converting specifically CINC leads, but I think it applies to any lead, but I think it's really cool in this conversation where.
A lot of y'all are probably CINC users or you have a [00:38:00] CINC, account and you're maybe generating some of those CINC leads or PPC leads, right? But what I'm hearing is you start with understanding. And the suggesting or what did you call it? Recommending or re the next logical step.
And what you found, if I'm understanding this correctly, is that next logical step often is talking about financing and talking to mortgage. To a, an lo am I seeing this right? That was becoming such a theme? Is that really why you pursued mortgage? Was like you wanted to own that part of the process and because it was so often the next step, you wanted to be able to, more easily make it an easier path, right?
That's absolutely.
Josh Rumble: And the thing is we've all had mortgage partners that were. Not partners. We've all had mortgage partners. That was the lady that bought, brought cookies to the office and then you give her all your deals and in return you got maybe cookies next Christmas, right?
So we've all had those type people. The, I wanted a partnership in a way that I. Every single one of my LOS makes dials inside CINC.
[00:39:00] Your CINC with your team. Same
Josh Rumble: CINC. Yep. And every other platform that we partner with, all 27 of 'em. So the reason that they work so diligently for these people is because they know what it's like to prospect a lead.
You know these other people that we had always partnered with, they didn't know how difficult it is to prospect a lead and have a fantastic conversation and cultivate all this stuff and then hand them off to a partner that was like, Hey, your person can't buy. If you'll get me another one, maybe I'll get them pre-qualified.
It's what? I work so hard to do that one. So my people understand that, that the people inside my group, they understand how difficult it is to prospect to lead. They understand how difficult it is to have a conversation with somebody and go through that. So they're empathetic to that, to the point that.
They're gonna keep trying to get ahold of that person. They're gonna try to get them pre-qualified. They're gonna try to get them into a repair program if they need it. They're gonna try to get them into the, whatever that next step is because they understand how difficult it is to prospect leads out of [00:40:00] the dashboard.
'cause they have a respect for it. 'cause they do it theirself. That's what a strategic partnership is supposed to look like. So I think that it's not necessarily that we make money off of each one of these mortgages. 'cause I wouldn't lie to you and say that we don't. Because we do. So the, but the reality is this was birthed from that that understanding, if we know that 37 people inside this transaction get paid how the more of those people that you can have strategic partnerships with and understand what the outcome's gonna be, then you know what the outcome's gonna be for the entire transaction.
And about 20 of those are on the mortgage side. So when you have those people. That are on your team in that way. That was the one proponent that kind of took us from here to here, and it was because identifying the fact that they need to have a conversation with somebody to clean up.
This mortgage conundrum, right? And a tactic that I use all the time, and [00:41:00] Christie's masterful at this, probably better than I am, is I'm going to, if you say you need financing, then I'm gonna muddy the water with a bunch of mumbo jumbo jargon, about 0% down, and DPAs and closing cost assistance and this program and that program.
Has anybody talked to you about this, and this? And then their head's kind of spinning, and then I have a clarity moment. They'll ask some questions like what about X? Hey, it sounds like you've got questions. I think the next step for us is let's have a conversation with that mortgage advisor and let them lay all those things out for you.
Does that sound fair? And that is the, that's that to me is, that was the dynamic shift too for my agents. Now all of a sudden, that's a win. So I don't have to set a buyer's agreement. I don't have to set a buyer's consult for it to be a win. I can set a Mortgage Advisor consult and that's a win.
And it's about a hundred times easier to set because that's actually where they're at than up here.
Zac Muir: But the key, having the right mortgage partner, right? And yes, and I think somebody on this call, listen, Inc. Could, 'cause they're not gonna go start a mortgage company overnight. He probably took you off.
You just
Josh Rumble: need the right [00:42:00] strategic partner.
Zac Muir: Go find the right partner. Look at. The person and I, what I'm hearing, what I what you're looking for is the person who cares to nurture the leads the same way you do, the same way you know works, right?
Josh Rumble: Yeah. Yeah. And if they want to be inside your CINC, you put 'em inside your CINC.
If they don't wanna be inside your CINC, then it. The one thing that's a, they don't wanna
Zac Muir: be inside your CINC, are they really the right partner? You know what I mean? Yeah. That's why
Josh Rumble: I'm thinking, is that Glad you said it.
Zac Muir: Yep.
Josh Rumble: And that's,
Zac Muir: They're scared of a CRM. They probably don't,
Josh Rumble: they don't wanna be in yours.
They probably don't have one. And if they don't wanna be in yours and they do have one, they're not using it either. Interesting. And I think I. Oh, go ahead Josh. Yeah, I think that's the differentiator between people that close at a super high level is how they are able to link with these strategic partners to elevate everything.
That's cool.
Zac Muir: That's very
Josh Rumble: cool.
Troy Mixon: I was gonna make the joke. Oh no, I was gonna make the joke that when he made the cookies about the mortgage company, it was, I have sent him cookies, so that was gonna be the joke. But we had to [00:43:00] feed the agent thing. His team closed the one point, so million dollar deal.
So we were like showing St leads the, that, so send cookies. So I was like, now I feel bad for sending cookies, but we'll make it up with something.
Zac Muir: All right. We're getting close to time. I would love anyone in the chat that has questions, please drop 'em in. And we might be able to tackle a few of those. Let us know what you'd like. Josh, it's really interesting listening to your story. The mortgage piece is really fascinating.
I think that could. Unlock a lot of things for a lot of people, especially, those of you that are already on CINC and you're getting these leads and you're looking to convert them at a higher rate. I think Josh just laid out some stuff that's really gonna help there. If I, so as we're wrapping up here Josh, if I wanted to interact with you more I know you do these Monday calls, or no, they're weekly calls, right?
Yeah. Tell us a little more about the community run. Yeah. And you're focused on conversion and I'd love to. Get people more information on that in case they're interested.
Josh Rumble: Absolutely. So there's one the one [00:44:00] thing that it, I talk to a lot of people that are on the fence, Hey, should I go with CINC?
Should I not go with CINC? And one thing that I think that CINC has that is probably, overlooked or undervalued more than anything is their training. Their training is, so I'm pretty fortunate. I'm in a lot of different places. Troy and I have had this conversation. I've got three other CRMs that are just comp to me.
They're like, Hey, will you just take this and tell me what you think? None of them, and I'm not gonna mention any names 'cause that's terrible, but the none of them even hold a candle to what this is on the training, on the support and all that stuff. So in that same vein, every other, every Wednesday at 9:00 AM central time, we do a conversion call and we have some of the best people in the country.
On that thing and it's from all over the place. Got Andrew Brian's team from Delaware. We've got Brian Buckley's team from down in south Florida. We've got bill Hilton from the Dallas area. That is amazing. And that list goes on and [00:45:00] on all over the country with a lot of people.
It doesn't matter if you're trying to set home evaluations. It doesn't matter if you're trying to set a buyer's consult, it doesn't matter. All of this starts with going through a great. Great discovery call and then given the gifts, right? Hey, I understand everything you just told me and I'm gonna re rehears, regurgitate half of that back to you so that you understand that I understood.
And then I think, here's the problem. Inherently across the board with conversion, 1000%, everybody I've ever talked to, you can write this on the wall. Peter told Paul, that you do not queue up your next phone call, your next interaction. Before you summate your call that you're on, and you have got to do that.
If [00:46:00] you're going to convert at a very high level, it has got to be, Hey, here's the plan. Here's what we are going to do next, and if it's something that you're going to do, then that's the. There's a reason that you're calling back. If your reason for calling back is, Hey, this is Josh with Excel Realty do you still not wanna buy anything from me?
Fantastic. Call you next week. That don't work. It never worked. Never worked one time, right? So I think that being able to really queue up what that next interaction is supposed to look like that is. The dynamic piece that shifts, that changes people that convert and don't convert at a very high level. So that's one of the things like, that's kinda what we focus on.
'cause people will ask a question, Hey, tell me what does that look like? What would that look like? I. And we get into all those things on that call of this is what that looks like. This is how you queue up what that next interaction should look like. That and about a thousand other tactics and topics.
Anybody that wants to copy that email, you guys send me an email. I'll send you an [00:47:00] invite link to that call. You'll find it extremely beneficial. We put a lot of time and effort into that. I. My, my team's on it, all the lending team is on it, all those things. So we use that in a way that is beneficial to my team, but is also beneficial to everybody that's on it.
Zac Muir: I love it, and thanks for sharing that. I put Josh's email in the chat, so take advantage. Troy, I'd love to hear if I'm, maybe not on CINC. Yeah. I'm looking to get started with CINC. Yeah. What's my best next step?
Troy Mixon: It would just CINC pro.com. That's, you can get all your info from our website or, even if you wanted to email me, it's troy.Mixon@CINCpro.com.
I'm more than happy to handhold you, not only through the process, what I love and really trying to change since coming to CINC is, you're not just finding a tech, stack, you're finding a tech partner. So I'll be here with after you sign up too. And hopefully even get to see you at one of our training events that we host and, happy to even introduce like others, and vice versa [00:48:00] too, Zach I think it's important.
We mentioned earlier how there are so many options for clients nowadays, right? I. But I always ask them to look at the company itself, right? When people have been here. And that's why I love, like creating partnerships and making 'em stronger with folks like you, I've known forever who, see who's been in the market, not going anywhere.
And it's what, making sure you're looking at not just the bells and whistles of somewhere, but what's the meat and potatoes behind it too. Sorry to switch it from cake, but don't get me wrong, I like both. But just, I ask that you always look at both equations, right?
And this goes back and forth too. 'cause, I plan on sharing this with our sales team, so I'm sure we'll be sending to prospects, like for people to be able to keep track and get engagement with their teams. What's, what is it for Sisu that we can make sure, that they're looking at the best in class for their check stack?
Zac Muir: Yeah. You're asking me?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking the same thing. All of these things pair so well together when you Yeah. You put CINC together with sisu and it's integrated, right? That's gonna, that's gonna make sure that you're not just [00:49:00] pumping in leads, but you have the accountability piece.
You've got Josh's call that we dropped on here for that the actual hard skills, the training, the conversion and jumping on there. So it all just integrates and pairs very well, I would say. Anyone looking to look at sisu, actually, I put a link in the chat. That's a, the reason it's an ugly looking link is because it's gonna tag you in our system.
We're doing a discount for anybody that comes to us through this webinar. And the discount is usually our user seats. Our 2020 to 25 per seat. If you're building a team, you're gonna want those seats without having to pay for 'em. So we're doing five free seats just included with the plan. If you're coming to us through this webinar and we're waiving all your setup fees too.
So take advantage of that if you're not already on ciso. If you're not already on CINC, take advantage. Like really? When you go all in on something like this where it's all integrated and tight, that's where you see the benefits that Josh is seeing. Like you got 27 agents, amazing retention.
You've been able to step into mortgage and I don't know, Josh, you just seem really happy and like you're running business. So we go commun.
Troy Mixon: Yeah. And I go back to [00:50:00] community. Think about that community, right? Think about CCC community, CINC community, just like we're talking about what you need for you and your agents, being part of those communities as well to me, adds so much value that the price tags doesn't even, really do it justice, but Oh yeah,
Josh Rumble: They'll make you money, both of them.
And they, going back 10 years ago when we first started this we. CINC was not the most open company to be able to do some of these partnerships with kudos to them. They have worked so incredibly hard to make their their tech way more integratable with these API keys, and I don't even know if that's a word, integratable.
And, yeah, I was, yeah. So the the a p keys and some of those things that we're doing now and the way that their staffs able to integrate these things, has been a game changer for us in a lot of different ways. The API now flowing back and forth from Sisu is something new. My sales rep at Sisu is Amber and she's amazing, and we've worked on several things together to help make that work even better.
There was things that [00:51:00] I didn't even realize that we could do now that we're starting to work on. So that integration of. The two systems talking back and forth. That's the kind of things that you have to have if you're wanting to grow and scale a team, is you have to have systems that talk mainly so that you don't double work your agents.
If there's one thing, if you want to talk about retention, start double working your agents and see how long they stick around. Yeah, it won't be long. I can promise you.
Zac Muir: Thanks Josh. Troy. Thank you guys so much. It was really good talking with both the, I learned a lot myself. We'll send a recording of this out.
I will just go to your email automatically. You can share it to whoever you wanna share it to. If there was something that you got valued like, oh, I wish my director of ops was listening to that, go ahead and forward it to 'em so that they can share in that value. But always a pleasure guys. Thank you.
Thanks to everybody and we'll see you on the next one.
Josh Rumble: Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks everyone. Appreciate it, brother.