Tristan Ahumada: Welcome everyone. Hope you're having an awesome day in January. We've got a treat for you today. It's my first time talking to Chelsea Scott, even though I thought I had talked to her before. Chelsea, great to meet you.
Chelsea Scott: Nice to meet you too. Thanks for having me today. Appreciate it.
Tristan Ahumada: I'm excited because you wear so many hats from what I saw at CINC. And you might be the best person I've ever talked to, to find out what the heck is going on with all this good stuff.
Chelsea Scott: Yeah. Yeah. My title's kind of lengthy, as you can see. Really I'm a senior director over here, but I help guide the onboarding team, the implementation team, and the training team. So really all that means is the first three months of your life cycle with CINC, after you get done with our sales team, you're working with my folks over here. So it's really the intro three months to your site going live.
Tristan Ahumada: Nice. I like that. Very good. So that means what's [00:01:00] going on with everything, which is perfect for this because we've got a lead success playbook. This is part 1. And so I'm going to, I'm going to hand the reins over to you. So you can take us through this. I'm going to probably interrupt you with questions or ahas from me or from the audience.
Chelsea Scott: Lovely. All right. Let's just kick it off. So again, this is part one. Before we get into the nitty gritty, I wanted to go through the CINC product just as a whole in case someone's not familiar.
So what exactly is the CINC product? The CINC product is a home search website. It's a CRM conversion engine and an effective advertising service. So all three of those descriptors are integrated on one platform to help you run a lucrative business. Our system is robust enough to provide search options for existing clients in your pipeline, nurture new leads in your CRM from our lead generation, all while [00:02:00] maximizing your return on investment.
So one of our clients, I thought I'd put this little testimonial on there. It's a one stop shop company. If that's what you're looking for, which I think most people are, that's where you want to be. Moving right along. The CINC success playbook. So why, are we here today?
So this is the part one. The CINC success playbook. Fill you in on it. It's an outline for any site owner to follow for a successful journey here at CINC. It's the first two years of your life cycle with CINC as well. We've curated this playbook based off millions of online real estate leads. Thousands of agents that work our site, and it really shows expectations, milestones, accountability, and expected results.
Alrighty, so the CINC Success Playbook is broken down into 4 phases. We have the onboarding phase, the implementation phase, the engagement phase, [00:03:00] and production. You'll see under each phase that there's the timeline within each phase, our goals, and our expected results using our best practices of the playbook.
Onboarding phase occurs the first two weeks here at CINC. This is when we effectively set up your site to ensure maximum lead generation. And today during this webinar, I will be reviewing in depth, the onboarding foundations. On part two, we'll go into implementation, engagement and production. But for today's webinar, it will be specific to the first two weeks because that's building your foundation.
Tristan Ahumada: I like this graphic right here would actually be good for a brokerage or a team as far as onboarding. I love the simplicity of this in the colors and the brackets. If you're paying attention, if you've got a team or a brokerage, I would snap this up right here. And [00:04:00] then think of how you can refine this for a team on onboarding. I love this, Chelsea. This is good.
Chelsea Scott: Wonderful. Yeah, within the playbook, the official playbook, because this is just a highlighted format. The pages are color coded. So if you're looking at the purple index, you know that you're in the implementation section. Because it's a pretty robust playbook. We're obviously just doing the highlights to keep it nice and simple. But yeah, we think that the color coding and the timelines really effectively help you say, okay, look, I'm in implementation. Let me just focus in on this right now. Let me not get ahead of myself and worry about the 12 plus months. Let's focus in on this. So I'm glad you like that.
All right, so moving right along, we'll go through onboarding in detail. Just a quick overview for the implementation phase that occurs from day of site access to your first 2 months live at CINC. This is when we train you and your team on your basic CRM usage. You're getting used to lead conversation, scripting, things like that. And you'll begin getting leads within 24 [00:05:00] hours of your site going live.
The engagement phase that takes place from your third month here at CINC to your end your first year. By this time you're closing business, you're using advanced features with our tools. And you're a pro at our proven scripting as well at this point.
And then lastly, the production. You're a well oiled, closing machine at this point. Wash, rinse, repeat. You already know you have those foundations. You've been living it and breathing it for the past 12 months. Just keep doing that. Wash, rinse, repeat.
All right, cool. So let's kick off the specifics within the onboarding phase. For this section, we'll discuss. We want you to understand kind of internet leads. Some people aren't familiar with that. And that's something that we want to introduce them pretty quickly before their site goes live. We'll explain their CINC website and it's made and why it's made. And we'll touch base on the importance of being compliant as well. Cause that's, necessary and [00:06:00] help you understand why choosing the right domain makes all the difference.
So first up, understanding the internet lead. We believe it's important to understand, especially if you're only accustomed to referral leads, because they are different. Internet leads during the expletory phase of their home search. And that's why it's crucial to have a CRM that nurtures the lead, right? We obviously all want leads that are ready to buy and sell immediately, but that's just not always realistic. So we want to make sure that we're getting to the lead in their early steps of the process, right? If you look at the illustration, it's a simplistic view of a Google lead and how someone would search for your website and get onto your site.
So let's see, the lead will search for a home online using key market terms. So if you're in Toronto, they're probably saying homes for sale in Toronto. You're in Atlanta, homes for sale in the Atlanta area. [00:07:00] Then the lead engages with your ad and is sent to your site. While on your website, the lead then will be asked to register for their free account to proceed with searching for listings. And lastly, the agent is immediately notified of the new lead. The assigned agent will get the lead's contact information, maybe a favorite city that they looked at, any saved search information the lead performed while being on the site and registered, and then if they favorited any listings.
Tristan Ahumada: I like this that graphic is super cool. Chelsea, I was thinking this. I was thinking if we could even go further down and understand the psychology of people jumping in and typing in whatever homes for sale. You're at a party, Chelsea, you and I are talking, you're like, Tristan, I just got a home and it's in, I'm in Malibu. So you'd be like, I got it over here in Malibu. And I'm like, oh, that's cool. And then I go home. I'm like, honey Chelsea's just bought a home [00:08:00] and then I just leave it at that. I go, I'm now on the side. I got my phone. I'm like, I wonder what we can buy. And then that's how the home search starts. And I think this is so important to explain to people, because I don't want to see any homes in person, barely thinking about this. And if I encounter an agent that harasses me and treats me like I want to buy something now, that's where you're going to lose me. So I love, this journey. Thank you.
Chelsea Scott: Yeah. We always want to think about not focusing on like closing a deal. We want to just understand the why behind someone wanting to look like, yes, you will eventually get to that, that deal on that closing, but we have to figure out like how we approach the lead so they don't get offended or feel like they're getting pressured into something. It truly is just an open conversation. So when they get to that point, and they are ready to engage. You already have some [00:09:00] back in background information that you can bring up naturally in conversation.
I sent some information to you guys. I don't know if you shared it anywhere, but I'm actually like a testament for the CINC website because I've lived in Atlanta, but I've always rented. And I was looking around just like wishing and hoping that I could afford something in a neighborhood that I wanted to live in. What I did, I went to one of our CINC sites. I favorited a house. It was a little bit out of my price range that I thought I could afford, but at the same time I hadn't even been pre qualified yet. So I was in the early stages, just dreaming. I favorited it. A few weeks later, it sent me an alert saying, Hey, there's a price drop on this. And then all of a sudden it became reality. And I ended up buying the home a month later. People can be like, I'm not ready. I'm not ready. And the next thing you know, if they figure out what exactly fits their wants, they are ready. So nurturing is key.
Great. So let's talk about your CINC website and explain it a little bit. So what is [00:10:00] is it? The CINC website is configurable, templated, created website. So it's created in house, it's templated. The CINC website isn't just for consumers, but also the agent. It's a front end, back end kind of system. So the agents use it to log in to look at their CRM.
Who is it built for? The primary audience visiting the sites are online leads as explained, so we want to make sure the experience they receive promotes the lead to revisit the website. Property alerts, email campaigns, but we're also building trust. And it's frequently used potential resources to help them buy or sell their home. So they could have come in as a buyer lead, but then they come out as a buyer and a seller lead.
Tristan Ahumada: So that's a, I'm going to interrupt you there because it's, somebody brought up a question that has to do with this. Jennifer great question. Jennifer is asking how likely is a lead to register with many sites or search sites, where you don't have to actually [00:11:00] register. You just jump in like Red FIn or Zillow. And from our experience, it's at the very beginning. If I'm just looking like chelsea and I were at a party type thing, like we just went through. I'm only going to go to Google type in homes for sale in Malibu close to the beach or something. Whatever pops up at the top. I'm going to go to that one first, alone. Because remember, I'm just dreaming. And if that site either is absolutely terrible, the agent just is terrible as well and bombards me. That's when I'm going to go to a 2nd and 3rd site. And if we do a bad job in nurturing this lead and making sure that we're touching them in the right way through this process, they're not going to go to Zillow or Redfin or Realtor. com at the end. Because we took care of them [00:12:00] from the very beginning. That I think is the key. And that's what you're showing right here with the nurturing Chelsea.
Chelsea Scott: Yeah, exactly. One way that we want to make sure that people are understanding on our sites, they're templated. And so the good thing about that is we're doing A/B testing all the time of what keeps consumers on the sites as long as possible. So we're constantly updating them for better conversion and better time on site. And so that's great because yeah, it is templated and sometimes. agents come in and they want to have everything custom and built out, but that's not going to give you the best conversion. Why not reap our benefits that we're already doing behind the scenes all the time. And this is a way that we think that's super beneficial for people because we're always tracking different things. How long did they stay on? Did they click this button? Did they not click this button? And if everybody has custom customized sites and stuff, that's not going to give you the best [00:13:00] conversion. And that's why we're really proud that our sites are. Templated and configurable. For instance, like this past year in 2023, we did A/B test for listing details page where you see the listings. And we had a 2 time increase of property inquiries when we were testing a new layout. And then we even had a 3 and a half time increase in showing requests. As you can imagine, once we saw those great numbers, we pushed it out to every single site on our website. We're constantly making sure that we're updating those templated sites to make sure you have that conversion.
Tristan Ahumada: I like that. I like that. There's a couple of questions. I'll read the Question and I'll answer it. Are we we part of CINC like LabCoats? No, we're not part not part of CINC, but we love CINC. CINC was way back in the day when Duane Legate owned it, he gave me the opportunity to have our [00:14:00] 1st live event at the Marietta office at the CINC headquarters. That's what really propelled us to the next stage as a company. So I'm always thankful to CINC for giving us that opportunity. That's why I love you guys. And that's why we're here.
Chelsea Scott: All right. Moving right along. It's important to be compliant. My background actually, at actually at CINC has been more on the MLS side throughout the years. So this is, near and dear to my heart. heart. So CINC allows up MLS feeds per site. It's mandatory for the IDX owner to be the same for all three. So we don't want you to add on an agent that's a part of a different market, but you want to get their feed. We want to stay in compliance with the MLS. And obviously you guys as agents be compliant as well. This also reduces the chance of MLS rejecting the request. So we're getting these sites up and running. People want the site up running as soon as possible. And if we have different memberships [00:15:00] and stuff like that, that can delay the approval. So we want to keep stern with that and then we keep up with overstretched markets too. We don't want someone to have a feed that's in Florida and a feed that's in California. We're hyper specific with our websites. That's what gives us a lower cost per lead. In a more sense of the agent knowing the market better, as opposed to someone going to a website that kind of just has all of the locations on it. You're really honed into that hyperlocal when it truly is just a specific market website that you're at.
Tristan Ahumada: I agree with you.
Chelsea Scott: Yeah, and then compliance is another reason templated sites make sense to us as well. MLSs are changing their roles and regulations often. And so we want to make sure that not only at time of launch is your site in compliance, If something changes a year down the road, we're automatically making those changes to your website.
Tristan Ahumada: Very cool.
Chelsea Scott: So choosing the right domain. This is controversial at [00:16:00] some points when we're talking to clients. So it's really great for you guys to know the reason why we want to say unbranded is best. Branded is not. Unbranded is best, especially for our type of lead generation. Unbranded domains create a sense of full market inventory, versus just listings that maybe a specific brokerage has, or an agent might only own. It gives full scope. As well, online lead generation is a numbers game. Per our stats, our testing that we always do. We see an 18 percent betterment on conversion when you follow our best practices for domains and having it unbranded. So obviously want that lift for sure. And then, CINC has got you covered. We will produce example URLs that fit our best practices, but also your market. So you don't have to worry about coming up with it on your own. We'll give you some options. And then from those options you can pick [00:17:00] your favorite out of the mix.
And then lastly, if you are set on having a branded domain, we suggest either forwarding your branded domain to domain to your CINC search site, or we have a we have free search widget that you can add into your branded site, and it links both sides directly so we can track that lead activity if somebody does come through your branded site. Any questions on that?
Tristan Ahumada: No, I like that. And I'd like to know what those best practices are. Do you have a manual or booklet?
Chelsea Scott: I can run through them right now. So we want to make sure that the term encompasses all of your area that you're working. So say you only work Cherokee County, that's where I grew up. Homes for sale, Cherokee County, homes for sale, search homes, Cherokee County. But if you're working outside of Cherokee County, you do not want to use that as your market. You want it to be larger. You want it to be a larger term. So maybe it's like [00:18:00] North Atlanta, homes for sale, in North Atlanta.
We want to have the term home or property. We want to have search the major market area. Guide is another one that over the past two years actually has performed pretty well. So North Atlanta home guide, we don't want it to be Chelsea sells homes. com or Chelsea's brokerage sells homes. com. So it seems pretty simplistic, but. It is something where people want to either have, they either have marketing materials that are already made and that's fine because you can forward that branded domain domain to our CINC site or keep and throw in our search widget. And so you can have the best of both worlds, but for us and our CRM and our lead generation unbranded is totally best.
Tristan Ahumada: I love that. And I agree with you on that because people don't care what you do until they feel like you're giving them value. Then they're like, wait, who is this?[00:19:00] It makes total sense, the psychology here. So thank you.
Chelsea Scott: Awesome. All right. So within this next section we'll be discussing ad campaign recommendations and secrets to selecting your target markets.
So diversifying your ad source lead type creates a healthier pipeline. CINC actually has 8 different types of lead sources that you can use, but when you're just starting out and you're in that onboarding and implementation phase, we recommend solely focusing on Google Buyer and team listing ads only. We want to have a 60 40 split between those two. Google buyer leads are probably the most familiar. I did my example earlier on a Google buyer search lead. I really want to touch base with team listing ads because people may not be familiar with that.
Team listing ads, or TLA for short, promotes your team listings across meta and their audience networks. [00:20:00] So ads are automatically updated and customized for each audience member that clicks on the ad. You can promote your brokerage listings, your team listings, your agent listings. This is compliant on some MLS rules though. And then keep in mind the first 90 days of your campaign going live. Don't touch it. Do not change your ad spend allocation from Google Buyer to ListCast or team listing ads to Meta Buyer. We really need those initial campaigns to stick the first 90 days without being touched. This is crucial for a ramp up period with Google network algorithms. We need to figure out what works best for your market based off your areas. Not everybody is going to have the exact same market or what they want to promote in.
And then we also need this time to build your reputation online. Your URL, stabilize costs per [00:21:00] lead, learn more about your audiences. There's many things that are going on in the background. That first 90 days that are crucial where we just don't need to touch it. And then after your ramp up period, you can either add any additional lead sources because we do to diversify it, but we just want to make sure that initial launch campaign structure stays in place. Any questions on that?
Tristan Ahumada: No, I like this.
Chelsea Scott: Okay. There is a little fun nugget of information. Never search for yourself online either. We see it a lot where people will search to try to find their ads and then they'll click on it. You just wasted some of your monthly ad spend. So don't search for yourself. If you want lead examples or ad examples, we can always give those over to our clients, but try to stay away from searching for yourself.
All right, moving right along. The secret to selecting your target markets. So with these market areas, you want a combination of cities, towns, communities, school districts, [00:22:00] counties, or large neighborhoods, but we for sure need to get 5 to 10 cities out of your mix. This is actually where you'll probably get the most traffic. Most people are more accustomed to city names, especially if they're not necessarily familiar with the area. So we need 5 to 10 cities. And then you'll want to select 5 or 10 supplemental areas to create. So that's like the school districts, the counties, or the large neighborhoods, things like that that really encompass your total market area.
So 20 or less in total that cover your complete market. And something to keep in mind, we don't want you to waste your money. So making sure that if you're picking locations that you truly want to work in, that they have at least 10 active listings at any given time. If they have fewer than that, we actually see that the bounce rate of a consumer coming to your site will jump off the site without [00:23:00] registering if they see that there's 10 or less listings, they don't feel like they have full market scope because it's so minimal. So make sure that your listings, if you go to supplemental five or 10, that they have 10 or more active listings at any given time.
And then obviously our CINC client marketing team, they're awesome. They'll be constantly analyzing and tweaking campaigns monthly to ensure increased performance, but we can't tell you what market you want to work in. You need to tell us. So that's why it's your first step. And then after that, we'll be able to tweak assess and make better along the way.
Tristan Ahumada: I like this. Thank you.
Chelsea Scott: Of course. And then our last section of this onboarding phase. is the fully loaded CRM built for conversion. So we want to talk about the CINC system setup. So once we've gone through compliance, the domain, the target market areas, your ad campaign breakdown, now we need to talk about the system setup. We want to make sure [00:24:00] that these five things are set up and being utilized. To ensure conversion.
The first one would be pretty simple. Complete your agent profile. So we want you to complete your agent profile, customize it, add a it, add a CINC number, put in whatever kind of thing that you want to do that is custom to you. You can add that in there. If you give it to us before your cyclist life, we can add that in for you as well. You'll want to get to get a CINC phone number. interested in our dialer, you'll want to turn that on too so you can create caller campaigns.
The next notification preferences. Your notification preferences will automatically be enabled so you don't have to edit or adjust. But we do think it's important to customize your preference if needed. We have three different alert types. We have email, text, or push notifications from the CINC agent app. And really this is custom to you. Yes, it will be automatic, but if for some reason you prefer text more, or you [00:25:00] prefer the push notifications more, you'll want to customize that. Whatever gets your attention, or what seems most important to you, and all the notifications that you'll get, make it applicable to your profile.
Tristan Ahumada: Text for sure. Cause I, as soon as I get it, I forward it over to my team. I'm like, did you see this? And yes, they did. I'm a maniac.
Chelsea Scott: Yeah. Sometimes when it goes out to multiple people too, no one knows which person's going to take the lead too. So that's nice.
All right. Setting up lead routing. That's essential and should be discussed with somebody in house at CINC. So whether implementation manager or support team, your account manager, whoever it is, in whatever phase you're in, we want to make sure that it's probably discussed with us because we do have basic and advanced lead routing options. And we really want to figure out what's best, whether you're a two person team or a hundred person team, right? So use us in our knowledge of how best to situate that lead routing.
CINC automations. [00:26:00] We have quite a lot of automation settings and features. Speed to lead automation via our auto tracks. Our auto tracks is our term for drip campaign. It's probably what you're most accustomed to. So the auto tracks, it's an email and text cadence. That reaches the lead within the first five minutes of registration.
We also have behavioral messaging automation that relies on the leads action taken on the site. So if they favorite a listing, if they log back in after 30 days. You want to make sure that this is enabled and something you're utilizing so when they start making traction on your site, you can follow up with them Timely.
Finally, CINC AI automation. AI is going to be your virtual assistant. We call our AI Alex here, and Alex will be utilizing text messages.
And then lastly, in the fifth column, the CINC Agent app. The CINC Agent app's gonna be your best [00:27:00] friend. It's our app for the agent on the go. Anyone with an agent profile on your site can download and access this free tool. So even though it says agent app, if you have a lender on your site, if they have a profile, they can utilize this app. Maybe it's an admin. Anybody that has a profile can download it. So it empowers agents, brokers, lenders, anybody that's working the site to respond back to leads timely. And then we have it available on Apple or Google play. If you try to use those links and you don't have a profile, I won't let you log in, but just wanted to throw that in there in case somebody is a part of CINC already on here.
Tristan Ahumada: The app is extremely powerful. You can operate the whole thing off of the app. We love it.
Chelsea Scott: Sometimes desktop is... you need a little reset and you're at your desktop, your laptop, trying to go through maybe dialer campaigns and stuff like that. But then other times, like you're [00:28:00] showing homes, you guys are always on the move. So to have it in the palm of your hand makes all the difference. So we're really proud of that product.
And really that's about it. At this point, the agent will be all set with their onboarding phase. We've gone through all of that. They'll be ready to hit their implementation phase. They'll be ready to set their site live. They'll have the IDX website built for lead generation, online advertising to drive traffic from target markets, and then the fully loaded CRM built for conversion. Any more questions?
Tristan Ahumada: No, that's it. I think we got them in between. I was answering them, but there were a few. And I got them in between. You answered a lot of them just by going through the process. What should we expect in part 2?
Chelsea Scott: Yes, so good question. So this was the foundation part. The next will be dial count. speed to lead, like how quickly you should be checking in with these folks that have registered for your website. What kind of [00:29:00] filters we use and requests to be used for your best practices to make sure that you are following up on people. You don't just call them once, you're going to call them six. Six times really over your nurturing campaign until you get an active conversation. So it really is more of the nitty gritty of the day to day life of an agent that has a CINC site live. Also what kind of check ins you'd have with your implementation manager and the support that you'd receive from our company as a whole. And then we might be able to, we'll see if we can fit it on part two, we might have a part three where we can do, once you're out of implementation, you're with an account manager and you're doing that wash, rinse and repeat. And what kind of goals and timelines you should be holding yourself accountable to month over month.
Again, our playbook is pretty robust. And so that's the whittled down version of it. It is a lot of information and that's why we like to have it segmented. If you are in day one or learning about what you should be [00:30:00] doing. At month 11, month 14, you're going to get a little overwhelmed. Let's start with the small stuff. Let's guide you to that foundation and let's hit it within smaller goals along the way.
So it's digestible and you don't overwhelm yourself because you can be successful and you will be successful. And that's why it's easier to do it in small chunks to get to that success.
Tristan Ahumada: I like that. I like that a lot. So thank you. There's 1 question that you may know the answer to before I answer. If you only have an email and a name, is there a resource that you send people to see if they can get a complete information like a phone number?
Chelsea Scott: We don't have a system or a product that we use, but what do you mean by name? So let's say sometimes they'll give me an email address. And so what we want to do is we have specific campaigns for that. So if it is someone that has a bad phone [00:31:00] number, but it's a good email address, we will have a campaign that kicks off to get them reengaged to come back to the site and give them us give them a real, number, a correct number. So we have it vice versa. So if it is something to where the email is invalid, we want to make sure that we ping them to say, Hey call this client. The phone number's right. We've checked it. We've verified that it's right. Call them and see you during the conversation, hey if, if. the phone isn't the easiest and best way to get in touch with you, can I get your email address while I have you on the phone or it can prompt on text messages, things like that. So we don't have a specific service. That'll go back and validate anything like that. But we will have different prompts to say, hey, this is good. Take advantage of it.
Tristan Ahumada: Okay, got it. We, I like that. Hey, we use Spokio is 1 and I know there are many others. But what I want you to do, if you already have an email, what we find is that [00:32:00] about 50 percent of the people who have, who you get emails from use that email as their iMessaging email, so what I want you to do is grab for the person who asked the question, grab that email. And dump it into the texting feature of your phone. And if it lights up blue, then you can text them. And that's what we've been doing for 13 and a half years. So you can imessage people with their email. So try that. You'll be like, what I'm like, yeah, it works. So Chelsea. This rocked., thank you so much for doing this. I can't wait to part 2 and dive in deeper.
Chelsea Scott: Appreciate it. Thanks for your time today.
Tristan Ahumada: Oh, thank you. I think there was a question about pricing. Hold on. Karen is asking, can we discuss pricing? Sorry if I missed it. What is that? Is that something you discuss here? Or did they just go to that link to find out everything?
Chelsea Scott: Yeah. So we want [00:33:00] them to take advantage of that link. I'm not in the sales department, but we will set you up with somebody that does this for a living. So use that link. You guys get a special promo too for attending and being part of LabCoat agents, so take advantage of it for sure.
Tristan Ahumada: Awesome. Thanks so much. Have a good rest of the week.
Chelsea Scott: Take care.
Tristan Ahumada: Bye everyone.