Bruce LaMaster, Team Leader of The LaMaster Real Estate Team, out of Sacramento, CA has been a CINC client for ten years, generating enough success to get out of the business and pursue his passions outside of real estate.
Watch his full interview with us for his take on the value of:
Bruce and his team are proof that if you can master the basics, it can lead to record transactions and GCI.
Bruce LaMaster: I don't think you should ever stop lead generation. I think the worst thing any team or agent can do when times get tough is cut their lead.
gen spend because the lead gen that the leads that come in now are more than likely going to stick with us over the long period of time, because most of the other real estate agents are cutting their lead spend in other places. So I just look at it like I have a better percentage of hooking these fish If I keep my lead spend up.
So I think that's one of the things that agents can put out of their head is cutting back on lead spend at a time like this. You know, cut back on Starbucks, don't cut back on leads. But because this is what is going to put you ahead of everybody else when the sun shining again.
[Intro]
I am Bruce LaMaster. I have a real estate business in Sacramento and started building a team there in 2008, 2009, something like that.
I actually started working with internet leads in 2007. I ran across CINC in 2014. So I've been in CINC for ten years. And, I always kind of thought that CINC was the Rolls Royce of CRMs. And I still believe that.I was lucky enough to get in on it when Dwayne was still around. And so I got to see the heartbeat of what made this company so cool.
And then over the years, I have just been able to develop what we do as a team with CINC and really understand the basics of it so that it's an easily duplicatable process. I can train a team member, I can give them 2 or 3 pieces of paper and handouts so that, on a daily basis, they know exactly what to do.
Because this really isn't rocket science. It doesn't need to be complicated. The foundational basics of CINC is something that anybody can do an hour a day. Because the basics are what is going to net you 15, 16x on your investment on this thing. And and it will hold true every time it's tried.
The problem with most real estate agents is they don't like sticking with the basics because it's boring, and it's really more fun to chase the shiny object of the week.
CINC is one of those things where it really is the most robust platform out there. It has more whistles and bells than Carter's got little pills, but it also has a super strong foundation that once that foundation is mastered and an individual agent or a team of agents can really grasp the foundation and work on a daily basis, then you can start building on it with all of the robustness of CINC and really create a castle. So that's what I like about CINC. It’s been really good to me and my family over the last ten years.
I think with anything there's got to be there's got to be a system in place. And, you know, one thing that's really good about CINC is there is there is a foundational system in place with the P and F filters. I know that's what I teach when I'm coaching clients all over the country with CINC is just stick to the basics of working your prospecting filters and working your follow up filters the way they were designed to be worked.
It's not the sexiest thing to do every day, but it is the most important thing to do every day. And once you get that down, then one of the things that CINC does a really good job of is like the continual education, like the every other Monday class that John and Christine do on role play and conversion.
It’s an excellent class. We still sit on it from time to time, and I've been around this thing forever. CINC U. I mean, Lance and Steve and the crew, let's say you do a fantastic job when you want to learn to build on that foundation and, you know, if you're going to walk through a minefield, follow somebody.
And what I mean by that is, don't listen to people who have not been successful doing what it is you want to do. Listen to the folks that have actually used CINC to earn a living and to build a business, or to do the things they need to do and follow them.
I decided to double my, ad spend and double the calls from 250 calls a week per agent to 400 calls a week per agent. So 2020, my team of I had 7 or 8 agents at the time, plus myself and my admin. My team did 127 or so transactions, roughly a million and a half in GCI, and it was the best year we ever had. So there is no obstacle that cannot be overcome with some common sense and hard work.
And my dad always taught me that if you really want to be successful at something, see what everybody else is doing and turn around to the opposite. So while everybody was running, we just dove into it and it worked. Last year I was quitting the business, last year, because I'm tired and I like to fish.
And, last year we did 27, 28 transactions. GCI $380,000 or something like that. And it was all through CINC. I don't use any other lead source for my transactions or my leads. Everything is ran through CINC because I'm kind of one of those guys, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Yeah. And, so it ain't broke, and it still works.
The second you say 250 dials a week. Most people's eyes roll up in the back of their head, and they're relatively sure that they'd rather just get kicked to the gut.
What happens is when you show how the dialer works and how the system works, and how quickly you can move through that process. And it really doesn't take more than an hour a day in front of your computer. And then the lights start to come on and they go, wow, this ain't so bad. In 2020, my team was the one that came to me and said, if you'll double the lead spend, we’ll double the calls.
I said you're on and I doubled the lead spend. They doubled the calls, and we doubled, we doubled the volume.
The more I coach these days, the more I hear these leads suck and they're no good, right? And I just giggle because there's no such thing as a bad lead in my mind.
And you just never know what you're walking into. And if you use the system properly, you'll let the system marinate the leads, and you are there when the time comes to start building the relationship, you never know where that relationship's going to go. We had a lead that was probably the most persnickety buyers I've ever met in my life. I mean, this guy was just almost classified as a jerk. And then he ended up buying one house. And through the process of buying one house over the next three year period, there were nine transactions that came out of that one house between him, his brother, his brother in law and, and then himself buying some more properties. But there was nine transactions coming out of one person that I almost wanted to fire in the beginning.
I don't think you should ever stop lead generation. I think the worst things any team or agent can do when times get tough is cut their lead gen spend because the lead gen that the leads
that come in now are more than likely going to stick with us over the long period of time, because most of the other real estate agents are cutting their lead spend in other places. So I just look at it like I have a better percentage of hooking these fish If I keep my lead spend up.
So I think that's one of the things that agents can put out of their head is cutting back on lead spend at a time like this. You know, cut back on Starbucks, don't cut back on leads. But because this is what is going to put you ahead of everybody else when the sun shining again.
I've only been in real estate 20 years. And I've only seen about 3 or 4 cycles so far. And, and there is a lot of commonalities between the every four years cycle and the every ten year cycle. I think that this four year cycle is probably one of the worst I've ever seen in terms of seizing up people to the point of not wanting to do anything.
And I'm talking about the consumer. I do not blame a consumer for not wanting to engage right now. It is some scary times that we're dealing in the economy and everything else. But what I do know for a fact is that this to show pass and everybody will get comfortable with, however it ends up, and we get paid to change names on paper.
And so at the end of the day, I don't think there's a magic bullet. I don't think anybody has the magic wand on saying, you should be in seller leads or you should be in buyer leads. Both are going to happen. And if we're good at what we do, we adapt and overcome. It's all going to work out just fine.
I don't buy seller leads. I buy only buyer leads because out of my buyer leads, if they're processed properly, we end up with about 30% of them needing to sell a house. So it has always just borne out to be true that buyer leads often need to sell something also. So, you know, is it ugly?
It's ugly. Has it been ugly before? Yes it has, and we've overcame. We've adapted. So just tighten up your belt, ride the wave til it breaks on the beach, and the sun will shine tomorrow.