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Boroughs & Burbs 178 || Real Estate Technology

• Season 5 • Episode 178

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In Season 5, Episode 178 of Boroughs & Burbs, we dive into the role of technology in transforming the real estate industry with two trailblazing experts. Jocelyn Vos, of Final Offer, and Bob Lachance, CEO of Reva Global, join us to discuss how cutting-edge tech is reshaping the real estate landscape. From Final Offer’s innovative auction-style platform that allows buyers to make real-time offers on properties, to Reva Global’s virtual assistant services that streamline tasks for real estate professionals, this episode explores how technology is improving efficiency and empowering agents, buyers, and sellers. Tune in for valuable insights on how tech is making a difference in the real estate market!

SPEAKER_00:

The Burroughs are New York City. The Burbs are everywhere else. Real estate is the ultimate game of risk and reward. It's the biggest investment most people ever make. Fortunes are made over a lifetime and lost in a day. And we're not playing with monopoly money. How do you stay ahead? Who's buying? Who's selling? And why? What do they know? We want the truth. You need an edge. Burroughs& Burbs is your secret weapon, giving you the insider knowledge and strategies you need to succeed in the high We press the experts to expose the pain, find the deals, and occasionally predict the future. That's Burroughs& Burbs, Thursdays, 3 o'clock Eastern, noon Pacific. Because everyone can make money in real estate.

SPEAKER_02:

Welcome, everybody. Burbs and Burbs, number 178. From Manhattan to Malibu, we press the experts. And today, we're doing real estate technology with Bob Lachance, Jocelyn Voss, and Ethan Butte. Welcome, everybody. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04:

All

SPEAKER_02:

right. And I have to introduce my co-host.

SPEAKER_04:

I'm Roberto Cabrera, and I'm on the airport side of Manhattan. Very excited about this. For someone like me, it's going to be useful. Someone like you.

SPEAKER_06:

Characterize you in that context.

SPEAKER_04:

I am a control freak and I do everything myself and I need to let go and allow technology to help me.

SPEAKER_02:

All right. Well, we've got a technology for you. I'm sure. But first, let me get into some housekeeping. Today, we're on Burroughs and Burbs 178. Last week, we were in Western Canada. And before that, we talked to the CEO of Scalamandre. It was a great show. You can check that out at burroughsandburbs.com. I want to thank our sponsor, gracefarms.org and Grace Farms Foods. And you can check them out at gracefarms.org and see what their spring calendar looks like. I'm John Engel, and this is actually showing off. This is showing off screen, where I show that this show has had 833,000 views, and we've had 28,000 this month alone. I wanted to introduce my co-host, top agent out of 2,270 agents, Roberto Cabrera. He's so modest talking about technology, but he is the number one agent in February. Kudos to you, Roberto. That's housing wire. I loved this image. And I thought, you know, I want to find out from Jocelyn, who is her PR person? Because to get housing wire, to write an article like this about a seasoned real estate agent who's killing it down there in, what, D.C., Jocelyn?

SPEAKER_01:

I sure am. I'm in Washington, D.C.

SPEAKER_02:

So we want to hear more about this. Bob, Bob Lachance, Riva Global. You're not in the Philippines, but you're going to talk to us about outsourcing a lot of our help, our VAs to the Philippines, right?

SPEAKER_03:

That's correct. I'm actually visiting at the end of the month.

SPEAKER_02:

And I have done that, and I have been there, and so I'm personally interested. And we've got Ethan Butte, and he is currently, well, formerly of BombBomb, currently, which is a favorite software, and currently with FollowUpBoss, another favorite software that I subscribe to, I use. So welcome, Ethan.

SPEAKER_06:

Thank you very much. Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_02:

Roberto, where do you want to start today's show? I mean, we could start with any of these. We need

SPEAKER_04:

help of where to start. See, that's the thing. So let's start where it's appropriate. Who wants to start? Ethan.

SPEAKER_06:

Yes. Do you have a question or do you just want me to go? I

SPEAKER_04:

want you to tell me what you do. What is follow-up boss? Tell me, you know,

SPEAKER_06:

let's Very good. Cool. Okay. So traditionally you would call Follow Up Boss a real estate CRM, but the way that it was developed from, it was founded in 2011, the way that it was developed, it really is the operating system of your real estate business. That is, it's the central hub. And one of the things that's distinguished it over the years is that it's always been focused on being a CRM. It's not a CRM plus this, plus that, plus the other thing. Instead, we've gone down the route of having an open API. So there are hundreds of direct integrations into FollowUpBoss and then through middleware like Zapier or Make where you can write rule sets that say, if this happens over here, make this happen in FollowUpBoss. Or if this happens in FollowUpBoss, make this happen in my other site. system. Between that combination, you can literally do whatever you want with this platform. And so if you're looking to be more consistent or efficient yourself or you're a team leader or operations leader and you want to make your team of agents more consistent and more efficient, it's a foundation to help you do that. It does have all the pure kind of CRM characteristics of put all your people in there, manage them, allow yourself to do different things in and around it. There are smart lists where you can start your day. I always recommend people start their day in people. people inbox and tasks, specifically in people, it's the smart lists where you get to, you know, we have a bunch of them out of the box, but you can write your own rules to say this list of people are, you know, hot leads, let's say.

SPEAKER_02:

Is that like an action plan? I'm looking at the action plan. Action plan is a

SPEAKER_06:

series of, it's a series of communication things. And you can write automations to trigger action plans to start or to switch people from one action plan to another. Again, you can literally do whatever you want. So Um, you know, to go back to your, your observation off the top, Roberto, when you're like, I don't even know where to start. It's like, okay, what is challenging or frustrating about your business? What is some of the feedback that you get from, you know, the people closest to you, including your clients, but including other people around you, um, that may be sometimes hard to hear. And then you figure out like, okay, um, there's certainly going to be a solution to that. No matter where you are in your business, you know, if you're not running off ACRM, whether it's follow-up boss or another one, I don't I run a show called Real Estate Team OS. I haven't recorded and released as many episodes as you all have. I think I've recorded about 115 and released about 104 so far. It's primarily with team leaders and operations leaders. I always start with where do they start in the business and what was the dawn or the spark for your team? Why did you even start building a team in the first place? And it's typically because they were so busy. And when you ask for their advice at that stage of their life and their career, you hear two things. One, get an assistant, whether that's virtual or domestic. And two, get a CRM. So it's the foundation for that. So no matter... what you want to build, whether you just want to run an amazing solo agent business, or whether you want to build a, you know, one of those kind of tight-knit elite Navy SEAL type of teams with, you know, eight to 12 high producers, all kind of moving in the same direction all the time, or you want to go, you know, a Team Ridge or, you know, mega team type route, Follow Boss can be tailored to whatever you want to build.

SPEAKER_02:

This is what I heard you say, that an agent like Roberto, who maybe a single agent begins with a Rolodex and they manage leads of maybe a few dozen people at a time. But when you want to take that to the next level, either more people, or you want to begin to segment that into hot, warm, and cold, and you want to start treating your hot one way with one set of communications, or automations, your mediums and your colds with a different, say, cadence, different messaging, that's why you need a CRM. Even as an individual agent who's gone from, say, 24, a couple dozen leads at a time to maybe 100, to manage 100, 200, or in my case, 14,000 names in the system, you need a better technology. So I use Follow Up Boss to manage 14,000 leads for a team with a dozen people involved. So when the Rolodex is no longer getting the job done, Roberto, you have to move to a CRM. To that end, and that's a great segue to Jocelyn, you say to yourself, well, am I going to spend all day every day worrying about my follow-up boss and what everybody's doing and managing it. Jocelyn, or sorry, I wanna get to Jocelyn after that. I wanna get to, where'd he go? Oh, Bob, you're switching around. So Bob is in the business of virtual assistants. I have a virtual assistant to help me manage. 14,000 customers and eight different agents who have seats and follow-up boss. So Bob, how does that work? Do you find that that's a major reason that people come to you when they get overwhelmed with the CRM and the amount of customers they have to manage?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Verberta is a perfect example. Um, he said on the beginning, he's a control freak and he's, he's, you know, it's tough to let go of things. Um, but perfect example. A lot of us are the same. You know, we start where, um, no one could do our job better than us, which we may be right. We may be wrong, but 80% of the stuff that we could outsource, if they do it, 80% is good. It's a win because it gets done. So we started, uh, back in, uh, about over 10 years ago, started a virtual assistant company, um, through the need. Cause with back in the day, I had a, uh, I was part of a coaching program that helped agents, helped investors get up and running, driving leads, et cetera. And what I've realized and I noticed was that Every time we gave them assignments to do in order to drive in leads or get deals closed, come to find out they didn't do the tasks we needed them to do. So, you know, fast forward, I was in that arena for seven years and a light bulb went on. I said, you know what? I hired my first virtual assistant and I said, there's a business here because there's a huge need in all of our real estate space, whether it's the agent space, investment space, CRM space, you know, everyone, All of us need a CRM, but the challenge is we actually have to work it. And we have to do work inside that software. And what I found is that we could tell everyone what to do to be successful, but for them to take the actions and the steps to do it, you kind of have to push them. So if there's another resource out there like virtual assistants that we train, it's just really towards the easy button of helping individuals perform those tasks to get them to where their top producers like Roberto, as an example.

SPEAKER_02:

Which comes first, the CRM? Oh, I need a virtual assistant or I've got a virtual assistant and I need a common platform to communicate with her.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, that's an interesting, it all depends if you have names. If you don't have any names, you could start your business literally on a Google sheet, right? Because you need to drive in business to build that database, to use a CRM. I mean, I do them both at the same time. That's my short answer. However, you know, we need to drive in business to fill follow-up boss as an example, use Ethan as a perfect example to be able to then get them in the sequences, drip campaigns, et cetera, to keep them nurtured. And then, you know, turn into either buyers or sellers.

SPEAKER_04:

How do you train your people to make these communications with your clients real, authentic communications?

SPEAKER_03:

Say that again. Sorry, Roberto. Cut out for a second.

SPEAKER_04:

How do you train your people to have real, authentic communication with your clients?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, it all depends on what tasks you want them to do. So if it is phone tasks, I always look at it. We train them on 80% of what we all do, and it's 20% that make it specific to you. So we have scripts that we train them on. So whether it's outbound prospecting, appointment setting, there's already scripts that they're trained on that we have. We have a whole training team in the Philippines. We have a placements team and operations team all in the Philippines that handles all that.

SPEAKER_02:

Is this a picture of your team, the actual team behind you? Great teams start with great people?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, that's the event we just had. This was in November.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so when you have an organization like that, I mean, you have, well, do I have my own dedicated person there or do I have a group of people to support me and I might be working with Sally one day and Bob or Mike the next?

SPEAKER_03:

Great question. We have a dedicated one-on-one. So we do part-time, full-time, 20 hours, 40 hours a week. We've tried everything from the last, you know, the call center set up to hourly. And we find that the best results that agents have is the 20 hour or 40 hour kind of relationship.

SPEAKER_02:

I have a full-time relationship. person whose job it is to manage my follow-up boss and make sure that the communications are going out, that I don't miss something because speed to reply is very important. So if you're going to spend money on advertising and you're trying to drive customers to your website, you have got to make sure that you complete the promise, that if they fill out their name and they connect with you, you've got to connect right back. And if I'm on a listing presentation and I can't do it, I know I've got Rachel who is saying, hey, are you in the market or were you just curious about the value of your home that you filled out the

SPEAKER_03:

form? And it's speed to lead, right? Because if you don't respond to them right away, they're going to go to the next person, the next person, the next person. So that's what we've found. That's a perfect way to use follow-up boss.

SPEAKER_02:

I want to pivot now to Jocelyn. I just

UNKNOWN:

...

SPEAKER_02:

Yesterday, I was asked on a podcast about Final Offer. I want to tell the case study that I told yesterday. I recently had a listing in Greenwich, Connecticut for a$750,000 condominium. I had some interest. I wanted to bring all that interest in that condominium together at the same time in the same weekend. I found it had not done me any good for the first month that was on the listing to show it once, and somebody was maybe thinking about making an offer, maybe an offer over here, maybe an offer over there. Then I got a low offer, and I had no way of getting all this energy back. in the same room at the same time. So a month into having the listing, I decided to put it on final offer to one, expose it to a whole lot of people, give it transparency and force everybody to make a decision within a 48 hour period of time. It generated over the weekend, 576 people followed that auction for the course of the weekend. I think we had four offers. It went, I think we went 680, then 730, and then 750. So it rose. And every time it rose, everybody could see it and everybody could get excited and wonder if, you know, if we were done yet. So it was a very exciting and transparent process. And the client was happy because the condo sold for market price. He knows he didn't leave any money on the table. And none of the bidders thought that I was gaming the system by favoring an agent in my own office or playing games with the terms of the deal. How's that, Jocelyn? Is that about what final offer is all about? Because that was my experience.

SPEAKER_01:

That was your experience. Yeah. I mean, think of final offer as real-time offer alerts, right? A property is listed for sale today. It goes under contract. It sells. We have no data and information on when offers are made, how many offers, and if the agent wants to expose the price in terms of offers. I have a hot listing I put on yesterday. I am using this as a differentiator to grow my business I've been a real estate agent for 16 years in the DC market. I've been a part of Final Offer because I know that infusing technology into our business is so, so critical, especially with the Rocket and Redfin purchase. I think we're going to be seeing a lot of digital age type of people buying and selling homes that way, and then the traditional way through us. And so think of Final Offer as a place where... Every single time an offer is made on a property, you are going to get an alert that an offer was made, but the price in terms and any identifying information is not disclosed. Okay, that's a choice. The auction-like feature is a choice. But what's really cool about that is you're driving urgency back to the property by getting more alerts out than the traditional way of selling. So when I'm in a listing appointment and I'm up against someone else, I always say this is the enhanced way of selling where I... I'm going to get more eyeballs on your property than ever before with more alerts that go out, in particular when offers are made. What's really nice too is that it's a big differentiator. I'm inviting the neighborhood to follow along in a process that they've never had access to before. It has a really cool open house tool so that you can actually capture more leads at an open house because you're talking about something of value. Whether you like this home or not, follow along and scan this QR code to get real-time offer alerts on this property.

SPEAKER_04:

Can we just back up a little bit? Because conceptually, I'm still not sure what I have a property and then this is an app that I can then put the property on that app and then use that to sell the property. Is that what I'm doing?

SPEAKER_01:

Essentially, you don't have to add it to our site. It's already on there. We have an IDX feed similar to Zillow, Redfin, same kind of concept. So when your listing is live on the MLS, it's live on our site as well. And now you're going to be managing the offer process through Final Offer, where you can also choose to negotiate like John did in our system and start an offer window, or you just manage the process to get real-time offer alerts out to drive urgency back and differentiate yourself and grow your business and win more listings. I mean,

SPEAKER_02:

how many times do you get something and you put it on the market and an agent says to you, oh, I have somebody who might be very interested in this. Can you let me know if you get any offers? Every day. And I turn to the people in my office and say, it's not my job to go call everybody who might express.

SPEAKER_01:

Keep me posted.

SPEAKER_02:

It is actually your job. Well, no, because actually, if I do get an offer from Meredith there, she makes an offer, she actually expects to get an answer. She doesn't expect me to call 50 people who might have an offer and shop her offer, right? So there's a great deal of suspicion that I have a responsibility to get back to Meredith with an answer fairly quickly. So I have a very limited window of time.

SPEAKER_01:

So like John, this is streamlining the process, right? It is hard to call 50 people on a really hot listing, but imagine being able to tell them exactly what the seller wants in the listing. You know, I need a rent back for this amount of time, all of those terms that matter to a seller and everybody knows exactly what's going on in real time. When offers are made, when offers are due with alerts going out to them, uh, Any of that type of information to ensure no offer or opportunity is missed or any buyer agent who's like, you know, my client, we missed out because they just accepted an offer and we're strong armed or whatever could have happened. The negotiation piece takes it a bit further where we actually have a buy it now option on our site. That's the price in terms to put a property under contract immediately. That's a choice by the seller and the listing agent as a strategy. I've used it when I've had one offer. I said, buyers are willing to pay a premium to know exactly what it takes to shut it down, knowing that anybody else could click it at any time. Boom, it's done. We also have the ability to start like what John said, it's like an auction or an offer window is what we call it, where now there's complete transparency into the price in terms of every offer coming in and every offer must be at least half a percent higher. It's like an open escalation is how I say it. And as a buyer's agent where we do escalations, it's quite nice to be able to tell a buyer instead of, we're gonna guess how to win this home and those comps don't matter and whatever doesn't keep you up at night, you have a choice You can continue to make more than one offer, which I think is hugely important because how often have you had a buyer who says, I would have paid more if I had just known, or why did I lose? Or someone who wins and says, I just overpaid for my home.

SPEAKER_05:

I have a question. Roberto and John, is this something that your market could handle?

SPEAKER_02:

I actually think they're two of the same. I mean, if I've decided what the best practices are for my business and I want to start being consistent about that, then I'm going to start using follow-up boss in order to be consistent and be able to send a message to all 50 of those people. And if I want to communicate to all 575 people who are interested in the Greenwich condominium this weekend, I'm going to use transparency, consistency, consistency and best practices with final offer. So I think that these are both consistently part of how you scale your business. I mean, we grew our business two and a half fold last year because we are starting to standardize the practice.

SPEAKER_05:

Well, I'm just wondering, Roberto, I mean, who in Manhattan is going to do it that way? Who's going to buy a$2 million condo that's like being on eBay?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, I think it's in Manhattan. I mean, I've seen a random couple of what I'll just call auctions like that, but it's very random because the nuance of these properties and these buildings and these co-op boards and everything like that, it's just too complicated. You have to do too much. You know, when someone's making an offer to a co-op, it's, you know, you're handing over an entire financial statement of this is how much I'm putting down. This is how much I have in liquid assets. This is how much I have in liquid assets after closing. This is how much debt I have. This is, you know, it's just like you have to pre it because you're, You come to an agreement with your buyer, and then you're both holding hands to get approved by the board. And 66% of our marketplace are co-ops. So I don't see that being very widespread here. But the other thing is, for me, is that in my business and the way I built it, it's all about relationships. And it's about spending time with people and getting to know them. And maybe I'm old school and I'm going to be left in the dust, but this is a video game. This is, this is just, you know, it's just numbers. You'll never make a relationship with any buyer. You'll never have a conversation with them. You'll never have a sense of if they didn't get this one, you could take that buyer and take them and sell them two or three other things. Like to me, it's very, it's a very cold situation. And maybe I'm just old school, but, and I'm not saying it doesn't have its place, but I would find a lot of difficulty engaging in it because I would just be kind of law. It's just such a, I

SPEAKER_01:

don't know. Look, I have a hot listing on right now. First of all, you don't have to do the auction like feature. That's a feature. That's a choice. You could just collect offers, keep them private, and an alert goes out that an offer was made. It doesn't mean there's any commitment or any transparency past that. But let me tell you, that's a lot more transparency than what we have in our industry today, which is pretty sad. So when you think about the consumer and putting them first, it's pretty important to do that when we're thinking about this. When it comes to, what was the other part you said? I'm sorry, I completely just blanked here.

SPEAKER_04:

I have no

SPEAKER_01:

idea. Oh, the relationship. Okay, so I have this hot listing that I put up, right? I've gotten a million phone calls still. I'm still talking to them. The real truth, though, is that the best price in terms will win. They know it's multiple offers. You can call me. I'm happy to talk to you. I'm going to say the same thing over and over again. But the real fact is just because I like you and you're cool and you're cool and you're nice and I've worked with you before, the best price and terms are going to win for my seller. And that's just the truth, right? And so even though I love all the people that have spent a lot of my time wasted today having little baby conversations with me about asking the same thing over and over again, They're also now, hey, go to final offer. Now everyone gets to see the same thing. So now I don't have to worry about that one agent I didn't call or that one person who came to the open house. Everybody gets the same information at the same time. And I think that's really critical when it comes to fair housing and everything else. But let me tell you, I am constantly talking to agents on the phone still. It is more just a matter of, you know, making sure that everything is consistent across the board.

SPEAKER_02:

Bob, we just talked about relationships and Roberto is afraid of giving up control. He values that one-to-one relationship he has with that buyer's agent. And you're saying that he can outsource this 12 time zones away?

SPEAKER_03:

You can, and I do have to say, Jocelyn, I understand exactly what you mean because you get the same questions from different people all the time and you're beating your head against

SPEAKER_01:

the wall. You're not going to win because you called me and asked me a lot of questions and were really sweet to me. You're not. The best racing firms are going to win. That's the

SPEAKER_03:

truth. I was chuckling because we deal with that. So it's actually kind of funny that, you know, and I understand yourself. I do understand it because, you know, we find our team, you know, dealing with the same kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I think when you've ever bought a home or been a consumer in the matter, wouldn't it be nice to know that there really is another offer on the table? Or wouldn't it be nice to know what that other offer is for in some scenarios as a buyer? I mean, the fact that we're blind bidding or blind best and final, does that not sound a little silly? Ultimately, is that the best thing for the seller, the best thing for the buyer and the best thing for the buyer agent? I think that we are as an industry are so used to kind of. holding the cards very close to us as what our superpower really is, when ultimately you can't be a good guide and expert without information at your fingertips to then explain to your client, to help them make an informed choice and decision versus the blind game that it is today.

SPEAKER_04:

Do you feel, good or bad, that if this becomes... very common, like in Australia, they do auctions and things like that, that your job will become marginalized at all. And I'm not saying that I'm afraid or any of that, but I'm just curious. Not at all.

SPEAKER_01:

I think there's the difference of actually using technology to leverage it to negotiate versus collecting a bunch of offers and picking the best one that wins. That's not really negotiating. I think there's a lot more strategy around being able to leverage, hey, I like your offer, but I'm going to give everyone a chance to make a higher offer, or you can come to this price in terms and it's yours now. Those are the types of negotiations you can use in our system.

SPEAKER_04:

But it's not always just the numbers. It's not so black and white. I have to stay in this property for another seven months. Can you close in nine months? We

SPEAKER_01:

account for terms on our site too. So if you like that all cash buyer, your seller's old school, they want the cash buyer willing to take a 20 grand hit instead of a financed buyer, you're welcome to take that offer too. There's multiple ways in our system in order for the seller to choose and get the best outcome that they want.

SPEAKER_04:

You keep saying our system. Are you a broker or are you working for...

SPEAKER_01:

I'm a real estate agent practicing for 16 years. I have a team of six here in the DC market. I'm a mental health therapist. I am no longer practicing, but I was that full-time also. And I am the chief knowledge officer at Final Offer. So a lot of what I do is product development. I've been at a few brokerages. So I've seen the backend and systems of what they've all built to help Final Offer build what agents need to grow their business. Like we built a private exclusive functionality because this is like the hottest topic of the year to allow for agents to input their listings when they get listed. listing agreement signed before they come to market and then share them in automated save searches?

SPEAKER_02:

So, Roberto, I mean, I sign this listing up. First thing I do is I go to Ethan's follow-up boss, and I say of the 14,000 people, I have 7,000 who are tagged as buyers. And of that, maybe I have 3,000 who are tagged for a condo. So these are people who have identified themselves as potential condo buyers in the Connecticut market. So I send out a 3,000 person blast and I say, we have an offer of$680,000 on this. And if you're interested, 500 people hit like, follow, want to know what's going on. So of those 3000 people, 575 of them followed the progress of this. Now, maybe they're not all interested in making an offer. That's okay. But I'm staying sticky with those people. So it was a way to impart a sense of urgency. And I want to get into that too. How do you, Roberto, impart a sense of urgency when you have all these buyers who are like, you know, I'm thinking about that condo. I like that condo, but absent anybody showing, somebody else showing interest in that condo, I don't feel like I have a sense of urgency to act on it this weekend. And that's what I wanted to do in Greenwich. So, I think that's an important point. How do you impart urgency and how does the person know that they're not overpaying at$680,000 unless they know somebody else just made a$685,000 offer? Oh, now I have confidence in price. Price discovery is an important component.

SPEAKER_01:

Market validation.

SPEAKER_02:

Market validation.

SPEAKER_06:

One quick sidetrack here based on what you just described, John. I would just add one additional layer. If you didn't want to go to 3,000 people, you could go to the... 1,200 people who've been active on your website, like all your criteria, plus active on my website in the past 90 days or these types of things. So you can narrow it down. In addition, one of the smart things about what you just did is that you you gave people an opportunity to raise their hand and say, I'm interested. And as you already observed, they're not all going to buy in the next three months just because they wanted to follow this particular property and the storyline of it. Some people probably did it out of curiosity. But what you did, and the point I'm raising here, and then I'll button it up, is everything that people are doing in a digital environment can be tracked and you can use those to write rule sets so that you can pursue what I call the holy grail of sales and marketing communication, always has been, how do I reach the right person with the right message at the right time? And I would add in the right channel because you, Roberto, know she only likes texting with me. This guy only responds to emails and she wants it in Instagram DMs. And so as we try to Be as efficient and consistent with our time as possible. We want to reach the right people with the right message. And very often it's a question at the right time in the right channel. And so the more activity that you're allowing people to do to raise their hand and say, I'm interested in things like this, gives you a reason to pick up the phone or to send a text message. Say, hey. Been a while. Roberto, you seem to me like someone who has a bunch of A-list people and then some B-list people, and you're really

SPEAKER_04:

invested. And some C-list people and some D-list people.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, but you're highly invested in the A's, right? He

SPEAKER_02:

only has A and A-plus people. Do you know that Roberto sells-

SPEAKER_06:

Regardless, as you're trying to decide how many phone calls am I going to make this week, how many text messages am I going to send, the better you have these folks organized and the more activity you can- filter through to know this person like because you're not just doing it exclusively for the relationship or else you know you're just running a friendship based business which is part of it but it's not the whole thing you have to be efficient with your time and so All of this, including, John, what you said, is like 500 people following this property. That's a thing. These 500 people have raised their hand with their real behavior to say, this is something of interest to me, and that means something to the way that you spend your time in the days and weeks ahead. That was my whole point. Sorry, it took longer than I wanted to

SPEAKER_02:

take

SPEAKER_06:

on

SPEAKER_02:

that. Efficiency of time, Bob. When 575 people raise their hand and they're interested in that condo sale, and then they all start asking for floor plans and and they have a question, can you help with that? Do I have to answer all 575 or can you train somebody to take that? Off my plate.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. And obviously, you know that because you work with virtual assistants. That's a perfect, perfect task to hand off to your virtual assistant. So we work with 20 plus in our office here. So that's exactly what we do. All the repetitive tasks that burn us out. Roberto, to your point that you don't want to answer those. If they don't have Jocelyn's software, it's a perfect opportunity to use a human being. And obviously, virtual assistants are getting more and more prevalent because Or

SPEAKER_02:

Jocelyn's software is working too well and I have 500 people suddenly interested in the same thing.

SPEAKER_03:

Correct, correct. But like I was saying, as we know, especially here in the state of Connecticut, minimum wage keeps going up and up and up. I think we're at$15.69. There's a push to get it up to over$20, which to me is crazy. If you want to start pushing stuff offshore, you keep raising that, but that's a different podcast, right? So here in the state of Connecticut, that's why a lot of us use virtual assistants because they all have four-year college degrees. I don't know about you, John, up in the New Canaan area, but it's very, very difficult to get a minimum wage person that's going to be very fluent in four-year college degrees, et cetera. So again, this is only what I'm finding. As minimum wage goes up, a lot of these jobs are getting offshored.

SPEAKER_05:

The virtual assistants that I know are making$50 and$65 an hour. Yep. Maybe$100.

SPEAKER_02:

A friend of mine in Texas said they're either coming out of prison or they're heading back into prison. I'm like, what?

SPEAKER_05:

Roberto, they are in the US. And my sister is one of them who I really think would be great virtual assistant for you because she's got a real estate background and she'll come into the city for you because she lives in long island

SPEAKER_02:

about that roberto you can you can dip your toe in the water having your own you

SPEAKER_05:

guys would get along beautifully and she would make your life so much better

SPEAKER_02:

Ethan, when do I need a software like FollowUp? When do I need a CRM, generally speaking? How do I know? What are the pain points that cause people to say, you know, I need a software?

SPEAKER_06:

When you became a licensed agent. Thank you. Period. And there are lots of solutions in this space, but if you don't start there, you're going to need to build it at some point. It starts on any process in your business. This is probably years ago, but when I talk to people about their growth of their mostly real estate teams, you know this this process in particular let's call it tc or something started on paper then we got it into excel but you know then we got into google sheets so that she could look at it and he could look at it and it was always updated all the time and then we moved it into a proper platform it's the same thing with all of these relationships um you're going to need to have this organized at some point. And if you don't, you're just missing opportunities. I'll tell you a quick story. I've got an episode coming up on Real Estate Team OS with a team leader. She's running about a six agent team, but she also has a very strong like national referral part of her business because she started her own business in Facebook groups. She's a self-described introvert. She didn't want to do a lot of the traditional things that it takes to get a real estate going from scratch in a town that you just moved to. She decided to start a Facebook group here in Colorado where I live coincidentally. And her first 48 deals all came out of that Facebook group in her first year in business. So she started a couple other ones, then she started them in other markets, et cetera. And what she told me was her TC is the one who told her, I need to find a CRM for us. And she said, no, I don't need that. I have these Facebook groups. And I just wanna say it because everyone's in a Facebook group or is basically familiar with the concept. She built her business in a Facebook group where all of the people are already organized, where she can communicate with the whole group, or she could communicate with individual people, where people can raise their hands. She was like, Facebook is my CRM. Now, of course, there's a whole line of argument we could make about building on rented land, like Facebook could shut your group down at any moment, but that's a separate conversation. Her TC was like, it's just not good enough. We're doing all these other things. Let's get into follow-up boss. And she did. And she said the first event she went to, she went to a real estate conference. had about eight opportunities come through. And she said, I guarantee if I didn't put those people directly into my CRM and have some of the tasks remind me of what I was supposed to do when I got back home, I would have let at least half of those people fall through the cracks. She was of the impression that she had bucked the trend, been the unicorn, been able to track all these relationships. In her own mind, she had never missed a single opportunity and everyone was where she could see them and communicate with them directly. And yet in her first weekend away, she realized that she would have missed at least 50% of the opportunities. And so that's a long way around, John. You're going to want this at some point. And I'm specifically responding to the idea of just got into the business. You know, I talk with people too, that have been in the business for 30 years and they're like, I don't need that. I'm like, fine. You found a way to run a business. I assume run a business you love and a life that you love and if it's working for you great uh but any new agent to the business or anyone who's ready to make some kind of investments like i'm tired of doing three to five deals a year as a hobby i want to get serious about my business crm is first on the list and then the second thing on the list is again which which tasks and activities um slow you down really You really hate them. You're really not good at them. Anything that falls into that category is appropriate for an assistant of some kind.

SPEAKER_02:

My assistant tasks me, Roberto, and I could just pull up my screen right now.

SPEAKER_06:

Which is a sign that you've been working with this person well for some period of time.

SPEAKER_02:

So you can see that it's just check in, check in, check in, check in. But based on what they're doing, sometimes I need to be reminded. So I have a virtual assistant who reminds me on who I need to connect with at the end of the day. where she wasn't able to move it along any further without me.

SPEAKER_04:

How involved is she in your business? How does she know that those are the people? Or is it just, you know, like, explain that to

SPEAKER_02:

me. We meet once a week. We meet as a group. She's part of that through Zoom. participating, hearing what the status is of each deal. And then what's happening is she says, oh, okay, I'm going to put him down for 30 days from now. I'm going to put John down for, you know, reach back out to Dennis two weeks from now, reach back out in one month, you know, with this one. So, you know, I think calendar management and task management is is enough of a reason all by itself. I don't need her selling real estate. I just need her to point me where I can be most effective.

SPEAKER_04:

But doesn't follow-up boss do that for you to send you a notification, contact so-and-so?

SPEAKER_02:

You don't need a virtual assistant to need a CRM. But if you're on the road all the time and not looking at your CRM, then it sure does help.

SPEAKER_04:

But also it seems to me that we have a CRM and I put everything in there. And then every day, all these tasks started stacking up and I was just like, can't deal with that. And I don't look at it and it pops up every day and I ignore it. I literally erase the thing every day. Every single day I erase it because-

SPEAKER_06:

It just means there are bad rule sets. If you're getting false positives, if you're getting things put in front of you and it's telling you what to do and you're like, that's not important enough for me to do, it just means you need to refine the rule sets or have someone do that. Like

SPEAKER_04:

if your CRM is serving you things- I need someone to manage that. It's like, so I need someone to manage my CRM for me, as opposed to just the CRM, just kind of doing that for me.

SPEAKER_06:

It's like, and every

SPEAKER_04:

time I think about it and every time I log in the number of tasks and stuff, it's like 15,000 tasks. And I've asked 7,000 times, I was like, how do I just get it to zero, get everything to zero so that I don't feel so intimidated by just when I log on, it's not, you know, cause I don't know where to start. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah. Two things here. One, um, either A, having someone sift through all that for you to your initial point, or B, partner with somebody, ideally at the CRM that you're using, to help you refine all of the rules that are putting these things in front of you. It's all under your control. There's no way you couldn't turn off you know, 90% of that stuff so that you're only getting signal and you're not getting noise. I mean, it's never going to be perfect, but like, it sounds like your signal to noise ratio is 99.9% noise. That's problematic. And so whether it's an acute fix of have someone come in and talk to you about your business and refine the rule sets and get you back on track so that when it does show you five things tomorrow, you're like, yes, yes, yes, yes, kinda. And you do those four things and maybe you don't do or don't do the fifth one, that's a thing. But if you're feeling like your CRM isn't doing its job, if it's serving you more than you can do in a day and very little of it being relevant.

SPEAKER_04:

Can someone from Bob's company help me with that?

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, I think Ethan was teeing us up on that one. So thank you, Ethan. Very good job.

SPEAKER_06:

It's a matter of

SPEAKER_03:

fact. Yeah, and that's what John, you said earlier. That's exactly how you use your virtual assistant to go through that because some CRMs like that, they could get backlogged with leads, if you will, if they're not followed up. And then that's lost money in our CRM. So to Ethan's point, to have someone work through that and work our CRM, that's why we have CRMs to make sure we... you know, keep follow-up tasks, have somebody go through it, follow up with leads, et cetera. So it's a necessary management tool for our businesses. So that's a good point by you, Ethan.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, even basic stuff like, you know, the email bounces and, you know, I guess you could say on the one hand, the traditional way is you give them a call because you have a relationship. We are relationship sellers. On the other hand, you know, if emails start bouncing, You know, it's an opportunity to reconnect or it's an opportunity for your VA to text them and say, did you change your email? Email's not going through. That's not something you necessarily have to do. So all that kind of housekeeping, what I consider housekeeping, is just handled automatically.

SPEAKER_03:

In Roberta, you could add in, have your VA just say, hey, I'm Roberta's assistant. So you could go through all of those older leads to get them warmer again. That's one of the things that works out very well for our office.

SPEAKER_04:

Are there other technologies that are changing this business that really stand out to you guys?

SPEAKER_02:

Do you mean like AI?

SPEAKER_04:

But like, yeah, I mean, anything that's like, it's literally going to warp what we currently are used to.

SPEAKER_01:

I think we are a little.

SPEAKER_04:

No, for sure. No, no doubt about it.

SPEAKER_01:

I think there's obviously companies out there that are trying to get rid of the real estate agent. That's going to be a real thing. Again, the Rocket and Redfin merger purchase, that to me seems like a... What's going to happen is they're going to be discounting the agent, if not making zero money on the agent and making money on the loan side and picking up that side of the business. So you'll see more consumers going the digital route. If they're a little bit more comfortable and have bought a home before, they might go the discounted digital route. And then there'll be the route that's traditional to what real estate agents have always done, which I think will compress the industry quite a bit.

SPEAKER_06:

I'll just speak to AI really quickly, just as an example of what it's doing for our customers and in a very immediate sense. Certainly, if you bring up AI in a group of just say 20 randomly selected real estate agents, you're going to get some nice chat GPT use cases and like, I used to do this and review it all by hand, but now I have it spit this thing out for me and then I review it, I process it, and then I talk to my client about it, saves me an hour per document or whatever. Some of what we're doing in the back end is you can get a Follow Boss phone number. And any time you call or text, and certainly your email which you hook up to Follow Boss as well, recording all the calls and transcribing it and giving you AI summaries of every single call. But then we're also rolling that up. So let's just say you do have an assistant or you're working with a transaction coordinator who needs access to some of your communication. Anyone can see this ongoing stream of communication with someone over months or years of time. And we're summarizing that as well. So if you want to pop in like, oh gosh, this person replied to my email about this thing or, or John, you know, to your, to your story, you know, 575 people followed it. I recognized one of the names. I went to look her up and follow up boss. Cause like it was familiar, but not super familiar. There's just a summary of all of your communication with this person, whether they were buyers or sellers or whatever conversations you've had, it kind of characterizes that they're looking in the zip code. They're looking in this price point. They definitely want this and they never want that. You know, like all of these things are just being pulled out so So it's just, it's this extra layer of you're having all these conversations, you have all these relationships, you're adding the human element to the process to the point of, you know, Jocelyn's observation is like, you know, if we're, you know, if our goal is to build relationships, manage emotions, reinforce excitement, allay some fears and all these other things that the agent adds so much value in this, you have ai just running in the background to capture all of the information and share with you super helpful basic information and summarize things so that you can be triggered your mind will be reminded um it's even you know we're in a beta test with a whole bunch of people on even uh you know writing messages to people based on all of the communication and all of their activity that we have. Again, this person was interested in this 750, I think I'm getting the price right,$750,000 condominium. That's part of the story going forward. So in any case, there are lots of practical ways that AI is helping the agent be more consistent and more efficient in the most important part of their job, which is connecting with human beings in a very real way. And when and as appropriate, moving to contracts and moving to closings.

SPEAKER_03:

Let me add something to that, Ethan. That's a great way to put it. Because we're starting to dig into AI. I like to say AI is a tool to help your business run because somebody still has to run that AI tool. And this is something that... So we're doing a whole thing in the back end of training our VA certain AI stuff on how to lead gen. So then it makes our... product, if you will, a virtual assistant company ahead of the curve, because we still have to do the work. It's the same thing. You can hire somebody, you still got to do the work. You get more efficient on generating leads. You get more efficient on training. So to your point, Ethan, you could transcribe, let's say one of your calls, you could give it to your manager, and then they can now help train that individual and create a scoring system on how that call went, as an example. So I think AI is getting mis-kind of Red, will it take over some of our jobs? Yes, but do I ever think it's going to take over 100% of our jobs? I don't. I think it's more of an incredible tool and tools, if you will, for all of us to actually learn how to use. It's kind of like follow-up boss, right? CRM, incredible, incredible CRM, same concept. You get that, but you still have to use it. You still have to learn it. There's great stuff inside, but if we don't use it, it kind of doesn't, you know, there's a million AI tools out there. So that's just my

SPEAKER_06:

take on it. And there's a lot of very basic automation masquerading as AI. If it's an if-then rule set, that's an automation. But we could sell it for more and faster if we call it AI.

SPEAKER_02:

Roberto, I mean, I think right now in the old days, you'd say you'd look at the island of Manhattan and you'd say, yeah, it's too much for me to try and, you know, understand all the buyers in Manhattan. It's just too big. But. The tools are getting so good and we're getting so much good help between AI and CRM tools that it's not hard to say that in the island of Manhattan, you don't wanna talk to everybody. You just wanna talk to the 1% who can buy the homes that you sell. And so we're starting to see the technologies. I mean, the name of this episode is real estate technology. I'm starting to see geofencing, where I said, so are you interested in the Upper West Side? And I have agents telling me now, no, I'm very specifically interested in this building. I'm interested in everybody who's in the vicinity of this building, who owns in this building or who's interacting with this building. I wanna talk to them. And once you do that, You have to have a follow-up boss or some sort of tool so that you can find out which 50% interacted with you and which 50% are not showing any interest. And so it's beginning. And then at the end of the day, you own something. You have a list of people who are engaging with you and another list who are not engaging with you. And you can start to use your time most effectively on the people who are engaging with you. So through geofencing... follow-up boss as an organizing principle, using Bob to say division of labor, right, to VA Global, division of labor, that you shouldn't be doing everything and you can hire people for technology pieces and other pieces so that you can focus on the relationship part that you like so much and the negotiation part that you like so much and leave the rest. So it's division of labor, getting more organized, as Ethan says, automating the process and leveraging AI. Those are four principles. And with Jocelyn, I thought transparency. I think it's a real problem for our industry that we like, Hostage negotiators and arms dealers think that we're going to keep all the information to ourselves and we're not going to disclose that. But you know what? A lot of people don't like that. They don't trust us. So I think putting out some more transparency, if this is where we stand, and putting it out there might do us some good in some cases.

SPEAKER_04:

Don't you love this guy? I mean, was that the greatest summation ever?

SPEAKER_07:

That's pretty

SPEAKER_04:

good. I mean, really. I'm fascinated. No, that was really good. And I, I agree with you, but people don't trust them. They trust me.

SPEAKER_06:

Okay. Okay. No, I mean, there's something there. I'm just, I'm very true. Let's just set other people aside. Why do people trust you? He's number one.

SPEAKER_04:

For February.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

No, but I mean, I'm quite transparent about the process. And I said, look, there's a certain level of respect that you have to have for the seller. There's certain information I can share. There's certain information I can't share. But I encourage you, everybody has a fair opportunity to, you know, to buy the property or whatever the case may be. You know, I'm, you know, I don't

SPEAKER_02:

know. Do you have any offers? Have you had any other offers? How come you didn't take them? I mean, all those questions. And so that gives me more information about

SPEAKER_04:

the process. to maneuver with them and to guide them to where they need to be in order to get the property.

SPEAKER_05:

This is their biggest purchase of

SPEAKER_01:

their life. And they're guessing how to get it. That's crazy. I mean, that's my point. Like, I don't feel confident as a buyer agent for 16 years telling people, we're going to guess how to win this home. And they would say, well, what about that comp for a million that's sold? Why are you saying we should go higher? Well, that comp doesn't matter. Who knows what someone's going to go to? Whatever doesn't keep you up at night. Does that make me sound like, you know, the badass agent I am? I don't feel very good anymore having those conversations with people. They'll say to me, what's the other offer for? Oh, we're not allowed to know.

SPEAKER_04:

Why don't you feel good anymore? And you used to feel good.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I just feel like. I've been my eyes have opened to how a better process can run. Right. And my eyes have opened to putting the consumer first, whether it's the buyer or the seller. I mean, a seller doesn't even know if they haven't left money on the table. Again, like I had a friend, he lost by fifteen hundred dollars on a condo and he called me complaining about it. He's like, we would have come up. We just didn't know

SPEAKER_02:

because you didn't tell him. I'm just joking. How about if 575 show interest and you get no bids, then you actually are saying it's been exposed.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. And our price is too

SPEAKER_02:

high.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, and the psychology in me over here, you know, the saying, you got to see it to believe it. That's a real thing. And when a seller can see, I have no showings. I have no offers. I have this many views. This is the feedback I'm getting. My home isn't worth what it is. Instead of you as an agent calling and saying, we got to reduce the price. Who do you think is the easiest person to blame in those situations? Or when a buyer loses on a property, who do you think the easiest person is to blame? A lot of times we blame the other agent. Oh, that agent, you know, whatever it may be. We've hurt our own industry by blaming each other because of the lack of information.

SPEAKER_04:

But so if I'm a buyer and you're helping me and it's on this auction type of situation, What value do you bring me then? Because I'm like, how do I get it? And you're just going to say, you got to pay more money.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, yeah. I mean, how do I have the value today? I say to them, these are your risks, right? If you want to keep going. Why do I need you? There's so much more to the process. When you're representing a buyer, there is no value you're giving. They could guess themselves. Anyone can be a psychic and guess what the craziest highest number is going to be. They don't need you for that. Imagine being able to say and explain how the system works and being able to say you have a choice here, but here are your risks if you want to keep going. If the property doesn't appraise, this is what happens. I don't think the home's worth this. You have a choice now. The fact that they don't have a choice blows my mind. When we talk about buying the biggest asset of your life and you're guessing, that's crazy. You don't guess when you buy on the stock market. You don't guess when you buy things that are this expensive in your life.

SPEAKER_02:

We're going to have to come back and do this for a whole nother second hour because we are just... scratching the surface. What I've learned is if you're feeling stuck as a realtor, you have three different opportunities here to try and get unstuck. One is you can contact Bob and say, listen, I don't have time to hire an assistant, train them. Can you put me in touch with somebody who can attend my Monday meeting and then take some of the load off my back, right? Is that about right, Bob? That's 100%

SPEAKER_03:

correct,

SPEAKER_02:

yeah. And we'll try this for a couple months and maybe it'll work. Or you go to Ethan and you say, just maybe, just maybe your software will help me get organized and more efficient with my time. And he says, individual agent, you don't have to be a team. You don't have to have 14,000 people to want to be more organized. And then with Jocelyn, she's saying, and by the way, that condo, That condo was not first weekend. I got that listing in October and I got an offer and it fell through. And then everybody's like, well, it's been on the market a while. Days on market. How come you haven't sold it? I think, you know, I think I want to offer you 650. So it wasn't a brand new listing. This was a way to just say, you know what? It's worth it. And I know it. I know it's worth it. And I know people are watching this and they're punishing me over days on market. So I'm going to put a stop to it and I'm going to run an experiment. And lo and behold, the experiment worked. Everybody had to show up at the same time and everybody stopped talking to me about days on market because they saw other interests above 700. Was

SPEAKER_04:

it difficult to get your seller on board?

SPEAKER_02:

No.

SPEAKER_01:

They were desperate, I'm sure. With a stale listing, they'll do anything to try. The

SPEAKER_02:

seller had to go to his brothers who said, when's this going to be over? And I said, oh, you want to be over by the end of the month? I have a software that's going to get us over this weekend. We're going to get everybody in the same room, and we're going to do what the market tells us.

SPEAKER_04:

And if it drastically underperformed... What is their commitment? They don't have to take it, right?

SPEAKER_01:

It depends on how they use the system. Again, there's lots of different ways you can use it. But again, the MLS list price has no meaning. When a home sells for 600 grand over a list price like it did during COVID that we've seen crazy things, that had no meaning. So why not just use the list price on the MLS as a tool to get the market to respond and get as many people in the door as possible to create what the market wants? value really truly is and let everybody know how that works. That's a choice in our system. Again, there's a million ways to use it. But there's value in the seller seeing with their own eyes what their home is worth. They're a buyer now saying, oh, this is the top of my budget. Someone else thinks it's worth this. Now it is worth this. I'm willing to pay more.

SPEAKER_02:

This was awesome. Thank you all. Thank you, Jocelyn. FinalOffer.com. If you're curious about this, go to FinalOffer.com. Check it out. There's many different ways to use the software to basically generate interest and get a deal done in a weekend. Thank you, Ethan. This has been great. You are the leader. and CRM follow-up boss. So it's a real honor to have you on the show. I mean, follow-up boss, what do you have? Tens of thousands of successful realtors using the software by now?

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, over 100,000 users, well over it, in about 40,000 or 50,000-ish. I'm not sure how many actual accounts there are because, you know, there are groups of three and groups of 300. It sounds

SPEAKER_02:

like Roberto is the only holdout left. So we're going to work on him together. Okay, cool. And Bob. Roberto's been saying for years he needs help. Can we get him help? Let's get

SPEAKER_03:

him some help. Come on, Roberto. Let's do it. I hear

SPEAKER_04:

you. I hear you.

SPEAKER_03:

I hear you, but I'm not listening. Is that what

SPEAKER_04:

you're saying? No, I am actually listening. I'm listening.

SPEAKER_03:

And

SPEAKER_02:

processing. This has been great. And if you like what we're doing, please give us a like. Give us a shout out on social media. Follow us. Subscribe. Thank you all. Thank

SPEAKER_03:

you.

People on this episode

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John Engel

Host
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Roberto Cabrera

Host