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As agents navigate real estate in a COVID-19 world, technology has taken a more important role. This month’s Keeping It Real Training from Real Geeks, features Greg Harrelson and Frank Klesitz discussing, “The Best Real Estate CRM(s) + Latest Technology To Stay Competitive.” Get the resources you need to function more effectively in 2021 in this training session.
Starting with the basics, Harrelson names Real Geeks as his preferred CRM and technology solution. Stating that his team produces over 3600 transactions a year, Harrelson has compared it to other systems and still finds that the Real Geeks system “does everything that I need it to,” he said. By being able to “drill down to small segments” with Real Geeks, Harrelson has been able to outperform his competition, having over 2,000 specialty pages on his website. Each of these pages are connected to custom Facebook audiences, as well. Harrelson also likes the LIVE feed of client engagement and that the Real Geeks CRM allows his team to be able to follow up in real time. “It’s a nice integration,” Harrelson explained, adding, “I do the ads through Real Geeks and the leads go right there... Lead capture, to lead management, to marketing... I can do all that within one system, that’s why I use Real Geeks.”
Beyond and in addition to Real Geeks, Harrelson has other tools he uses to add a “soft touch” to nurture his clients, using sold reports and market reports. He also suggests using HomeBot. Homebot gives line graphs and pulls in a client’s mortgage balance, interest rate, and equity with name, email, and address. It shows the sellers interest rates and shows how much they can save by refinancing, calculates how much buying power they’d have on a future property, and estimates the opportunity they could have if they list their home as an Air B&B. Using a tool like Real Synch agents can integrate these services together for a seamless solution.
Based on speed and accuracy, Harrelson uses exactdial.com to harvest client information that has partial information. Harrelson strives to have all points of data on each potential client. The service provides email and physical addresses, phone numbers, and IP addresses.
When contacting expired sellers, Harrelson suggests that agents subscribe to Vulcan7 and RedX and for transaction management, his team uses DotLoop. For PPC he uses Real Geeks and has great success with the Real Geeks home valuation tool. Harrelson feels the biggest mistake agents make is, "Judging the quality of a lead based on how long it takes to convert.... We've got to stop thinking like that!" he exclaimed. “Low quality has no correlation with time to conversion.”
Harrelson uses Canva for thumbnails on videos but doesn’t use many other tools. "I believe in going deeper on the tech we already have," Harrelson said. When he considers other tools, he debates on whether the features they offer produce measurable return or duplicate existing tools. "I want to get every dollar and value I can out of the one tech I use, before I start looking for new tech," he added.
Klesitz discussed the tools he recommends for clients in his marketing practice and outlined why he found them to be valuable tools.
- CallRail - is what Klesitz suggests having as your main phone to have referencing and monitoring of all inbound calls.
- Vulcan7 - is a compliant call dialer.
- Everybody Answers - is a circle calling solution.
- Dialpad - is a VOIP Phone system that integrates with most CRMS.
- Woodpecker - is a cold lead email solution that links to gmail or outlook and sends multiple emails to a large database. Klesitz even shared how he would use this service if he had to start a business with nothing.
- Letter Printing - is the tool Klesitz recommends for direct mail.
- Paperform - is a form builder that he uses on landing pages.
- Emma - is a resource for a broadcast email with the best deliverability.
- NeverBounce - takes all contacts from everywhere and compiles and cleans the list.
- Hubstaff - is a service that provides ISAs and related management.
- Upwork - provides on demand talent.
- Onlinejobs.ph - works for hiring virtual assistants in the Philippines.
- MyOutDesk - is a hiring agency for overseas outsourcing.
- Slack - allows teams to communicate in real time across a variety of channels.
- Vocaroo - is recording software that Klesitz uses for initial overseas interaction.
- Property Radar and PropStream - provide industry focused property data.
- LandGlide - helps to identify land owners and property information.
- Likely.ai - is a predictive seller company that has a 10% listing rate.
- OpenCorporates - finds owners of LLC owned property.
- Trello - is a resource for managing transactions.
- Eventbrite - is perfect for hosting online workshops.
- Hubspot - is a free CRM that lets you pay attention to lifecycle stages.
- Zoom - can be a resource for listing presentations and buyer showings.
- FaceTime - also works well for video calls.
- Loom - is a video messaging call service.
As they focused on tech, both Harrelson and Klesitz were quick to point out that all of these tools are nothing when compared to relationships. “We’re not guaranteed that there’s going to be a tomorrow,” Harrelson reminded. “If we don’t make an extra million, but our family experiences a little more love, that’s wealth.”
Here is a transcription of the entire discussion:
Frank Klesitz:
Hey everyone. It's Frank Klesitz with Greg Harrelson here on Keeping it Real. Welcome. Glad to have you here. I'm double checking my microphone, making sure I have the right microphone here. Today we're going to talk about the latest CRMs and the latest technology for you to use in your real estate business that we love.
Frank Klesitz:
Greg is very well connected in the real estate space. So am I. We know all the different players, many of the CEOs and different technology, and we're always using our business trying to figure out what's the right blend of just the right amount of technology, where it's not too much and it all works together. Some may call it your tech stack. You're going to learn everything you want to know about that. I actually have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 12, 13 ... I've got 17 or 18 different pieces of tech I'm excited to share with you. I'm sure Greg has just as many, if not more, maybe less though because Greg, we're going to find out if you, your thoughts on technology-
Greg Harrelson:
I have a lot less. I have a lot less. I sure do.
Frank Klesitz:
But anyways, welcome. Thank you for attending the Keeping It Real show. You can go to keepingitreal.com. That's where we post all the shows. And if you want to sign up to get updates to the show, you can go there, put your email address in. And you won't get emails about anything else. It'll only be updates for the show that we like to do every single ... every two weeks. We'll do here on our YouTube channel. Just like we started the show back in 2014.
Frank Klesitz:
We're also on iTunes. So you can get notified that way and listen or watch through Apple Podcast, you can do as well. We also post these in the Facebook group. All right. So Real Geeks Facebook group. You'll see the replays in there as well. And then, if you want the replay, it's right here on this YouTube page. Once we're done with this, this is literally the link to watch the replay that makes things very easy.
Frank Klesitz:
In addition to that, if you have any questions, feel free to use the chat. I'm the one moderating over here. I see it over here. Hello everyone. But if you have any questions for Greg or I, feel free to ask. And there actually is no guest today. Your co-hosts are our own guests. I'll be asking Greg questions, and Greg will be asking myself questions to figure out to get to the bottom of what's the best CRMs out there for real estate professionals and what's the best technology. How does that sound everyone?
Frank Klesitz:
All right. Let's get started. Greg.
Greg Harrelson:
Yes.
Frank Klesitz:
Remind everyone again, just remind everyone. How many homes does your enterprise sell a year? Remind everybody.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. Last year we were right around 3,600. 3,600 closed transactions which was about ... It was a little up from the previous year, but I would call it flat because it's give or take a hundred, so that's kind of flat to me.
Frank Klesitz:
So that's insane. 3,600 transactions. How many agents did that under your veil?
Greg Harrelson:
About 179, 180, right there.
Frank Klesitz:
Which puts your per agent productivity at what?
Greg Harrelson:
I haven't really calculated it.
Frank Klesitz:
Roughly. I guess you just divide it out, it'd tell you.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, that's ... My first tech lesson is I got a calculator.
Frank Klesitz:
Well, it's high.
Greg Harrelson:
Yes.
Frank Klesitz:
You guys could probably do that's high. So I think it's important that whoever you take advice from-
Greg Harrelson:
It's around 20 by the way. It's around 20.
Frank Klesitz:
[crosstalk 00:03:08]
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, which is a lot lower than I'm used to when I was a smaller company, but at scale it's going to naturally go down, but it's still on average around 20 transactions per person.
Frank Klesitz:
Got it.
Greg Harrelson:
And that's in all offices across the state, not just my main office. My main office would be significantly higher.
Frank Klesitz:
So the advice that you're getting is real. The tech that Greg uses produces that result. It's not too little. It's not too much Greg. It's just the right amount. So let's get started.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
Why don't you share with the audience what you use. Let's talk about it.
Greg Harrelson:
And let's just start with CRM. We'll start with CRMs, and I will disclose to you, I've had a BoomTown account. I've had a Kunversion account. I have a kvCORE account right now because I bought a company that had already had a kvCORE. I've got Real Geeks. I've got like multiple Real Geeks websites. And I've even had a Real Estate Webmasters website. Actually I still have one, an old domain sits on it. And out of all of those, we chose to really use the Real Geeks CRM.
Greg Harrelson:
So when it comes to a CRM, I'm using Real Geeks. And I understand this is keeping it real and I'm not saying that because this is a Real Geek sponsored podcast. I'm saying it because I've been using it for years. I've been tempted by other companies to look at them. And when I compared everything, I still stayed with Real Geeks. But that's my CRM. That's right there.
Frank Klesitz:
Why?
Greg Harrelson:
Because it does everything I need it to do. I mean, a CRM, and then if we couple that with the IDX. The IDX is a lead capture, it's a tool, a technology that we use to attract leads to us, to capture leads. Whether we're doing it through pay-per-click or whether we're doing it through organic SEO, the first thing that I want in a CRM is the ability to capture leads. Real Geeks to me was one of the easiest CRMs or website providers, the easiest for me to build community pages or city pages or multi-family pages, apartment pages. Whatever it was I wanted to build, I could drill down to small segments or categories of property types within my market and I could easily build pages.
Greg Harrelson:
Now most of the time, your website provider is going to allow you to build pages. But I will tell you, this is the easiest platform to build those pages. And it seems to be the platform that Google really loves because every time I build pages or nearly every time I build pages, I get those pages ranked up in the top three if not number one for the long tail terms. And there's a lot of competition in my market. And it seems like the Real Geeks websites are always at the top, and the other ones are kind of like at the bottom.
Frank Klesitz:
Like us.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. So that was number one, is why I did it. The CRM, I wanted one that would capture leads. Then I want a CRM that allows me to manage my leads, manage my communication. That's more of the middle of the funnel. You got the top of the funnel. You got the middle of the funnel.
Greg Harrelson:
But I also, when you're managing, a lot of people just think, "Oh, well gosh, anything you can send drip, you can set drip emails out to or you can set people up on your calendar," they all do that. But what I like is that there's a live feed. So I know when people are on the website, when they are on the website and then we can set our follow-up schedules and strategies based on when people are engaging. So when people are engaging more, we engage more. When people are engaging less, we engage less. So we meet the consumer where they are. That allows me the middle of the funnel management.
Greg Harrelson:
And then you got the bottom of the funnel management is where we're then able to push that out to our staff for them to manage the transactions once transactions are conducted. You got the marketing side.
Greg Harrelson:
So I can go out there, build custom audiences, retarget. Anything I want to do on Facebook marketing, I do it right through Real Geeks. So it's a nice integration. I do the ads through Real Geeks and the leads go right there. I don't have to build landing page. I don't need a special company that specializes in landing pages. I just don't need that. I don't have to add that to my stack because it's all built in with Real Geeks. So either from lead capture to lead management to marketing, I can all do that within one system. That's why I'm choosing Real Geeks.
Frank Klesitz:
Greg, I did a little research on your website C21, the harrelsongroup.com, I believe that's on the Real Geeks platform.
Greg Harrelson:
It is.
Frank Klesitz:
23,000 organic visitors a month. That's incredible. Number one keyword Myrtle Beach condos for sale. You've probably worked your whole life to rank for that on the web page.
Greg Harrelson:
No, I actually just was an early adopter.
Frank Klesitz:
Yeah.
Greg Harrelson:
I was an early adopter. Yeah, I was an early adopter. We were there. We were building pages before Zillow even, we even heard of Zillow.
Frank Klesitz:
And how many pages would you say you've built out for specific communities? Just guess. I mean it has been thousands.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, I'd say 2,000. There's probably a thousand residential and a thousand condo buildings. And then, and maybe there's 800 and 800 and then there's other specialty pages like duplexes, triplexes, foreclosures, short sales, homes with elevators, homes with pools. So we're building out long tail-
Frank Klesitz:
I'm assuming you hired a content writer. I'm just curious.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
You hired a content writer to just build these out over time, page by page, painstakingly. Just like we talked on the last episode, you have over 800 custom audience groups for each niche, neighborhood, and condo building inside your Facebook. You've done the same niching out your Real Geek site which really ultimately gives you the really good leads that are very specific and targeted, right?
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. And if anybody watched that show or listened to that show, just do you notice how without even thinking that you were going to ask me these questions. The number that I said for pages on my website were very similar to the number that I said in Facebook custom audiences?
Frank Klesitz:
Yeah, they're all matched up.
Greg Harrelson:
They're all matched up.
Frank Klesitz:
Gosh, it's good.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, they're all matching.
Frank Klesitz:
You're the envy of all of us Greg on that.
Greg Harrelson:
I don't know about that.
Frank Klesitz:
Everyone's sitting here, "Man, I wish I had done."
Greg Harrelson:
I have to give credit too. I've had some good people in my life that have ... on my staff that really helped, helped out a lot.
Frank Klesitz:
So CRM. You need to have a place to pull your leads. They automatically go into Real Geeks is the way to go. What other technology have you added on to that or complements all that? What else could you give the audience that you recommend?
Greg Harrelson:
So what I'm really doing is I'm using Real Geeks and other things to also nurture my database, like the soft touch, that's just, the nurture, the kind of wow. So within Real Geeks I'm using, I'm sending sold searches to everybody that's a documented property owner in Real Geeks. I have sellers and buyers in there. Then they're getting a market activity report which Real Geeks gives that in a form of kind of like a CMA. And then a sold report. Anything that sells in a two-week period of time in a community or building, it'll go out to people that are in that community or building, that are in my database.
Greg Harrelson:
But then outside of Real Geeks, I really, really like Homebot. If you're an agent and you haven't looked at Homebot you've got to look at Homebot. Homebot is ... I mean if I was to explain it and only said this everyone would be turned off, and that is, it's a digest that's sent monthly that shares with people what their property is worth.
Greg Harrelson:
Okay, now you could sit there and say, "Well gosh, every system does that." Now this one is charts it out, and it's a line graph, and it shows like where it was last month, the previous month, the previous month. And you can see this line graph. It also then pulls in based on ... You only need to have the name and an email address and their address of course, and it'll automatically pull in their mortgage balance and their interest rate. And then it all ... So it displays this is what your property's worth estimated value of your property, and then it will say this is how much equity you have in your property. So it'll actually change, go from the minus the debt from the value and it says this is how much equity you have, and then it says your current interest rate is 6%. You can get interest rates right now anywhere from 3% to 4%. If you were to refinance at 3.5%, you would save x amount of dollars per month, and then it would say you'd save $75,822 over the life of your loan.
Greg Harrelson:
Then it shows you, okay, if you were to actually sell this property, it will tell you, calculate what your buying power is for the next property. Then it also displays, all these are compartmentalized, it'll display if you are going to Airbnb your property based on your address and your Zip code, the estimated nightly rent for a property like yours is blank, and then you have a toggle, it says how many nights you want to rent. And then you toggle it to maybe eight nights a month, and it'll automatically calculate your monthly income and your annual income if you were to choose to do some Airbnb with your property.
Greg Harrelson:
And there's a few other components that it has there. But it's a very nice, very appealing display. It's called a Homebot Digest. It's a home digest and it-
Frank Klesitz:
Goes out once a month.
Greg Harrelson:
Goes out once a month.
Frank Klesitz:
How do you get-
Greg Harrelson:
So I'm using that on the side-
Frank Klesitz:
... homeowners on then? How do you officially get the homeowners that you talk to and that come into Real Geeks on that?
Greg Harrelson:
Well, with Real Geeks, what we can do, we're getting ready to bridge it. We're going to connect it. I know that RealSync is working on a connection, is one of the things that I'm looking for. But right now what we'll do is as I got seller leads within my Real Geeks, we'll just do an export and then an upload.
Frank Klesitz:
RealSync by the way is the Zapier of real estate apps. They went out to all of the players in real estate. They sell software. And basically tried to get them all to talk to each other, and have done a pretty good job. So when you're trying to integrate something with something else, you can get the two to talk to each other using essentially the Zapier for real estate apps RealSync. I've put the link here for everyone.
Frank Klesitz:
RealSync, Homebot, Real Geeks. What else?
Greg Harrelson:
Gosh, from a technology standpoint I'm going to tell you, I mean little things like looking up telephone numbers, exactdial.com, that's what I'm using. I'm not using any other service. I've used every service I think that you can find. And based on speed and accuracy I'm using exactdial.com.
Greg Harrelson:
Other than that for the most part-
Frank Klesitz:
Do they give you emails?
Greg Harrelson:
Oh yeah. Yeah, they give you everything.
Frank Klesitz:
Got it.
Greg Harrelson:
They'll give you their IP address. If you're very savvy and you know what to do with that.
Frank Klesitz:
How do you use it? I'm assuming you have partial leads opt-in where they put in their address but they don't give you the full contact information on the next page.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. We'll have that.
Frank Klesitz:
Tell me how you use ... How do you use Exact Dial in your business.
Greg Harrelson:
Okay. So let's just say I get a ... We'll just say on the buyer lead side for a moment, I get a buyer lead. Okay? Buyer lead comes in. It's got a good email address. But they disguise their number 12121212. I can put their email address into Exact Dial and it'll reverse me to their home number and cell number.
Frank Klesitz:
This is better than Spokeo and Intelius and BeenVerified. You tried them all.
Greg Harrelson:
Oh yeah. And BeenVerified was like was great, until Exact Dial came along. Or the reverse. The reverse can be like, okay, if I get a good telephone number but in a bad email address and I call the person and I don't get them on the phone, okay? Well then I will go ahead, and yes, I'll leave them a message, but I'll go ahead and take that telephone number, put it in Exact Dial and reverse into their email address so I can have complete data.
Greg Harrelson:
I always want to have complete data. There's a lot of times you'll have one piece of data that's missing. And I don't settle for just having that one piece of data. I want to have the second piece of data also so I can connect with them. And that would be a way. Or partial leads would be another way, that people are like coming to your website, they're clicking on your stuff, they're giving you information, but they didn't give you all the information. I'm going to get it. I'm going to get that information.
Frank Klesitz:
Exact Dial. What else?
Greg Harrelson:
Oh, let's see. We don't use any systems for for sale by owners because they're right there on Zillow. I know a lot of people are using Vulcan and REDX and LandVoice and whatnot. We just didn't feel like a need to have a system for for sale by owners and another in-
Frank Klesitz:
Well, that with Exact Dial, you're good to go.
Greg Harrelson:
We're better than, because you can go ... because with the for sale by owners all you get is their telephone number off of Zillow. So you call them, right. And there's agents out there that will call those people, and they'll call and they'll call every once a while and never get them on the phone. But you can go and take that number. You know their name. You could take that number, put it on Exact Dial and you have their email address and send them a nice package of information about for sale by owner or whatever stuff you would use.
Greg Harrelson:
So the tech that I'm using is very simple.
Frank Klesitz:
Or Zillow for FSBOs, I like it.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, that's it. It doesn't cost anything. For expireds we typically use either ... Well, we have both accounts. I mean there's Vulcan and REDX, just because neither one of them are going to provide everything. There's always little glitches with every tech. There's no perfect one. So we actually will go ahead and agents will subscribe to both of them to make sure. Like if in the month you captured 10 additional expireds that the other program missed, it would be well worth it on an annualized basis to make that investment.
Greg Harrelson:
DotLoop, we are doing that for transaction management. So we got DotLoop. We've got the ... I mean PPC's all going to be through Real Geeks. We're going to use the what's my home worth widget, is a very, very important technology that you should be leveraging. And for all of you that are listening right now and you're like, "Oh my god, I tried that and that's terrible, those leads stink," I'm going to ... There's zero chance that that opinion is accurate, zero, zero chance that that's accurate. Maybe you need to adjust the way that you're doing the seller ads to get a better response and a higher quality lead. But that being a dead project is not correct, it's not dead. And quality leads.
Greg Harrelson:
The challenge Frank that I've seen in our industry in the last say six, seven years, is, and most agents don't realize that they're doing this, is they're judging quality of lead based on how long it'll take to convert. That's not how you can judge quality of lead. Quality of lead is do you get a lead and they eventually buy something. But somebody is going to say these leads stink because I get a lead and they're not really ready to set an appointment next month or next week. So then it's about leads.
Greg Harrelson:
No, because the challenge, especially with AI and I think we're going to talk about that a little while, especially with AI, we're going to be getting leads so early in the funnel, at some point you're going to get a lead and the reason you got the lead from the lead company it's going to be because they clicked on Lowe's website and they looked at kitchen cabinets, they looked at flooring, kitchen cabinets, and paint. And they looked on Amazon and clicked on a book about selling their property on their own. That's what's going to happen. The lead of the future is going to come to us based on that type of algorithm.
Greg Harrelson:
And then think about it, if you think that the lead quality today is not good online, because of how long it's going to take them to convert, when we start getting leads like that, these people don't even know when they're going ... These people have no clue. They're so early on, that we're going to have to nurture that thing for two years.
Greg Harrelson:
So we kind of get this lead quality is low quality has no correlation to time of conversion. We got to stop thinking like that. These what's my home worth widget is going to give you high top of the funnel leads. But there's been research by some of these companies that they researched them over a four year period of time when by the third year like 25%, 28% of them sold or did something or listed maybe never sold or sold, like it was a high percent.
Frank Klesitz:
What do you use-
Greg Harrelson:
I think that's what I have right now. I think that's about all I have, but I'm sure I'll think of more as you're talking.
Frank Klesitz:
Well, this is what I was thinking about, is you have a hundred and some agents. What do you use to train all the agents to know how to be so productive?
Greg Harrelson:
So ...
Frank Klesitz:
Is there a learning management tech or way you deliver the training?
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. I have my in-house staff. They'll do the task and they'll record it. And then we use that as the training material, like how to upload to Facebook or how to run a Facebook ad. We don't want to repeat that over and over and over and over again, right?
Frank Klesitz:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Greg Harrelson:
So what we would do is we'd create a tutorial video and have an admin section with just all these videos, and any time it comes up, boom, this is what we ... We just send them the video. Yeah. So it's a library.
Frank Klesitz:
Any other tech that-
Greg Harrelson:
And in that case, in that case really the reality is I have a ... There's a department with virtual assistants and staff that are really running all those ads. The agents don't necessarily have to run the ads.
Frank Klesitz:
What other tech can you share with the audience that is some of the latest best stuff that you use without going overboard and using too much?
Greg Harrelson:
Right at this moment Frank I can't think of anything else that I use really.
Frank Klesitz:
It's a simple business ran well.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. Maybe we use canva.com for thumbnails, for video thumbnails, and little things like that. But really from the operational standpoint that's about it. I believe in going deeper on the tech that I have. So like if I ... I don't mean to say too much about Real Geeks. I'm not trying to sell Real Geeks here. But I know people that have these IDX websites that they'll have a CRM like a BoomTown or a Real Geeks or whatever, and then on the side they'll have Follow Up Boss. And I'm not saying ... Follow Up Boss, I've used it. It was a great product. But I just don't understand why somebody would need Follow Up Boss if they already had say Real Geeks. In other words, they're just ... It's another CRM.
Greg Harrelson:
Now, of course, somebody's going to say, "Yes, but what I like about Follow Up Boss is this." They'll like one little feature. So they complicate their lives by having two systems in order to achieve one feature. And then I go and I ask them, "Okay, well since you got that new feature that you love so much, could you tell me how many deals you did in 2018?" "I did a hundred." "Okay good. And when did you add that feature?" "Well, at the end of 2018." "Okay, then that feature should show up in growth in 2019. Can you tell me how many deals you did in 2019?" "100." "Okay. So you may like that feature but did it actually produce a measurable return?"
Greg Harrelson:
We get tempted by these features and we start stacking more. We start stacking duplicate tech into our office, cost us more money, cost us a lot of confusion and aggravation, a lot more time, and it never shows up on our bottom line. So I go deeper, deeper, deeper within the tech. I want to get every dollar and value I can out of the one tech that I use before I start jumping into other techs.
Frank Klesitz:
Nothing else? No other nuggets I can extract from you before I share my tips?
Greg Harrelson:
No, go for it. Go for it.
Frank Klesitz:
All right man. Sounds good. Hopefully you guys enjoyed that. If you have any questions for Greg, feel free to ask in the chat and then we'll get to them after we go through my spiel.
Frank Klesitz:
Greg, obviously I run a marketing firm, so I have a little more tools in my bucket to get this done for people.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
I'll share with you what I love and ask me any questions maybe you have. Sound good?
Greg Harrelson:
I love it.
Frank Klesitz:
I'm a big fan of callrail.com. So if you're making outbound calls and need a caller ID where you can send the call back somewhere or you're doing direct mail or Google ads or sign your signs and you want to get stop using your cell phone number basically, I would actually port your cell number in the CallRail so it's done. And that's like your main office line now. And you can send and wrap those calls wherever you want. And you can get a bunch of extra phone numbers to put on all of your different lead sources so you can actually see where the calls come from. What's nice is when the calls come in, they're recorded, they're monitored, and you can route them however you want. So when it comes to inbound call tracking or if you need a good caller ID for outbound calls that you want to be able to track the call backs, go check out callrail.com. I'm a big fan of that.
Frank Klesitz:
The next one is a dialer. Let's say you want to make outbound phone calls and you want to do some just listed just sold calls, or you want to call expireds or FSBOs and you go get that property information, and then maybe you go look up the phone numbers using the Exact data like Greg showed you. Vulcan 7 just came out with a new product that is very relatively inexpensive and the dialer is very good. It's also very compliant, so you can learn more about that. It's called everybodyanswers.com. It's designed just for circle calls pretty much. And what's nice is they even pull in the data for you, pretty much unlimited standard data you can use. And maybe don't have to even go to Exact data to use. And I've used it and love it, and it's a great system. So go check out everybodyanswers.com.
Frank Klesitz:
And by the way, I also want to say this. No one's paying us for any of this.
Greg Harrelson:
No. No.
Frank Klesitz:
It just sounds like I'm sitting here running commercials for everybody.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, I know.
Frank Klesitz:
But no. This is just stuff. I mean, we literally use this stuff every day and it's helpful to hang out with two people in the industry to share the tools they use, right, tools in our toolkit.
Frank Klesitz:
A phone system. The phone system that I like that we use is called Dialpad. It integrates well. We just about boost CRMs. What's really great about it is you can call on your cell phone, you can take the calls on your soft phone on your computer. It's really good when you have like virtual ISAs, someone doing outbound or inbound from home and it records all the calls and keeps that compliant. It's a really great phone system if you want to start going over a VoIP system as opposed to using a real landline phone which where a lot of things are heading. All right. Check out Dialpad.
Frank Klesitz:
Let me give you one I really love. Greg, you should give this a shot. Remember how Greg said that you can use Exact Dial to find emails? All right. In addition to that, if you're running a service like Real Geeks or a CRM where you're generating leads off Facebook or AdWords or whatnot, you probably have a lot of archives sitting in there.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, yeah, mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
A lot of leads that maybe haven't really gotten back to you. You know what I'm saying?
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
In addition to that, if you find a condo building in your case Greg, or your circle, there's a ... your circle, you're making calls around a home that just sold or listed but you also have the email addresses, you can get one-to-one emails out to that list using a service called Woodpecker. Woodpecker.co will link up to your Gmail or Outlook and it will ... You'd set it to fire out maybe like 50 emails a day, but it's like, it's literally like someone going into your Gmail account and just like copying and pasting and pressing Send, all right? I'll show you an email probably from a service just like that I just got the other day. Check this out. I never met this agent but it just came in my inbox.
Frank Klesitz:
Hi, I'm Brittney. I'm a local real estate agent. I was just reaching out to see if you're aware of how much your home is worth right now in this market. The inventory is very low which is making property values skyrocket. If you've ever thought about moving or either to upgrade or downsize, now would be the time to get the most money for your property. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to text or call me. No strings attached. I'd love to help any way I can. Thank you for taking the time. Have a great day.
Frank Klesitz:
Guess where that goes? Right to your home value page.
Greg Harrelson:
Home value tool. Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
It wouldn't surprise me if Britney got the email addresses of likely every homeowner in Tempe and is using a service like Woodpecker to send out a simple message like that to drive traffic back.
Greg Harrelson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Frank Klesitz:
So if you're looking to do like outbound email, I'm a big fan of Woodpecker one-to-one, if you have to do cold email. The other thing too Greg, I know you're a big fan of this is taking all those archives and the CRM and loading those archives up and sending out a little ... It could be anything, but the simplest one is just the subject line says quick question.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
And with your signature there it says are you still interested in buying or selling a home in Myrtle Beach in your case Greg.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. Yeah, and use it for re-engagement, re-engagement campaigns. If you've got ... I did a test. Again, I used, within the Real Geek system, I created a workflow and took 200 ... I did a test with a client that was a Real Geeks user. 267 emails or people that had not been active in the database for like six months. So they're kind of like dead leads in the mind of this agent. And we got a 40% engagement rate within 24 hours. And I could tell you all kinds of analytics, but it's 40% of the people responded by call or email back or text back within 24 hours. These are 40% of the leads that these people just were trashed.
Frank Klesitz:
If you stripped me naked in the desert, took everything away from me and I was completely broke, I mean after getting clothes, I would go to a library because I have free internet and I would start typing in Myrtle Beach condos for sale in your case, or San Diego houses for sale in all the major markets and find out who's bidding on the actual keyword terms on the search results. Chances are they're Real Geeks customers.
Frank Klesitz:
I'd click it, scroll down to the bottom, figure out who runs it, reach out to them and saying, "Hey, I'm looking to get started in real estate, I got nothing. But you got a database that you're probably not happy with the conversion with. Mind if I work it? 50-50 split. Great. Export it over to me." Throw in the Woodpecker, simple email, quick question. Are you still interested to buy or selling your home in this market? Work the replies. Boom, you're back up and running again from scratch.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. Man, I hope people stop this recording and replay what you just said. That's a real nugget. That's a real takeaway. So I just wanted to put a little asterisk by that. That was a real takeaway because of two reasons, number one, just about everybody that's listening has a database that's not being worked right now, and just about everybody has the ability to send an email. And he actually just showed you an example of an email that you can kind of recreate.
Greg Harrelson:
So you got the email, we got the ability to email and you've got the database. Now it's just about taking action.
Frank Klesitz:
Greg, I'd make so much money so fast with you. I would just take all those archives, throw them in Woodpecker, schedule 100 emails a day going out, hit a couple replies, send them over to your team, make 50%.
Greg Harrelson:
Here you go. Yeah, that's right.
Frank Klesitz:
Anyways, that's Woodpecker.
Frank Klesitz:
Now let me share another system that I love, and I'm a marketer. Okay? Letterprinting.net. God, these guys are good. I'm actually a direct mail guy believe it or not. I love sending out letters. I think I can tell a full story. The best letters out there are usually I have a buyer or maybe I am a buyer if you're an investor. Those tend to get the best response. But if you want to send mass letters, they're very personal, that go into the A pile and not the B pile. Actually I got a couple examples. Hang on. Look like that, or like that. See?
Greg Harrelson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Frank Klesitz:
Go check out letterprinting.net. Lots of ways when you talk about using direct mail. We don't have time today, but that's some tech I really enjoy. Oh, let me give you my next one Greg. Greg, I'm a landing page guy.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, I know you are.
Frank Klesitz:
I know I am.
Greg Harrelson:
I was waiting for this one.
Frank Klesitz:
Landing pages. Paperform.co. You have landing page builders out there. A CRM will probably have ones built in, which are great, fine. But sometimes you might need something a little more robust. There's like really big ones out there, Leadpages and Unbounce where you can build whole like essentially web pages, all right. That's not really what you need. You essentially like a form builder that could just kind of gets into being a landing page. It's like a form builder instead. That's what Paperform is.
Frank Klesitz:
And I've ran a lot of different Facebook ads. And when I switched to just a simple paper format, the conversion just went to the roof. And if you're looking for a good form system to make online forms, collecting forms, feedback forms, go check out paperform.co. I'm a huge fan. I bought their enterprise level account after testing out a lot of form builders out there. All right.
Frank Klesitz:
My choice CRM to Real Geeks. Many out there, many out there you can choose. Real Geeks is like the best bang for your buck with price. So a lot of other ones too you have to understand Greg are understandably a lot more expensive. I don't really know why. Real Geeks is a very-
Greg Harrelson:
I don't know why either.
Frank Klesitz:
I don't know why. I don't know how they still command the thousand plus a month fee.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. Well ...
Frank Klesitz:
You know what I mean?
Greg Harrelson:
I think, well, one reason it's so hard. Once somebody gets it-
Frank Klesitz:
Can't switch.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, it's hard to switch.
Frank Klesitz:
The switch cost.
Greg Harrelson:
Once you get deeply integrated, the cost of switching is what deters people from switching. It's not necessarily that they love that they're seeing the value in a high price. They're just seeing the value of not having to go through the process of switching.
Frank Klesitz:
What a great value proposition. It's true. I know it is.
Greg Harrelson:
Well, it's what banks do. Banks, that's why the banks go and give you a free squirrel account for your kid. Then they give you free checking and then they say, "Hey, why don't you do it ... Let me give you a credit card, get a debit card, buy a CD, and then go ahead and start doing a different savings account, and now you need a car loan." And what ends up happening, you open up all these accounts with one bank. Like you can't even fathom changing banks because you have to change all of those direct, the billing that's going out or any money that's coming in, all the accounts and passwords, everything has to be changed. It's miserable. So people will stay with the bank forever.
Frank Klesitz:
I'm going to give you guys an email that will generate some seller leads for you, how does that sound? This is my next one. The next piece of tech that I'm a big fan of is My Emma. Frank-
Greg Harrelson:
I have not heard this one. I've never heard about this one.
Frank Klesitz:
That's My Emma. Well, I spend about $11,000 a month with them so I know. They do all of our broadcast email. So there's lots of different email providers out there for just kind of loading everyone up that you know and sending out an email outside of your CRM and outside of your Homebot strips and outside of your Real Geeks strips. Just a totally separate email marketing system. So there's constant contact. There's MailChimp. Find solutions, but Emma, the deliverability man, I'm telling you, getting in that inbox, that's what you're ultimately paying for, not all the bells and whistles. It's getting in the inbox. And since they cost a little more, they keep a lot of the riffraff out versus being a dumping ground for people, so the servers are a bit better. And that's what we use for viral clients.
Frank Klesitz:
Let me give you guys an email that you can send out to generate some seller leads. This is a little tip, do like a email program. You can take all the context you have in your Real Geeks account, CRM account, your Outlook, your Gmail, round them all up. I'll give you a service here shortly to scrub them and clean them up. It's actually neverbounce.com. We'll talk about that.
Frank Klesitz:
But then let's send out an email. And how do you get seller leads? What does a seller want? They want an offer on their home. That's what they want. They just want an offer. Whether it's traditional or an instant offer or an iBuyer, they want an offer on their home. And unless you're living under a rock, there's a lot of iBuyer companies out there.
Frank Klesitz:
Another company I'll throw out that I've heard good things about that I don't use is the company called Zavvie, Z-A-V-V-I-E. And if you need a institutional buyer to back you up so you can have a ... I have a buyer claim or a guaranteed offer claim. You can go to there and they have many institutional buyers that will provide you with offers that you already have going into the listing appointment. Follow me? So you actually back up the claim I'm going to make.
Frank Klesitz:
Let me read the email to you. This is what you send out. Ready for this? This just crushes it. I'm going to read it from you Greg.
Greg Harrelson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Frank Klesitz:
From Greg Harrelson. Subject line: Offer on your home. Clients and friends, I have a new option if you want to skip the hassle of selling your Myrtle Beach home or condo this spring or summer. I can get an offer on your home from companies who want to buy it, not just individuals on the traditional market. When you call, just let me know whether you prefer maximum value or maximum convenience. This means all the benefits of an off-market sale. Tell me here if you're interested in getting an offer on your home. That goes back to your landing page. I'll go to my investor relationships and companies who specialize in all this and secure the best offer for you. I could get you an offer in seven days without any hassles or showings on your part, showing your home to the public. Greg Harrelson. And then a whole bunch of leads start coming in.
Frank Klesitz:
Actual landing page, simple as that. I think we actually did one for you Greg. Yeah, we did-
Greg Harrelson:
I know we have in the past. Yeah, I know we have in the past.
Frank Klesitz:
Here it is. Actually, here it is.
Greg Harrelson:
Yes, yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
There it is.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
It goes back to a page like this. So the question here is what service do you use to round up all your emails and send out just kind of a separate email? My tool in the toolbox is Emma. You hanging in there Greg?
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, man.
Frank Klesitz:
I got more.
Greg Harrelson:
Let's do it. Yeah, I'm writing more of mine down right here.
Frank Klesitz:
This tech, we're talking tech. I have a lot. All right?
Greg Harrelson:
You're making me remember some more of mine too.
Frank Klesitz:
And how do you simplify my business. You do, you do pretty well with your-
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, that's a lot man. But hey, look, I'm not going to hate on you at all.
Frank Klesitz:
Yeah, I'll give you a few more. When you manage VAs, you probably need a way to track their hours. Your virtual assistants may be overseas and pay them. I use a service called Hubstaff. H-U-B-S-T-A-F-F. If you need to get property owner information because you want to cold call property owners or mail them, there's a service called Prop Stream or Property Radar. They're fantastic.
Frank Klesitz:
If you want to get predictive sellers meaning, hey, give me a list of all the people in my county who are probably going to list their home in the next 90 days, likely.ai has a 10% hit rate if you back date it. They sell you a list of 100 names, 10 people will list their home in 90 days on average. All right? They sell you a list of a thousand names, 100 are going to list their home on average. What's nice about that is turnover rates and Zip codes are like, what? 4% or 5% now, probably less with low inventory. If you go to someone who sells predictive seller leads, ask them, "If I buy a list from you, how many people on this list are going to list within let's say 90 days?" And they'll give you a percentage, and they should not lie to you and be honest about that. That's going to be the turnover rate let's say in that list. Much more efficient to work than let's say just straight cold calling.
Frank Klesitz:
Need to hire some on-demand talent, maybe an ISA, maybe a transaction coordinator, maybe a bookkeeper, upwork.com. Greg, you use Upwork, don't you?
Greg Harrelson:
A little bit, yes. Yeah, yeah. I've used Upwork or Fiverr.
Frank Klesitz:
Upwork or Fiverr. It's like a marketplace of independent contractors. We can go and find talent and use it all the time. Oh, Greg, I got one. Let's say you're calling a property record on a cold call and it's owned in an LLC. How do you find the owner of the LLC? Opencorporates.com. Have fun guys. They'll type in your LLC that you own that no one thinks you're the owner of or they can't find you and type in the LLC and your name's probably going to pop up. They've been able to bring in all the different property owners of ... all the different owners of secretary of state to find owners that way.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, that's good.
Frank Klesitz:
Let's get a couple more here. Hope you guys are hanging in there. I was going to teach ... We were going to do this show and I'm like, "God, I got some school things that I use."
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
There's an uptick recently, especially for those of you who live in Florida. You probably can't drive down the interstate without seeing some attorney saying did you get some unwanted call or unwanted text, got it, and they're going to sue you. There's a whole bunch of other issues there that we don't have time to go into, but the majority of those complaints come from people who sue telemarketers for a living. And you can actually scrub those people out of your list. Batch Litigator Scrub. Before you ever do any calling, upload your list to that. It'll match up people of a sued telemarketer, suppress those numbers. That'd probably make some sense. So go check that out. All right?
Frank Klesitz:
Trello, we use for transaction management and managing transactions from the time it goes maybe under listed to done. I'll throw out Eventbrite. I'm kind of ... Greg, we talk about landing pages. If you're ever going to hold a seminar, let's say you're going to hold a buyer workshop, you're going to hold a seller workshop or investing workshop or in your case maybe for recruiting an agent training. You know what I'm saying?
Greg Harrelson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Frank Klesitz:
Dude, just put it up on Eventbrite. It's free. And people know it versus doing a whole custom landing page.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, I'm familiar with it.
Frank Klesitz:
Oh, yeah, dude.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
I mean just throw it up on Eventbrite. Eventbrite allows you to host virtual events now. It makes it really easy for a virtual ticket. And there's also a nice benefit of Eventbrite, is they're searchable. Somebody can type in what they're looking for and it shows up in the search engines on Eventbrite as an event.
Frank Klesitz:
So I really like that technology for putting on online workshops. If you're going to incorporate a buyer's seminar or investor seminar or agent training is hosting them on Eventbrite for the registrations, that's good stuff. We're almost done guys. I got mine and we're going to talk all about it. Almost done.
Frank Klesitz:
Let's say you've neglected your database and you haven't really been staying in touch with everyone like you should be, all right? One of the things we'll teach you at Viral is to go into your Gmail, go into your Outlook, go into your CRM and export all those contacts. But a lot of those emails are probably bad. Got it? Like after years of Lord knows how long sitting in your database, you want to scrub them and remove the bad ones before you upload them to a service like Constant Contact, MailChimp, or Emma to send something out.
Frank Klesitz:
That's called neverbounce.com. You upload your list to there. It'll remove all the ones that are undeliverable emails to reduce your bounce rate, and you'll download a nice squeaky clean list afterwards. We use that pretty well. That's good stuff.
Greg Harrelson:
I just want to chime in and say that is such an important thing to be using. I think people underestimate. I hear a lot of chatter in the industry where agents are complaining about the deliverability within the CRM that they're using. And they blame the CRM companies for like, "Oh my gosh, you're not sending out all my emails," and it's actually not. They have nothing to do with it. It's that these emails are bad emails and it's affecting your deliverability. So if you can go and use neverbounce.com and it deletes and tells you, "Hey, here's 50 emails that are bad," you should be excited that you have 50 back-
Frank Klesitz:
That you're not going to email those because it's going to ruin your deliverability rate. Yeah.
Greg Harrelson:
That's right because not only would you never make a dollar off of any of those 50. It's actually going to probably prevent 50 more from being delivered that are good. I just think that we should be responsible with our email list, and constantly, at least quarterly, run your email list through this Neverbounce and you'll be amazed at how much your deliverability will improve.
Frank Klesitz:
Yeah. Don't ever do a blast email like one to many without running it through there.
Greg Harrelson:
Yes, that's right.
Frank Klesitz:
It'll greatly improve your deliverability.
Frank Klesitz:
Two more. Let's say you want to start recruiting agents or maybe you start kind of proactively hiring. That's a separate CRM straight up. I would not run that in your real estate CRM. It's not built for that. What's another free, simple, easy to use CRM, best CRM is one of the titles here, that you could use for maybe putting agents in for a recruiting pipeline, or maybe you're hiring to track your applicants? Go check out HubSpot. HubSpot has a free CRM. It's great. It's wonderful. Go check that out. Pay attention to the lifecycle stages that they ask you to classify your contacts as in there, and that'll really help you understand how to use it. It's what we run Viral on and I'm a big fan. So shout out to them.
Frank Klesitz:
And last but not least I have nothing else but good things to say about Zoom. My goodness. Greg, I'm curious. Have you done any listing presentations over Zoom? Are you using Zoom with your buyers and sellers? Has it worked its way into the transaction at all? I'm curious.
Greg Harrelson:
I personally haven't, but I do have agents within the operations that are doing some Zoom presentations and it's working very well. What they're doing that's working is they'll send them over information via email and then they'll have an appointment to get on to Zoom say at one o'clock but they send information earlier in that day and have them look at some things, and then they go and discuss those things over Zoom. So they put something kind of physical. I guess email is not technically physical, but they give them something in their possession to be able to read as they're going along with the Zoom, and that's working out well.
Greg Harrelson:
I mean, when it comes to buyers it's FaceTime. I mean it seems like everyone has FaceTime. So with buyers you're going with your cell phone or they're out of town and you're going through the house and you're facetiming through the house. That's what we're using for buyers.
Frank Klesitz:
Got it.
Greg Harrelson:
In that multiple deals have been written and ratified from FaceTime showings, multiple deals.
Frank Klesitz:
I mean there has to be an element of like the video conferencing being more of a necessary just when deals are so hot.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
Like I mean they don't want to wait for a day for a showing or something like that, be like-
Greg Harrelson:
Absolutely-
Frank Klesitz:
"I need to buy this house. Walk me through on FaceTime."
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. Right now in my market, if a new listing comes on the market and we know it's a certain category so it's going to fly off the shelf in a day, and let's just assume your buyer is at work and they can't get away. Maybe they're a teacher or something like that. An agent right now, if they've got a good relationship and they really believe this buyer is a good buyer, they're going to call ... they're going to text and say, "Hey look. Do you any chance you can actually FaceTime with me in the next 30 minutes?" And then that agent leaves that office and goes and facetimes that new listing right there on the spot.
Frank Klesitz:
Is Zillow doing virtual tours now?
Greg Harrelson:
Well, they ... They may call it virtual tour but they have the 3D.
Frank Klesitz:
[inaudible 00:49:48] tour?
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, the three ... That's just a button to capture your information.
Frank Klesitz:
But they're kind of pushing the whole video shot with the agents, yeah?
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. I actually haven't seen the ... I haven't experienced the video chat, but I think all that's going to really do is you can record a video and it'll send a video to them. I believe that's all it is, because that's booking a tour, you're not necessarily going to get a live person when you hit that button at that second.
Frank Klesitz:
Yep. No, you won't. Okay, let me ...
Greg Harrelson:
I want. Well, go ahead. I'm sorry. I wanted to add a few more.
Frank Klesitz:
Yeah, let me go through my list for everyone and articulate it more clearly of my list of tech, all right, that I like. Here's my draft picks. Callrail.com for inbound call number tracking, everybodyanswers.com for an outbound dialer, Dialpad for a phone system, woodpecker.co for outbound cold email, letterprinting.net for direct mail letters, paperform.co for landing pages, Real Geeks for your home value page buyer search capture and real estate CRM, My Emma for your broadcast email, Hubstaff for managing VA payroll, still going, Prop Stream or Property Radar for homeowner mailing lists, likely.ai for predictive seller mailing lists, call lists, upwork.com for comtract ... Comtract? Contract labor on demand. Opencorporates.com for looking up LLC owners. Batchlitigatorscrub.com for removing people that sue telemarketers from your call list. Trello for transaction management, project management. Eventbrite for buyer, seller and investor and agent training workshop registrations. Neverbounce.com for email cleaning and scrubbing. HubSpot CRM for like maybe a recruiting or hiring CRM to manage that side of your business. And then Zoom for video conferencing/FaceTime for working with buyers was your tip.
Frank Klesitz:
So there they are. Those are my picks.
Greg Harrelson:
Those are awesome man. Those are awesome. All good. All good. I was going to add for virtual assistants, hiring virtual assistants we use onlinejobs.ph.
Frank Klesitz:
Oh yeah, it's good.
Greg Harrelson:
Onlinejobs.ph. As well as MyOutDesk does a good job with. I was just with Daniel Ramsey at the GoBundance event this week. So shout out to Daniel and his company. MyOutDesk is a great company also.
Frank Klesitz:
Talking about hiring VAs, when you have people applying for a phone job or ... when people are applying for any job where they're going to be on the phone, if it's a verbal hire, they would call it. I always want to like thin the herd by just listening to how they speak and how they sound. And the challenge is like how do they record the audio and send you a link. I'll give you what I use. It's been around forever. It's a Vocaroo, V-O-C-A-R-O-O. I tell anyone around the world to go here click record, just tell me why you want the job. And then when they stop, it gives them a link and it sends you the link, and it's an easy way to get a recording to hear somebody.
Frank Klesitz:
So when you're looking through all the applicants, you can listen, you can listen, you can listen, you can listen, you start filtering down like who has the verbal communication skills that would work well in a verbal role as a VA.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, that's cool. Hey, did you ... Do you have an app that you want to share, an app like not a technology but a cell phone app? Do you have anything that ... I've got one that I'm going to share that I like.
Frank Klesitz:
I've never used it. I've never used it.
Greg Harrelson:
Okay. Well, good, that's a good disclaimer.
Frank Klesitz:
I'm telling you, everything [crosstalk 00:53:32]
Greg Harrelson:
Full disclosure.
Frank Klesitz:
All right. So everything I've shared with you today on my list, I've used all of them. I literally went through my American Express and figured out what I'm being charged for. I've never used it, but I've heard great things. It's called Forewarn. Okay?
Greg Harrelson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Frank Klesitz:
And this is something that you use to check up on someone before you go do an open house to stay safe. I believe it's a Lexus Nexus product.
Greg Harrelson:
I don't know that, but I have heard about this, yes.
Frank Klesitz:
I don't know. I think it might be, or might be pulling from that database which is like one of the best databases you get access to. But if you want to basically know who you're going to an open house with and you want to know more about a person to vet them out, go check out Forewarn, F-O-R-E-W-A-R-N. That's an app on the phone.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. So here's an app, and actually Frank, you like to buy property. Okay. So I know-
Frank Klesitz:
I do.
Greg Harrelson:
I know this is ... If you don't know this app, you're going to love this app. It's called-
Frank Klesitz:
Tell me-
Greg Harrelson:
... Land Glide. Land Glide. Man, this is so-
Frank Klesitz:
Land on.
Greg Harrelson:
Land-
Frank Klesitz:
Land Glide?
Greg Harrelson:
Land Glide. Land Glide.
Frank Klesitz:
Okay, GPS property line map app?
Greg Harrelson:
Yes. So I can, like no matter where I am in the United States, okay, no matter where I am, I can just hit the Land Glide app and automatically I'm going to see this. Look at the screen here.
Frank Klesitz:
I am.
Greg Harrelson:
Okay?
Frank Klesitz:
Okay.
Greg Harrelson:
So that little button right there or the little dot, means that's my house. Okay? So I can see every property, every parcel of property. And I can go click on any one of those parcels and I can find the homeowner's name and everything about it.
Frank Klesitz:
Wow.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. So I could be ... I was at Squaw Valley in Lake Tahoe.
Frank Klesitz:
Yeah, look at that.
Greg Harrelson:
The last couple days, yeah. No matter what I did-
Frank Klesitz:
This is becoming democratized so fast and the price to access is going down so fast.
Greg Harrelson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I pay the $99 for the year, and no matter where I am. So you could be driving down the road and you could see this one house that like you want to buy and you could stop right there and you could just ...
Frank Klesitz:
Put it in.
Greg Harrelson:
Because it's going to be geo, it's going to have your pin. You don't have to do anything. You'll see it right there, because it's going to track you. So you're going to see a pin where you are, and then you'll be able to look to the right. There's that lot. Hit that lot get all the information right there.
Frank Klesitz:
Does it have phone numbers of the owner?
Greg Harrelson:
It does not.
Frank Klesitz:
But Exact Dial.
Greg Harrelson:
Exact Dial, yes. All you do ...
Frank Klesitz:
Exact Dial.
Greg Harrelson:
Exact Dial. All you would do is go in and put that address and the name and you could get their telephone number and email address.
Frank Klesitz:
What a great driving for dollars option.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
Hey man, go drive around and find distressed properties that's been [crosstalk 00:56:23]
Greg Harrelson:
And it also it has a link where all I have to do is hit the bottom and it connects to the county courthouse records. Now I can see what they paid for the property.
Frank Klesitz:
Man, that's pretty helpful.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. It's efficient.
Frank Klesitz:
Yeah.
Greg Harrelson:
Very efficient. I mean, I can put any city, I can put your address in there right now and then and be right, just drop right on your house. So that's a ... it's a cool app. I mean, when you get it, you won't let go of it. You're going to be sitting in the airport looking at property values and stuff like that, just through that app.
Frank Klesitz:
There was another app I, again, I haven't used. Let me see if I can find it. I can't see if I can find it. I heard about it anecdotally, but it's all about like on my phone how do I get property information and owner contact information as fast as possible.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. There will not be any faster than that.
Frank Klesitz:
That's ...
Greg Harrelson:
It's like, oh, I got it. It's this fast.
Frank Klesitz:
Okay.
Greg Harrelson:
That's it. It's this fast.
Frank Klesitz:
Yeah, that's a great app dude. Give me some give dude.
Greg Harrelson:
No, that's all I got.
Frank Klesitz:
That's it?
Greg Harrelson:
Listen ...
Frank Klesitz:
What else did you learn up there in Tahoe when you're hanging out with all those guys? What other apps, what other cool things?
Greg Harrelson:
Well, I will tell you, but probably-
Frank Klesitz:
By the way everyone, Greg, I got to give a shout out to this group. Greg is a member of GoBundance. Real quickly tell everyone what that is. That's a cool thing.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, it's a group of men that get together and mastermind around some extraordinary trips. Like we go to Tahoe and ski and snowmobile and do all these things for a few hours during the day, and then we mastermind together for a few hours of the day. But the key is it's a group of men. There's also GoBundance for women, but they don't share the same space and same events. We just get together and we talk about business, we talk about health, we talk about relationships, we talk about wealth. And we just kind of all those things is our focal point. So we're not just talking about money. We're equally talking about family or health, et cetera. And we bring in speakers that come in and speak to us. It's almost like kind of like a brotherhood where everybody is there to help. There's some categories. There's a category of like five million net worth or more. They have some meetings. And then one million to five million net worth, they have meetings and whatnot.
Frank Klesitz:
From what I understand they just had their highest earning tier out there that you went to, is that correct?
Greg Harrelson:
No. They had a combination of both. I went to that one. It's called The Champions. I went to that meeting. And then I stayed one extra day to see the other for a day of the other meeting so I could just meet some of the other people. But they're going to be meeting from yesterday-
Frank Klesitz:
And you learned about this app there, is that right?
Greg Harrelson:
No, no. I've known about this app. Actually a guy in my office, Kevin Mills actually showed me this app a while back.
Frank Klesitz:
So let me dig deeper. So you're at this event of all these sharp people, probably many tied to real estate in some way. What's a piece of tech that they're using that maybe you picked up on that you can share with the audience from that event that you just came back from? Just think through it man.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
Think through it.
Greg Harrelson:
There were ...
Frank Klesitz:
Any presentations, any conversations.
Greg Harrelson:
There were really no conversations around tech. I will tell you this. And I think this is worthy of me sharing. The biggest conversations were about making sure that we carve out some time for ourselves and our families and we don't make life all about money because we're not guaranteed that there's going to be a tomorrow.
Greg Harrelson:
I think we all would agree that our physical life is going to end at some point, but I think we'd all agree that we don't know exactly when that is. And how many of us right now, our whole day is going to be consumed about making more money and generating more wealth, and then that leads, those days leads to weeks leads to months leads to years. And how many people look back and say, "I wish I would have spent more time with my family." And that really, I would love to say, "Hey, here's the next tech thing that I brought from all these high net worth guys," but actually what I brought back from all these high net worth guys is that one thing that's extremely important is family, but it's also one thing that gets neglected too often, the relationships.
Greg Harrelson:
So it's like you know what, if we don't make an extra million but our family experiences a little bit more love, then that's wealth. That's how you be wealthy.
Frank Klesitz:
Man, I had a joke with my ... Greg was actually there when I essentially met my wife, Katie.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, I remember it. I remember that awkward moment like-
Frank Klesitz:
Who's ... There's a client or what's going on here?
Greg Harrelson:
That's exactly what it was.
Frank Klesitz:
Yeah, I know.
Greg Harrelson:
That's exactly what it was.
Frank Klesitz:
Yep. And we're happily married with two kids.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
I remember when I was young as a joke because we were at an InfusionSoft event.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
That's what it was about. I wrote a whole two-year drip campaign for Katie of happy birthday, happy anniversary.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
Just kind of like a funny joke. Anyways. That's great stuff guys. So there you go.
Frank Klesitz:
Oh by the way, one more thing I do want to share really quick, video email. Sending video to one-to-one to a lead that comes in, go check out Loom, L-O-O-M .com. It's essentially like a free boom, boom. It'll scale easier to your team. It's an easy way, integrates with Gmail. Lead comes in. Want to connect with lead. Hold down button, record a video. Boom, in the email message, sent out.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. Hey, I want to say, yeah, Frank, you probably don't know this because it's not out yet, but I've already tested it the beta test for Real Geeks.
Frank Klesitz:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Greg Harrelson:
They actually are now integrating that exact technology within Real Geeks.
Frank Klesitz:
Oh, so the video emails will be going out. Oh, beautiful.
Greg Harrelson:
Probably within the next month, it'll probably be released. And there'll be no need for any third party. If you're a Real Geeks user, there'll be no need for any third party applications.
Frank Klesitz:
Cool. Well, there we go. We went a whole hour. There you go, a whole hour with Frank and Greg. We didn't have a guest Greg. It was just us.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
And we talked about best CRMs, best technology. Greg give his picks. I gave my picks. They'll be all here on the replay for you here on this YouTube channel. Let's open it up and see what questions people have. So let me scroll up here real quick.
Greg Harrelson:
While you're looking at a question, I just want people to know that I am a speaker with Frank on this call today, but I'm also a business person that's learning from this call today. I have written down two things that I am going to investigate that I did not know about based on Frank's list.
Greg Harrelson:
I just recommend for all of you to take this call and just write down one or two, no more than three things. Don't go and look at all these. Figure out what one, two, or three might be something you could use in your business, and go investigate them. And if you use one, great. If you don't, that's fine also. Obviously we're not sending you any links for affiliate fees. That's not ...
Frank Klesitz:
Nope.
Greg Harrelson:
I don't even know if these things have affiliates. But I wanted to just give you that bit of information. I'm actually taking two. I'm going to learn about them and decide whether or not they need to be within my operations.
Frank Klesitz:
Cool. Let's take a look here. Yes, it's Exact Dial Bob, not Exact Data. There actually is a company called Exact Data. That can be confusing.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, exactdial.com.
Frank Klesitz:
Exact Dial. I might have said Exact Data.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
Great. Ian's been using number rounds for a while. He loves it.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
Yes, we'll have a replay of all the links or all the things that we talked about today coming up on the replay once that's written up, probably posted here and pinned at the top in the comments. Toronto CityHomes, whoever's behind that asks, what app are you using for door-to-door? I guess that would probably ... Well you just ... What was that app again? I should have written down that-
Greg Harrelson:
I'm not sure ... Land Glide? Yeah, I don't know-
Frank Klesitz:
Land Glide.
Greg Harrelson:
I don't ... I really don't know what the person means by door-to-door. So if they ask another question to kind of clarify that, so I can answer [crosstalk 01:05:07] but I'm not sure what that means.
Frank Klesitz:
Yeah, I would assume if you were door knocking or you're going to door-to-door like who is this person, you can use that app on that phone.
Greg Harrelson:
Oh my gosh. If you're door knocking, you just go house to house to house and hit and then you'd have everything right there.
Frank Klesitz:
Yeah. Let's take a look here. CMAs. Bob asks CMAs, what do you use? He likes to use RPR. That's Realtor Property Resource?
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, that's ... Yeah. And it's great.
Frank Klesitz:
What do you give your agents as far as like give them accurate CMAs these days?
Greg Harrelson:
Just the local MLS.
Frank Klesitz:
Nothing beats that. You tried them all.
Greg Harrelson:
No. I don't think that there's ... I don't think that anybody's going to beat me because of a different CMA. The CMA is not going to be the presentation. My dialogue is going to be the presentation. So the CMA is just, is data that I would be using in my verbal presentation. That's just my opinion. So we don't really spend any extra time doing CMAs.
Greg Harrelson:
By the way, I don't tend to ... I'm not one that sends CMAs to people. A lot of times that'll confuse them and bring up additional conversations and dialogues and objections that are unnecessary, that wouldn't come up. I always take a CMA. I always have a CMA in my presentation, but I don't necessarily send out CMAs. So an RPR as an example in a cloud CMA, both of those companies are fantastic for building out CMA like multiple pages of presentations. I don't use that.
Frank Klesitz:
Got it. Brandon Bartic, looks like his operations team, Bartic Operations or Tic Operations rather, what's the website for the What's My Home Worth widget? I know Real Geeks offers that.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, the one I'm using is just the one that because I know this team, the Real Geeks, the one that's baked into Real Geeks is the one we use. If anybody wants, from the team wants to talk a little bit more in depth about how we're doing it probably a little bit different than most, I really admire what the Bartic Team is doing, and so I'd be happy that he knows how to connect with me.
Frank Klesitz:
Where do you hire your VAs Greg?
Greg Harrelson:
Onlinejobs.ph or MyOutDesk.
Frank Klesitz:
Will do it for you.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. So over the time we've got multiple VAs. So really what I do is I take one of the VAs that I already have, and she actually does the hiring at this point.
Frank Klesitz:
Got it. Maideneer, looking for mobile capabilities to directly input contact data or follow appointments straight into a CRM via a mobile app or other handheld device. This is somebody out in the field that wants to put it right into CRM.
Greg Harrelson:
Well, I would hope that whatever CRM they have already has that type of integration. The fact that they asked the question leads me to believe that that's not the case. But I would be able ... You should be able to do that from just about any CRM you would have.
Frank Klesitz:
Yeah, you would hope the CRM has a mobile app to make that easy.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. Or if, at a minimal, it's mobile friendly. And if it's mobile friendly, all you have to do is save it to your home screen and it's just one button, and you put the information in.
Frank Klesitz:
I'll even tell you. There's another business I'm involved and there's someone driving around all day long, going on appointments. And you would think that they could just put in the mobile app, right? So like the CRM, even if you have the most amazing mobile app, I'm just, I don't know what it is, the state of mind that you're in, you're running around, things are going crazy, doesn't actually get in there, right?
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
So we actually have a VA, no joke, monitoring their calendar and literally calling them after every appointment because they won't call us and just saying, "Hey man, I'm on a recorded line. Vomit what happened on the appointment, get it on," and then the VA's putting it into CRM and scheduling the follow-up dates because the person that's on the road all day long and they don't do it and they come home and they're exhausted, and they don't fill it in. The next day they forgot everything, right? So it's a way to getting an assistant to make sure that they're constantly updating CRM throughout the day, which is just answering the phone, having a conversation, and the VA is putting in correctly or the assistant.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah. That reminds me. I use Slack a lot for something like that. So what ends up happening, I use Slack and I have multiple channels, and the VA will be one channel, send listing documents will be one channel. So then when I'm actually talking to somebody, if I'm in my CRM and I'm talking to them and they agree over the phone that they want to list with me, I actually put ... I'll put in there price, commission, and duration of listing, and then I'll take a screenshot and drop that screenshot into Slack under send listing paper out. And as soon as I drop it into that one channel, it goes to my assistant and then she then goes and DocuSigns the paperwork out based on that.
Greg Harrelson:
Or if I want them to go to Homebot I say, "This is a lead," just got make sure they get into Homebot, make sure they get into Real Geeks. I'll screenshot it. Drop it to my VA. My VA knows when they see that screenshot to automatically put them in Homebot, Real Geeks, set them up on a sold search if they automatically know that. So I use screenshotting on my laptop and then send it via Slack or I can do it on my phone.
Frank Klesitz:
It's good stuff. So the home value tool that Greg uses is the one with the Real Geeks.
Greg Harrelson:
Yes.
Frank Klesitz:
Complemented with Homebot, H-O-M-E-B-O-T.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah.
Frank Klesitz:
Which I do believe requires a lender to sponsor, so get your lender on board to help-
Greg Harrelson:
It does not. You can-
Frank Klesitz:
It doesn't require it?
Greg Harrelson:
It doesn't require it. There's a real estate agent side and a lender side. If you can get a lender to sponsor it, that's great.
Frank Klesitz:
Yeah, usually why that may be the case, I'm just guessing, is that if you get a lender partner, they are able to get credit bureau information to append to the contact so the information the consumer gets has a lot more in there that you as an agent can have access to for the report.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, well, the lender version, a lot of the people that when the lender's giving it out, they're hoping that you'll put your buyers in it.
Frank Klesitz:
Yeah.
Greg Harrelson:
And if you're putting your buyers in it, they have some sort of things, some tools for the buyers because that would be most appealing to the lenders. I'm not putting buyers in there. I'm only putting documented property owners in there.
Frank Klesitz:
There's a ... I'll give one more here. I was talking to a lender yesterday. Greg, have you ever heard of Sales Boomerang?
Greg Harrelson:
I have heard of it. I've never used it.
Frank Klesitz:
I've never used it either. But the lender was telling me because the lender has access to credit bureau information. You can send your list of your database into them and it'll basically run soft pulls on their credit. So when someone's shopping for mortgages, it'll send you an email adding, "Hey, this person's shopping for mortgages." And that way everybody in your database that might be in market for a buying or selling a home, the lender be able to tell you should probably prioritize these people because they're monitoring their credit for soft pulls when people are shopping for mortgages. It's like a predictive analytics of some type. From what I understand, I do not use it. This is literally from a mastermind over the weekend.
Greg Harrelson:
That's interesting.
Frank Klesitz:
That is possible. So maybe if you have a lender, ask them what data monitoring tools or what software they have that maybe help predictably know, hey, I got this list here who might be wanting to buy or sell a house. Well, someone literally applying for mortgages in your database might be someone you want to talk to, and a lender might be able to know that, all right? But you as the agent can't get that service because you can't qualify. You have to work through a lender.
Frank Klesitz:
Any other questions as we wrap up. Let's take a look here. Let's take a look here. I'm pretty happy with all of this. I've never heard of ... Steve asks, I've never heard of Spotio, S-P-O-T-I-O or Rabbit door knocking apps, SalesRabbit. You ever heard of those Greg?
Greg Harrelson:
I have not. I have not heard of those. I'll look it up, but I have not heard of it.
Frank Klesitz:
I'll check them out. Last question. Richard asks, what tech would you recommend for finding buyers relocating to your city such as buyers whose company they work for is relocating to your city? Interesting. Well, that's a great question. I don't know.
Greg Harrelson:
Yeah, I don't know how I would go and find them. But I could give some ideas on how I could be found by them.
Frank Klesitz:
You have a couple of tips, and then we'll go wrap it up.
Greg Harrelson:
So I could build some pages on my website and SEO for relocating to Myrtle Beach, okay? I could build a like Myrtle Beach relocation or relocating to Myrtle Beach to be the title of the page, and then I could have on that page, I could build out information like resources that people are relocating that might want to experience, or you could also build out a page on your website for every school that's in your county.
Greg Harrelson:
The reason why I say you'd build a school page is because when people are thinking about relocating from out of state, if they have children I would say high school or below, if they're relocating, one of the things that they do and a lot of times it's the wife that does this is they start googling the best schools, best school systems Myrtle Beach high schools. So you're more likely to capture leads that are relocating if you're building pages and SEO and for terms like that.
Frank Klesitz:
Good stuff Greg. All right everyone. Thank you so much for watching. That was a little overtime with Greg and I for about 15 minutes after our one hour show. Normally we'd have overtime and talk about the guests, but we were the guests today.
Greg Harrelson:
That's right. That's right.
Frank Klesitz:
So thanks for attending. You learned pretty much the CRMs to check out, as well as all the latest tech tips that we like. Yeah, feel free to share the show. Subscribe to the Keeping It Real page. The replay will be right here and we'll be live in two weeks. Get notified when we announce the live stream on the YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe to the Real Geeks YouTube channel and we'll ...
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