Episode 14 - Tamara Ward

You are free to correct me afterwards. Tell me if I got any of it wrong. Better get it right, we're gonna quiz you. Okay, I'm gonna do my very best. But guys, Tamara's been with Sync since 2018.

And she is just a CRM training guru. In 2022, she was promoted to a senior training manager, which allowed her to not only train our clients, but also train our internal new hires, and ensure that all employees are knowledgeable on CRM functionality, of course, leading to client success, which is the overall goal.

After excelling in that role, she was promoted again, but this time to a senior training coordinator position, which allowed her not only to continue training our clients as well as our employees, but now she works directly with our product team.

Tamara has had her hands in new feature rollouts, Q&A, and online articles via the Sync Help Center to self-guide clients on the platform. She is extremely passionate about this company, about our people, and especially about our clients. So, with all of that, Tamara, welcome out!

But I also do work heavily with our product team, kind of making sure that when we roll something out, that it aligns with our best practices, that it's something that's going to be useful to you as an agent, and definitely, something that's gonna improve your day-to-day operations. So, thank you guys for having me, very excited.

Tamara, I know you have a big part in guiding that, so… I'm excited. You guys should be excited, because a lot of the questions you asked We would not be able to answer. But before, Before… but before we get started. I do want to mention something… I'm sure it's old hat for everybody. I'm sure you all already follow us on social, at SyncPro. Literally anywhere. But one of the videos that just came out on there, was from Dan. And it was the top 10… micro-targets… in the United States from 2025.

But, here, so I… I… I… like, one of the things about our website is that, like, we all… we… it's not just towns and cities, we're able to go to, like, zip codes and school districts, lakes, and, like, country clubs, things like that, and market off of those, as opposed to…

cities and towns, which are the defaults from the MLSs. All MLSs around the country are different, and they're all kind of… they all have different ways to search them, but we've been able to kind of circumvent that and put our own little… special sauce on there that allows us to market towards anything. So I'm counting down the top 10 micro-targets. These are not cities in the country. And actually, because they're so large, they should really be called macro targets.

micro-targeting, going into areas that other people are not able to advertise to. You get lower cost per lead, better lead quality, because… Other people, generally, they're farther down the road.

other companies, other lead gen, like, they are reliant exclusively on what the MLS gives them, and we were able to dig in deeper and be able to populate our landing pages, based on the keywords, based on the ads that we're using, and filter that page more specifically to what people are actually looking for. I use even colloquial terms, sometimes, right? Like.

So, it's really specific, and it's a significant part of how we're able to drive down cost and improve the relevance for our campaigns to what people are actually looking for when they search. So, I just… I didn't want to brush over that. That's really big.

Your questions submitted. Thank you so much. We got a lot of good questions. One of the ones that I wanted to start with, came from Eric. And… I don't know why I said right there. But anyway, it came from Eric. I'm starting it over so I can clip it. One of the questions that I wanted to get to came from Eric, because it kind of touches on both things, I think. Both sides, both training and marketing. So, he asked, any thoughts on a smaller market sales pitch?

We rely on getting our name out there when we call leads. Our advertising budget isn't really that big. So getting our name out there is a challenge. So, anything come to mind? From any of you guys. when I asked that. Yeah? Well, I think…

I mean, in terms of follow-up, You know, is there anything… That you can think of, Tamara, or anything on the CRM side for this, or…

On your social media. Because if somebody clicks those links and they come to your site, that's organic traffic that you're, you're directing, I… proper… our properties. tab, is a great way to kind of promote properties as well, and promote yourself. It's a really great way to kind of reach out and generate more business. So never forget, you can always Share your subdomain, share your, sync site, you know, advertise yourself.

with a little bit of money and, you know, a video views campaign, so that could be a way to… That can be a way to get the… to get the exposure out there, too. Marcus had a couple of questions. I want to get to the first one that… came in, Marcus, was about… Promoting a listing and getting the leads assigned to you. We can do that, so if you have a listing that… if you have a listing… If you have a listing that you would like to promote. You can go to Sync Listing Ads, dot com.

That's our… our listing product. There you can enter the address. the budget, and we'll take that, create the ad, and send it back to you. All of those ads are specifically sourced. So they could be routed to you. But we also do those through lead ad forms, and that lets us Put in a parameter in the backend that Bada, bada-bada… Bing. Sorry. Intrusive thought. Put something in in the backend that automatically routes it to you, so we can do that. And we can route those leads to you.

That was the…

Actions column. So when you open up that section, there's an Actions column, and there's a little share icon in the right-hand corner, and if you click on that, you can actually share properties right from that page to Facebook, to your social media, copy the link. But the thing it actually does is it copies your subdomain. So if you're an agent on a team, in your profile, you have your own individual subdomain. It's normally defaulted with your first name. Period.

your website, and no WW in front of it, but your subdomain, if you were to promote that property to your social media, and they click on it, takes them to your subdomain, so if somebody signs up, they're not gonna go through generic lead routing and get assigned to someone else in the system. They signed up on your subdomain, so they do get routed to you. So that's another way, again, that you can kind of organically Promote your listings and generate traffic for you personally on the site.

We'd love for this to be as conversational as possible. Like, I love that we have some really good questions that were submitted, and we can go through those and kind of pick our favorites and the stuff that Tamara said might be most relevant to the most people, but…

definitely, you know, don't just spectate, participate, right? Like, if you have any questions, if anything that we're talking about spurs a thought, put it into the chat, and let's have a conversation about it now in real time. So definitely use the chat while we're here to talk about it live. Whatever it is, you know, we want this conversation, whatever direction we need it to go, to be most valuable to everybody that jumped in here, so…

Just wanted to say that. Thank you, Samantha, for pointing that out. Thank you, Marcus, for kicking in, and look forward to talking to everybody.

Or, if you're using our dialer, you can be connected to a headset and be making dialer campaigns and calls.

Right from your computer, but make sure you're placing those calls from the sync system, because one, it automatically recognizes the pipeline change. It recognizes that this person's no longer brand new. It's going to update a new lead to attempted contact, so it's already starting to track things in the system, but it's also going to start tracking how many times you've tried calling a lead, it timestamps when you tried them last.

So, call your new leads right away, and I really encourage, if you're wondering, how can I quickly find my newest leads? How… where do I know what leads to work? when you're in your system, you always want to be in your agent-level launch pad. When you open your CRM, you're usually defaulted right there and then, and also, on your mobile phone, you're taken to your agent launch pad.

And you'll actually see a prospecting section, and the very first section in that is our P1, our Prospecting 1 filter, new leads. So call your new leads. Now, if you don't… get a hold of them, that you don't get a quality conversation with them, they're gonna filter into our next section, which is our P2 filter, our Prospecting 2 filter, which is any attempted contact that…

you still haven't gotten a conversation with, but is less than 14 days old on the site, so they're less than 2 weeks old. With those leads, we want you to be persistent. 80% of leads will pick up on the fifth attempt, the fifth phone call you've made to them, 90% on the sixth try.

It can take persistence to get the conversation. When you call someone, they are seeing a name, a number they don't instantly recognize. People are terrified to pick up numbers they don't know. I have trained on this for 8 years, but if somebody calls my cell phone, and it's not my husband, my mom, my dad, my sister, I don't want to pick up, I don't know who it is.

So do not give up. So, in that P2 filter we're encouraging, stay persistent. Let's try those leads several times, ideally 6 to 10 times. Over the course of those 14 days. Worst case scenarios, you did that. You tried to lead, you stayed persistent with them. When they're older than 2 weeks.

Worst case scenarios, we still didn't get that conversation, and they're gonna fall out of that P2 filter. Best case scenario, though, is you get the conversation. They answer. You have a quality conversation, and now that somebody you can start moving forward with. So in your prospecting tab in the Agent Launchpad, call your new leads in P1. Then click that drop-down, go to P2, stay persistent with them for those first 2 weeks.

Move the pipeline to contacted if you do get a conversation. And then your P3 filter, that final part of prospecting, is any attempted contact that's now older than 2 weeks, so they're now at least 15 days or older, but they're actively logging back into your system. They've logged into the platform within the last 30 days.

those leads are actually going to be sorted by that login. So your leads that have been on the site most recently are always at the top, and you want to focus on those most active leads. If you can't always call everyone in that list. call the leads that were at least logged back in within the last 7 days, because sometimes you'll have somebody who actually registered on the site a year ago, 2 years ago, and now they're at the top of P3 because they're coming back, which is a huge indicator

they weren't ready to talk to an agent when they signed up. But now that they're coming back, now is when they're looking. Now is when they're ready to make a move. So really focus that attention In your agent launch pad, your prospecting section, as well as, contact requested, which houses your hand raisers.

Also, oh, forgot voicemails. We do recommend not leaving voicemails. Don't leave a voicemail, and this comes from our top performing agents. Voicemails just increase the chance that somebody's not going to pick up. You know, in today's world. people aren't going to return your call. You leave a voicemail, the chance that they actually call you back is very…

low, low likelihood. We've actually found that just staying persistent and dialing increases the chance of someone answering. If you leave a voicemail and then you try that person again, even though they need a real estate agent, even though they are ready to make a move and they need someone's help, they almost get more scared. They now know who's calling them. And even though they need to talk to you, it's like they're more nervous to pick up, and I always think about myself.

I can be such a child sometimes. Sometimes I will see and know it's my doctor calling me to schedule that appointment. But it's almost like if it throws me off, if it feels like it's not a good time, like, I'll purposely just let that person go to voicemail, even though I needed to have that conversation. So, don't leave voicemails. dial, and then we also increased double dialing. If you…

get to someone's voicemail, hang up, try that person immediately a second time. I know some agents worry about that, but it almost… like, quadruples the chance of someone picking up, because they start thinking, okay, well, maybe this call's important. Maybe I need an answer. And it really increases that likelihood of getting that conversation. Biggest concern agents have is, well, what if the person picks up and they yell at me? Oh, why did you call me two times?

Most agents that use this tactic say that hardly ever happens. But if it does happen, and someone questions it. our top agents play it off in their script, like, it never even happened. They'll say something like, oh, I'm so sorry, my phone cut off. I didn't even know that first ring went through. So you can always play it off, and then dive into that conversation and try to… try to capture that lead.

conversion call with, Christine Dunn, and I believe John does that sometimes as well. We have online conversion day, we have… Recorded trainings, you can call in and speak with your account manager, or email support, and then… To top it all off, we have Sink University, which is our live… 3-day training, and that's actually going on right now in Atlanta. We had the happy hour last night. With a bunch of clients up in the office, that was very cool. So take advantage of that.

The training is really, really very good. It's one of the things that I think sets us apart.

AI. I want to learn about just best practices. If you type in keywords, you'll see all of these articles that populate and appear. Almost every single one has a short training video on it. So, you can either read the article, or you can just watch a quick 5-10 minute video about how to do or conquer what you were hoping to get out of it. But under that help button, we have a scripting hub, so if you just want to quickly see

suggested scripts. We have a link to our success playbook, which takes you also to our three daily money plays. If you have not printed that out, print out our daily money plays. It's literally like a… our sync bible of what you should do each day to see success in the system has all of our scripts, our best practices in it, but there's also

live events, and if you click live events, you can register for our webinars. I encourage to check the webinars every month, because the topics change each month. But Sync University, that links for Sync University, is also

is also there. You can register, reach out to your account manager, too, if you have more questions about it. Our next event is going to be March 24th, that Tuesday through Thursday, but it's going to be here in Atlanta. Most of the events are in Atlanta this year, but we are going to actually have one event in Chicago this year, and then another event in the Tempe-Phoenix area.

cause people to object and end the conversation sooner. But for that screen recording, we're finding short and simple is better. we do still encourage, don't mention that you're a real estate agent yet, because if you do that, even though they need a real estate agent, they might get kind of nervous of that conversation. It's an easy way to kind of say, no, I don't want to talk to this person, I'm not ready yet. We're finding that something as simple as just, hey, this isn't your first name.

Hey, this is Tamara. Hey, this is John. And if you think about it, it makes the person kind of go, well, maybe I know this person. Maybe I should pick up an answer. So not even saying, hey, this is Tamara from Keller Williams, just, hey, it's Tamara. Because it has a very friendly tone, and our agents that are using that are getting more pickup rates.

they've tried different variations, too, so you could try maybe, like, hey, this is Tamara in Atlanta, but I would really encourage just, hey, this isn't first name, and then get them on the phone, and then dive into your opening script in that conversation.

really found works, is, I'll kind of go through it. If somebody was to pick up my phone call past that call screening, hey, this is Tamara with the home search site. I saw you were just looking, I saw you were looking to make a move in the Atlanta area, just curious. Are you, wanting to make a move in the next 3 to 6 months, or are you just browsing? And a couple things, we recommend Don't start with a question. So don't, when someone picks up, validate, hey, is this Sally? Hey, is this…

so-and-so, I know you see the name of the lead in your database, but one, leads lie. You could be talking to Sally. When you get Sally on the phone, if you ask that question, she's gonna say, no, it's not Sally. But also, who cares?

If I think I'm calling Sally and David picks up, I don't care who answers. All I care about is whoever just picked up that phone call. Are they in my market? Are they looking to buy or sell a home? Is there any way I can help them? Maybe I can just refer them to someone else if they're not in my area. Also, don't start the conversation by asking, hey, how are you doing today?

it's a very easy way for someone to kind of end the conversation. Not a good time, not a good day. Try again later. But we do also recommend just introduce yourself with your first name only. So when I did my introduction, I just said, hey, this is Tamara. I didn't say I was a real estate agent, I didn't mention my brokerage, my years of experience. Sometimes the more you jam-pack into the introduction, the more salesy the call can sound.

And the more salesy something sounds, it can actually raise the person's guard and cause them to want to end that conversation. Whereas if you just say, hey, this is, and your first name only, it again takes on a very kind of friendly approach. It gets that person to kind of lower that guard a little bit.

And then the other thing is we… I didn't mention the exact name of my website. I didn't say from www.atlantahomesearch.com, or, again, from the Keller Williams site you just were on. I just said the home search site. this person, if they signed up on my site, there's always a chance they registered on other sites out there. Or maybe, again, I thought I was calling Sally and David picks up. Maybe David didn't sign up on my site. At the end of the day, my goal is I have this person on the phone.

Are they looking to make a move? Is there any way I can help them? So… And then, we also encourage, end with, or are you just browsing? Because we know 99% of people, when they hear that, they're going to say, I'm just looking, I'm just browsing. And it is the easiest objection to turn around and flip. don't take that as the end of a conversation. If somebody says, I'm just looking, I'm just browsing, respond back and go, oh great, what are you looking for?

oh, great, what are you browsing for? And it completely flips that conversation, asks them an open-ended question, which is now going to get that conversation going. And again, all of this, these scripts. sign up for our conversion trainings, our dialed-in webinar, every other Monday. That's led by our conversion coaches, the experts in the scripting, and they dive into this a lot further, but then that daily money plays in our Success Playbook has all of this written out as well.

So, Harry, as you want to look at some other questions, I want to go back up to something Marcus Morgan had asked a couple of minutes ago about the micro-targets. Marcus, I did make a note of Lake Logan Martin that you had put in there to add to your site, as far as the micro-targets we were talking about. So, you'll see

we call them PDQs, but in the quick search section, once I get that added, there will be a link for it, and that will go to the page as it is filtered to only show those. So you can grab that link and put your name, you know, Marcus dot at the front. For what Tamara was talking about earlier for your, agent site that would go any lead that you post, or like, hey, here's a specific spot, and you can send an email or talk to your account manager, like, let us know if you have

other lakes or other, you know, any of those micro-targets, and we can get some of those added to the site, and you'll just see the links populate as we get them added. But you can look for Lake Logan there, you know. later today, tomorrow, it won't take long to get those added, but but I'm not gonna do it live while we're here.

And then as you learn more and more and more about the area, that becomes homes for sale in a school zone, or a zip code. And that is what James and Dan have been talking about today, is… You know, the combination of how our sites are set up. With that marketing automation that we built over the last… Decade plus now. It is one of a kind. So, and even with that, though, you know, the majority of those leads that you get are not going to be hyper-local.

But those are… We would expect will convert more quickly and at a higher rate. I do want to cover… Mark asked this a couple of times. So just… Questions around auto tracks and AI. So, is… Is AutoTrax… Our auto track. Is AI the same thing as AutoTrax? Are they different? You know, how would you recommend people use those cameras?

Alex, the AI, introduces himself. Hey, this is Alex, he introduces himself as the assistant working under you, the agent. But the great thing about Alex is

Alex, the AI, is going to have an organic conversation with the lead. If the lead does respond to that text message, Alex is going to continue that text conversation. Alex is going to ask the leads questions, try to get some insight as to what areas is this person looking in, what are the must-haves they're wanting in at home, and… every conversation is different because it's all based on how the lead's responding, so Alex is…

conversations are never going to be identical from lead to lead, because it's a just true, dynamic conversation based on the the responses we're getting. Now, the other thing about Alex is Alex is gonna notify you. So, if somebody is talking to Alex and having a text conversation, and Alex, our AI, recognizes that this person is interested, or they actually need agent follow-up, meaning

In the conversation, we're getting all the details. This person's telling us the why they want to move, the where, the when they're looking, or sometimes the person actually said, hey, can your agent call me at 3 o'clock on Friday? Alex instantly alerts you to say, hey, this person doesn't need an assistant, they're ready to talk to you, the agent. So…

Alex is really going to have those conversations with the goal of getting the lead warmed up to pass over to you. Now, Alex is not going to make a phone call, so we do want you calling alongside of those text messages. If you do need to turn Alex off on someone, there's always the option to mute Alex.

But you can also send your own text message to the lead from within our platform. You sending your own text to someone is essentially saying, hey, Alex, I don't need you for this text conversation, I'm stepping in, I'm taking the conversation over. Now, auto tracks. our scheduled campaign. So, some people have probably heard of the term drip campaign before. AutoTracks is kind of our fancy term for

a campaign, essentially. But auto tracks are scheduled texts and emails, and even reminders that you can kind of plan out. So you could say, I want this email going out the day a lead registers and signs up, and then 5 days later, I want them to get a text, and then 3 days later, at this time, I want them to get another email. So you can kind of plan and schedule the cadence of things that you want going out.

But they can also include reminders, so if you just want an instant reminder at a point in time to notify you to call the lead on this day. And they can also be scheduled by date, so holidays, for instance. If you want to make sure You send a… Christmas email to everyone, or a Valentine's Day email, or maybe you just want to send something to your leads on the first of every month. You can handpick and say, I want this message to go out on March 1st, this one to go out on April 1st. Now,

I encourage a combination. So, one thing that we do encourage is a best practice, if you're using Alex, Alex is going to be texting your leads. So. AutoTracks, I would focus more on email communication. Let Alex text use those auto tracks for, kind of, nurture campaigns and email campaigns. Now, I do… you can always create your own auto tracks from scratch. We have great, short videos in our Help Center that teach you very quickly how to set one up.

But Sync also has an entire library of templates, where you can just copy our templates and activate them on your site. So, you can customize your own, you can use our templates, you can even do a combination. Use our templates and make some modifications to it. Couple things that I encourage is we have an AutoTrax Information Hub, so if you type in the word AutoTrax in the Help Center, go to the information hub, has everything right in that article. But there's a really great

article called Quick and Easy Auto Tracks to Set Up. That one actually has some of our suggested templates that you activate, but my favorite part is it tells you how to set them up. How do we at Sync recommend you set this up for your leads? So those are some great resources.

Marcus, you've been really engaged on the conversation, in the chat and everything, so if you're in a spot, Whoever wants to raise their hand.

But really during COVID, listings really started to… you know, kind of… I don't want to say come back, but people really started connecting with listings, and I think that was because It was so scarce, you know, it was hard to find a house that you liked and a price that you liked.

Especially, you know, there at the beginning of COVID, And so we've seen that trend really continue, and so we've really kind of focused more, or focused again on that listing side, because it drives the best cost per lead Leads are signing up to see a particular listing. And… We're collecting information on that, you know, we're asking that lead, are you ready to tour homes? you know, do you have a home to sell? That kind of stuff, and that all comes in. So, with that in mind.

We really have a suite of packages that are aimed at marketing your listings. The first is individual listing ads, which is what the… The prize will be if someone can unseat Dan Lott, today, a $200 comp for individual listing ads to promote a specific listing. All those leads, of course, would be routed, or can be routed, however you'd like them into the system. And you can hand… with that, you're hand-picking a listing and saying, I want to promote this for 30 days, whatever it might be.

Then if you have multiple listings that you'd like to promote, we have team listing ads. And that is an automatically updating catalog of your listings from the, from the site. So that can automatically promote your team's listings, the specific agents' listings, we can even do rentals. We know some clients in bigger cities are interested in rental leads, if that makes sense for you. That's something we can do with team listing ads, and that has a ridiculous cost per lead.

I mean, it feels like we're healing from… From Meta. And the leads themselves are, from the people who we've run it with, which is a small size. But has been good. It really just matters if it makes sense. For your market. So… Those are really all geared towards

promoting listings, because again, it goes back to that data. The data that we've seen is people are really connecting with listings right now, because it's hard to find one. And, you know, when we look at, we have, when we look at sales that come from ads on Meta. The biggest driver, by far, is these listing-centric ads, and that's also the shortest time frame. So… We think it's a, we think it's good. Clip that.

So we'll kick Dan out. You'll have 1 minute to do the best you can with 7 questions. It is timed. So if you're not sure, you can pass, and you should pass. You don't have to let James read the full question, but it's advised, because it could turn in a way, like, you know, like a Shyamalan movie. So… With that, I'm going to kick Dan out, and I think Marcus, since I have to be the bad guy, Marcus said yes first. And so, I think we'll bring Marcus on.

To compete. So, Marcus, we're gonna bring you on… on audio only, and then we'll explain a little bit more Oh, and an exciting twist! the guest will be able to use Tamara as a lifeline for a question that they miss. And that will be counted towards the score, so…

Again, we're doing everything we can to make sure Dan loses.

Because Real Social would be in person. And you can come to Sync U for that. If you love the show, thanks very much, and if you're not, if you don't, dang it, messed it up. Don't tell anyone about that, or that you didn't like the show. Have a great day!