Episode 5 - Matt Hart

and perhaps the world. We're still calculating the results minus Alvaro rize, of course, who is on a pillar by himself, Dan Lott, my boss, and the most handsome man in the world. So how are you guys doing? What's on your mind today? If anything.

there is no way I am missing this webinar. I'm absolutely gonna be here mostly because Dan was like James, you're not gonna be missing this webinar. Right? He said. No, sir, I'm logging in. It's gonna be good. I don't know how the Internet quality is, I don't know the video quality, but I'm here. But.

you, you when I think of a salesperson in my head. But like I was, gonna say, like a good salesperson. I'm still off the rails. This is like a lawyer joke. It's turning into a lawyer joke. I don't mean it that way. But you know just Matt always does such a good job of matching. You know the needs of what people have with the products that we offer. And does a great job of. I've learned a lot of of just

you know, the the right way to match products with people just by working with Matt over. Was it 8 years that you said.

for the for the entire time that I've been here right, and I'm sure probably even a long time before that. But our goal as a company is always to keep the agent at the center of the transaction and empower the agent. And I think today's topic with AI is is as pertinent as it is. It could be in terms of highlighting the shift that we've seen over the last 8 years that I've been here right? Always constantly working to be on the leading edge

of development technologies that are going to increase conversions and ultimately transactions for our clients. And so you know, watching that AI revolution happen over the last few years, and I would say.

you know, one of the things that that really, I think we could point out is that sync is usually working on on cutting edge stuff before our competitors are right. We've had an AI solution as a part of our core, foundational, you know, platform and product for the better part now of like 4 years, and and I think

you know a lot of them. A lot of our competitors and and in the competitive landscape have have, like they all, everybody's got AI. Now, right like that's just that's just part of your. If you don't have AI, you're so far behind that you you may as well right like. But.

it? It's really difficult with AI to just build something and deploy like you can't spend 4 years building something, deploy it and have it be its best version of it. Right? Like AI is, it's right machine learning. And AI take time to develop because you need the inputs over time for the for it to get smarter.

And and so I think Sync always being at the cutting edge or the the bleeding edge of those things, and and really trying to get out ahead of the market and understand, you know how to best leverage these new technologies to serve our clients is is something that's been fundamental here in the time that I've seen and what's what's evolved and changed over time.

please be sure to reach out to them. You know, this is more going to be kind of higher level stuff around, you know the AI and and the questions that you have, like Tom, just put in there the questions that we got submitted. But you know we do have another benefit of sync is the best support team in the industry reach out to them. They make me look a lot smarter than I am all the time, and I'm very grateful for them.

But so one of the questions that we did get was around the AI, and so like, I don't know, and I don't know if you guys can see it in the chat, Tom just put it in. Thanks for reprinting it, Tom. he said. I think Alex does a great job, but not at $200 a month for a social agency. So Tommy had to cancel and rely on drip campaigns for touches every 4 to 6 weeks. So, you know, I

I think that's a really interesting question. I don't know if there's a right answer to that, like, I think this is really interesting feedback, because the way that I I look at AI right at $200 a month is, you know, if you set 1, 2 appointments from that I I would feel like, you know, if you were to buy an appointment like a lead in an appointment stage. That's cheaper than that, and that's nurtured from. You know your brand, that's your specific lead.

I don't know. Just kind of throw that out there like, what? What do you guys think about Tom's question? I guess.

21 million dollars. Most expensive home sale in the history of Charleston. That was because of AI. It wouldn't have happened without AI. So again like this. What Harry was, I think he said it, or he was thinking it. You know, if you if you sell one house, because if AI helps you sell one house, it covers it so that one they probably got. I don't know what a commission on a 21 million dollar house is, but it's more than $200 a month. So or I guess that'd be.

yeah. So yeah, because think you can think of it that way. So.

literally thousands of agents every month on my side of the business people who are looking at and and evaluating technologies to help them scale their business. And I I would say, it's a it's a question that comes up an awful lot. So here, here's what I would answer, though right, and especially right now.

in in times when cash flow for agents is so critical. Right? You've got to be really judicious about where you spend your your dollars. And and I think you know, we're we're very sensitive to that, but also at the same time, you've you've got to pick where you think you are going to get the biggest bang for your buck

in in your dollar spent and every every market's different, right? I'm not gonna say that that you know everybody should have the exact same solution for their business. And that's right. That's why there's there's different options out there, and and everybody's got to make that decision for their business. What I can do is tell you what we see across the board, across thousands of of solo agents and teams, and you know. Just in millions of leads generated. We know that having AI

allows people to scale and work more leads right? Like that's kind of the bottom line, the morally, because at the end of the day online online lead generation for real estate is a math equation. And that's really what it boils down to right the the numbers you're working with. Right? Like, if you can work more leads, you're gonna have. You're gonna have better and more predictable revenue for your business.

And that's why we're always encouraging people to to spend more money on ads. Without AI you wouldn't be able to work leads the way that you need to work leads

at at the level of effort. Right? That that a solo agent has a special, particularly for solo agents right like you don't have infinite amount of time. Right? Like, that's your biggest constrained resources, your time. And so you have to have technology to help you work the leads the way that the leads need to be worked. Otherwise you're going to see a drop off in conversion rates.

you know, to to close the leads. And so and I manage the social side of client ad spend as well. So you know a lot of the time those leads take longer on average to close than well, most of the time we would expect that those leads will take longer to than on average to close than a lead from search. And so that I really am excited about the AI, because.

you know, there's there, I think there's less things that are falling through the cracks, you know, when an existing lead re-engages, for instance, what like the the cool thing with the Charleston sale is that lead? They were on vacation. They came. They googled it at like 7 30. AI responded. 5 min later that agent woke up to a 22 million dollar appointment on a Monday, you know. That'll cure the Mondays so like. But I get it at the same time.

you know. I it's interesting because and we've talked about this, but it kind of puts. you know, sink at odds with ourselves because we want. You know, we know AI converts, but it also has, you know, a cost associated for us and the development that goes into it. The research that goes into it. I mean, it's 1 of a kind, I think, you know, and I don't know. That's not an answer.

I don't want to say minor, but not a particularly aggressive goal in terms of transaction cost right? To to cover that. So the math equation makes a lot of sense to me. I like what Lane said on here. In the chat, talking about it, taking the place of an assistant. Harry. If you hadn't mentioned it, I was gonna say the exact same thing that that Charleston deal that lead came in at 8 o'clock on a Sunday night, right? I wasn't sure if Dan had mentioned that. But

it's tough to be on your on the ball to the degree that you're gonna respond to a lead personally like, even if you're willing to make the calls, if you're like, you know, in the game

8 o'clock on a Sunday night you might not text them back, and immediately. But the AI is always. It's always on. It's always got there. And lastly, Eleanor had mentioned that she's canceled and and re-engaged AI over the years. My question is, when was that most recent? Because the updates and in sync AI, I mean, it has been ever evolving and.

millions of leads. Not just not just right, like millions and millions and millions of leads. Right? So by this point, we've got billions of data points telling us what works and what doesn't work helps us to refine to optimize for conversion. Right? And so that's what that's what enables

our agents to scale their operation, because now they can work twice as many leads or 3 times as many leads, and at the end of the day it is a math equation, right? And so you have to. You have to determine for yourself what level of investment you're comfortable with, right? But if if you've got. you know

whatever you pick your pick your dollar amount right like, it's just a math equation. Plug it in. We can help you do that right. Like our our account manager. Your account manager, should be able to help you plug in the numbers and go, hey, if you invest this much in lead, gen, with our tools and our system, this is the output. You should get right. And it's really it really is predictable

because we've done it over millions and millions and millions of leads, thousands and thousands of of real estate agents, tens of thousands of real estate agents. We see this on an annual basis. We continually are optimizing to get those higher conversions and building that right into the system for our clients.

you know you should see the way things used to be from time to time of of it. It gets better in steps. And I think, you know, we're constantly improving. We're constantly innovating. So this feedback is very valid, and you know great. Thank you, Tom. I don't know if that's a right answer, that that's just kind of more.

and it's not just doing it once as a a human. It's doing it every time, you know. And that's and.

we're gonna we're gonna bubble up and continue to work that opportunity. But bubble it up for you so that it becomes like we're waving our hands at you, saying, Hey, this lead wants to talk to you right? It's super super obvious, because it's it's, you know, that's our that's you know. Our our agent ready leads right like they're waving their hands, saying, Hey, I'm ready to talk to an agent. Now.

they've been in the system. They've been being nurtured, you know. They said. They were ready to buy in a year 10 months ago, you know, and now they're coming back from a property alert or so, you know, I think the AI the focus of not just to follow up. But I think where we're headed with the AI, too, of you know you.

Our main goal is to collect leads and surface people that want to speak to you, and you know, to collect leads and help you. It's to streamline this process, it's to, you know. Cut through this numbers game. Mary Jo. I do see your ready to set appointment, I think, are you? I think you mean agent ready? Not the case. Not sure. Why AI says that in the instances, and that is not the case. I will say

So this is definitely a good question for support as well, because they'd be more versed in it than I would be. But I have, you know, seen AI set a lead to agent ready when there's a question that needs human input. you know. So I think, really, just agent ready. A lot of the time is alerting you. That. hey? This is a good time for you to step in and and and text with the lead. I don't know if you were on last month but we had Chelsea Scott and Tamara Ward, and they talked about

a lot about the AI messaging, you know, when to take over that kind of stuff. So that that's a really interesting one. If you have other questions around that. Any thoughts on Mary's comment. Yeah.

and that's right, like. At the end of the day, too. You've got to match the right scripts with the right leads right? The better the better. You can understand what kind of lead you're dealing with. The better. Your opportunity to to convert that that lead to to businesses.

help guide you in your day of you know these are the people that want to talk to me. These are the people that I'm still trying to prospect and just prioritize that, you know. And I guess so. It like one of the things I'm always interested in Matt. and I think you'll have an interesting perspective on it, so like what this feels like. Such a sales salesy question, such a softball! But like what? What really does set sink apart like, what's better.

what's better about sync than like, really, yeah, like the AI to me, I think, is much better than a lot of the competitors I've seen. That hasn't always been the case, but now it is.

there were some major omissions on the Crm. Side for us, right? Like being able to send like birthday reminders was something like, for, for, like the 1st 4 years I was here. We were like, I don't understand. Why can we not do this basic thing that every other Crm can do? I mean, that's no longer the case, I would say, you're you're gonna be hard pressed to find a a feature or a function that sync does not do that everybody else does, and and at this point doesn't do better. But you know.

talk to people who've gotten leads from every other system. We've hired people from every other company that that competes with us, and they all, every last one of them say, syncs, lead. Generation is is hands down better than anything else out there.

and it's the hyper local approach that we take. It's the example that Dan just used on on the the you know, the level of micro targeting. We can do even within those hyper local ad groups that are driving these incredible results for our clients. Right? And so

you know the way that we're doing it is different than with the way everyone else is doing it right. Generally speaking, most companies are out there doing zip code based marketing. They're they're putting a PIN in doing 30 mile radius based marketing sync

has an entirely different way of going out and and maximizing our clients ad budgets based on the markets that they want to serve, driving higher higher value transactions through targeting certain areas and and features within properties, that sort of thing. So we've got the ability to go a lot deeper

than everyone else, I think. And that's really the proprietary technology we've built to manage ad spend and and bids on on Google, for instance, these are tools that other companies just don't have. And so I think that's really what sets us apart.

Here we go and sinks. Syncs built different low key, high key, high key sinks, built different.

partners with our tech team, like the change in the impact to our lead quality. Our cost per lead. The value of the leads to our clients is not just the, you know, the next evolution of what's changed. But when we really partner with tech, it becomes like this, more of a revolution of what we're able to produce. I'm looking back to when we created. Our automation to create niche ad groups

and really get specific and tailored into long tail keywords is the term we're using. But people that are searching gated communities or high rises in Las Vegas, and we can tailor the the ad copy.

the the keyword itself, the landing page that we're driving and and add all that together, so that people are finding what they're looking for with as few clicks as possible. But also Google's relevance is, you know, drives down the cost because Google sees all those things as so relevant to each other. And it's all so tailored together. That was one huge impact of our team really collaborating with tech to build that tool

internally, specifically for what we needed. And right now, what we're working on with tech. And our team has been looking into this, we've been wanting. This is to link the adwords campaigns where the ads are actually run and how we manage them in Google to the leads that are generated in the dashboard. So that way we'll be able to know on our end

not just what was the cost per lead. The conversion rate like data like that. But we'll actually be able to know. Was this a real verified lead? And which of these keywords? Which of the ad copy will be able to run tests on our side, to focus on real verified and eventually to focus. And this is why I bring all of this up to the group of clients eventually to focus on, not just what lead gets generated, but which leads that get generated

are contacted, which are, get to an appointment set status like, where in the pipeline status that we can focus on. And I say all that to say, using the pipeline and setting those leads when you do contact one, to set it to contacted. When you do set an appointment or make an appointment to update that stuff will really be valuable, not just from an engagement perspective. But it'll be very valuable from a lead generation perspective, so that we can focus on generating

more appointments leads, so that we know what terms and what keywords and what niches that we're. You know, these hyper local targeting that we're using what's actually bringing value, not just bringing in leads. So I'm excited about that next big focus for lead generation. As that question came up. But, Matt, while we've got you here. One of my questions is, what have you been working on most like recently? Like, what are you excited about? Where we're going? What's your? You know? The last

3 months, 6 months a year, like as the vice president of our sales team. What are you excited about the direction that you're taking? The team.

Where you're doing idx Legion and Crm all all together in one. And you're seeing a lot more of like piecemeal. Right? So like, you're gonna see combinations of technologies that people are running as their solution that require multiple integrations, things like that. Just and and so everyone knows in the tech world. The more the like multiple integrations just means more potentials for failure. Right? Like, where where things can break, is is really what I mean? And then and then

the 2 companies have to go running around trying to figure out, well, is it broken on your end, or is it broken on your end? And and that takes time to to resolve. Meanwhile, clients are sitting in the middle going. When's my stuff? Gonna get back up. I've got business. I need to do but

you've seen this this sort of like shift towards piecemeal solutions to to, you know. Because everybody's, you know, there's the new thing that comes out, and I want to bolt that on to the thing that I'm using over here that I like, and I don't want to shift and change all over everything. And so and then you've got companies that used to be all in one that are now breaking it up and go. Well, you can just buy this if you only want this

piece or this. If you only want this piece, I I would say that sync is when everybody else is is zigging. Sync is zagging right like. And that's really, I think, what we're what we're working on right now is something that's gonna be pretty transformative, which is an all in one solution. I'm just gonna tease a little bit. I'm not gonna go, too, in depth with it. But where Sync has.

you know, charged for these additional technologies like AI, you know, Tom brought up you know, as an extra $200. We're working on an all inclusive platform where we're even going to provide access to the leads.

And we're gonna do it at a at a lower monthly cost than what you see on our traditional platform. And so the idea is that we're building out what what's more like a real partnership program. I'll I'll call it that. For now where where sync is really partnering with you is your your, the the tech extension of your business if you will. Right? And we're investing in your business, because.

you know, we're so confident in our ability to generate leads and your ability to close those leads and and turn them into transactions that we're willing to put our money where our mouth is right. And so we're going to invest back into our clients. We're gonna build an all inclusive platform of all of those best practices that we know give agents the absolute, best chance of success.

That's all being built into one platform. You're gonna see more about that over the coming months with sync, it's something that we're really excited about. And so I can. I can sort of tease that a little bit, but that's that's what's coming.

how many calls it takes for them to answer the phone to when they set their appointment. When they go under contract. I mean, if you use deals, we can see the property value, and that all goes back into what we then put out there to generate more leads. so I think that you know that access to data is really gonna be a a. it's what you know sets us apart from just because someone thinks something's gonna work. We know exactly what does work.

And you know, this is what you should do. And you know, since I see a lot of ads for pay it closing kind of companies. And usually they haven't been around for very long. And there's probably a reason for that, and they're usually not around for very long. After that, you know, Sync has been around for 10 years.

That's a it's a viable business model. It's great for Zillow. It's it's less great for agents who are paying 40% of of their their commissions to zillow after the fact. And when you look at a cost per sale, analysis between something like sync and something like zillow flex. You you're gonna see that zillow is astronomically more expensive and much, much more difficult to scale the business with. Right and and.

how much do you want to pay for someone else to do that right? And we think that there should be something in between right like there's there's the tradition, the traditional sync model. And then there's the Flex model where they're taking nearly half of of your money. We think there should be something that that sits somewhere in the middle there, right like where you can, you can enable people with the tools and technology to be successful and scale their business in a meaningful way, but not take.

you know, 40 45%. And they're moving. I I you know, I hear people saying that they think they're moving even higher than that in the future. So you know it. It just depends on on what level, what level of work you, the agent, want to put into it. But again, and this is the point with with technology and AI, and using automation to help you manage a larger volume of opportunity, which is what gives you the scalability? Right?

I could probably talk about that for for hours in and of itself as a topic, but.

till we come back from break. So Tom, thanks for hanging out, but and again, let me know if I'm the way I understand your question, Tom, you said, can you discuss how you may limit zip codes or markets for other agencies in an area, and leads possibly repeating to another agency. So my understanding of that is like oversaturation. How do we make sure that we are not oversaturating a market and either generating the same lead on across multiple sites, or I guess, driving up the cost per lead for.

the early days. And that is because the way Google because of the way Google's ads were run. There's something called the I guess it was impression share. So we would do this very complicated analysis of like based on a normal, you know, if somebody's searching homes for sale in Asheville, like, what are the odds that somebody is going to see a sync ad. And then, because of the way they used to have, like 2 rows of ads. And so you could see the same. Technically.

you can see this. You could see the Sync ads, like 6 versions of it, based on the thing. It's like, that that's that's.

There's nothing unique about sync in terms of the the spending of the money. And like, Oh, yeah, by having another sync person that's going to. They're all independent. They're not. Well, one. Okay. One thing that's very important is that

not not to get too technical is that each of the each client at sync is its own separate account, so they have no relationship to any anybody else. If they were, if they could be set up, and I assume some competitors would have it set up so that they would be campaigns versus accounts, in which case that would, you would negatively impact the other clients. But because we have it set up as accounts, they're completely separate entities. Google doesn't even

Google doesn't know that they're they're both run by by sync. So they're not. It's not like, okay. they're not rotating. It's like, okay. Well, site, a can go now. Okay, now, we're going to write now. The next time somebody searches for that same keyword we're going to have Site B like that. It's not like that. It's because they're completely separate entities, like, if if we have a boomtown or bull trail, or whoever it is, or whatever one of the competitors.

the it's the same. So it doesn't really impact it. And we don't see like adding another person another client hurting the what

it doesn't affect like the cost per click or the cost per lead. So anyway. So I think we were worrying a little. We we justifiably were worried about it because there would be some weird searches that, like we, we bid on some weird search terms that nobody else bids on. So in the early days we would have like this, these kind of these weird searches we do. And it's like, Oh, these are all sick ads that looks really bad. Now, now that doesn't happen. And before it was an issue. Now it's now it's not to be

Facebook bought Meta. It's why Facebook bought Insta or not. Meta bought threads. Sorry. That's why Facebook bought Instagram or Meta, who knows whatever. But it's like the reason that they're doing that is to expand the eyeballs on and to have more places to show ads and overall. It drops

the lead costs, you know, if if you have it managed properly, and I think you know one of the other things that you know one of those articles about AI, Max and Google pushing more ads for AI, you know more AI generated ads and Meta. You know Mark Zuckerberg just mentioned the the term infinite creative. which means like, instead of people making ads, you can still make ads. But you would just go to Meta and say, find people that are interested in

a real estate. Crm, and they would do the rest, you know. I mean, I think that's to me that's always dangerous, you know the more control that you seed to the billing person. the company controlling the costs, you know. But they're gonna make that easier and easier and easier. And you know, I think someone with campaigns that are managed like syncs will benefit from that. As things get more cookie cutter and less people know what they're doing

because they're using AI. I don't know is that a crazy take.

some of the stuff we do like. So Google this week announced something called but it was, Search a AI for.

of the kind of the experts, so that everybody does well. And so we're always hesitant about like arbitrarily turning on any sort of AI or any sort of and like any of the any of the automation that they do, because

were able to beat the market by not doing that. And but some of them have the benefits. And I was just noticed that in the internal email they had the same number of like, Oh, yeah, you're going to get like 27% more leads for the for roughly, the same amount of cost per lead. It's like, okay. And then you said that same number with this other thing. It's okay, maybe just 20. You've tested the fact that 27 is a nice number that people like to use in terms of improvement

because it doesn't say anything really. But anyway, long story short, I guess one of the good things about sync is that you know we will test it, and we will see how it. how it affects accounts, how it affects lead, flow, how it affects the quality of the leads, quantity of the leads, one of the things we do as part of. Like, we mentioned the Ad group creation tool, we create a lot of landing pages that are hype, like the hyper focused. So that plays well with

AI, because those will be the landing pages that AI would send the visitor to if our competitors don't have those landing pages. They won't get those searches. So that's that's what happens now. And that could happen in the future that would would have in the future. If we decide to do it, we we generally don't like hop on the thing like the 1st week, because, oh, it's all this is great. Google says it's gonna be great. Let's flip it on. No, we'll test it, test, test it, and then see? Like, Oh, yeah, 6 months down the road, or whatever we'll, we'll flip it on if it works.

And so the only reason that they would do. It is because you're gonna have to spend more money to get the same results, using their guided like they now control how expensive something is, and you need someone that is looking at things like what Rlsa, you know, when the Google Rep came over and talked for 3 days about something that we had tested. and it didn't. And that was just his Kpi to get people on Rlsa like they are a business.

And so like, Yeah, I want to play. You know, we want to play nice with Meta and Google. But ultimately we probably at this point. like we probably know a lot more about it than they know. The reps that we talk to, you know, because.

3 seconds to build it with the automation. So there's that value, I would say we definitely have more keywords that don't get searched, or that don't ever, you know, like, throw an ad because we have just millions and millions of keywords in the campaign, and that a classic 80, 20, or even 90 10 rule right? Like 10% of the terms, get 90% of the traffic for the most part.

But because of that, yeah, a lot of the ads for those keywords when it is very specific to waterway access in whatever city, you know might not get searched very often. but when it does, that guy's finding what they're looking for, we're there for them.

would, anyway. So we can have a better position at a lower cost because of how relevant it is. So maybe that answers your random question.

it always has some of the best. I mean, people get on and and stay on. And we appreciate that people interact. We appreciate that. So thank you so much. Thanks for being with sync. We, we love you and hang out with.