Gregory Charlop: When a real estate agent hires someone through you, do they keep working with the same person or do they cycle through different people?
Daniel Ramsey: Our business is a one-to-one model. So, if you're a broker or an agent and you need leverage, and you've identified the things that you should not be doing, or you don't like doing, or isn't the highest and best use of your time, we'll group them into functional areas. You have sales, marketing, and operations. Those are the three functional areas that we support as a company.
Once we group those tasks, we’ll go after your outcomes. Typically, sales are more listings. Typically, marketing is getting more eyeballs on your listings. And operations is doing all of the paperwork required to get paid. Those are the three things. It's not rocket science. It's a very simple process. With 1.2 million real estate agents in the country, nothing is new in this space. So, those are the three typical areas that we support. The biggest thing that you can do is get very specific on what the outcomes are within those three areas and then hire to those outcomes.
Gregory Charlop: Without getting into specific prices, how do virtual assistants charge? Is it by the hour, by the month? Can it be by the project or by the property, or are there different models depending on what you're trying to do?
Daniel Ramsey: I would say there are three or four models. There's a per transaction virtual assistant. So, you could get somebody just to do your transaction coordination or your listing coordination. Then, some services are by task. So, I need my marketing set up from zero to 100, and you can pay a fee to have all of that done. New cards, new website, all that stuff. There are task-specific needs like, "I need a new website designed," and somebody says, "Oh, I can do a website." And, those people can get together for a per project cost.
There are staffing companies like ours. When we hire a client, and we really view it like hiring a client, we're creating a match. Our goal, the vision for the company, is for those matches to be forever, a client for life. The reality is, when you're growing, your biggest obstacle is finding talent. And, that's what we do for people. That's our value proposition: we find great talent.
So, those are the four or five different models out there. If you're new, you probably ought to do a per transaction thing, and a per project thing until you generate enough business where you can handle a full-time person.
Gregory Charlop: How can hiring a virtual assistant provide more stability for an organization?
Daniel Ramsey: One of the biggest challenges in the real estate space is, once you've reached a particular size—let's say you're doing a couple hundred transactions—losing one person on your team can create mass chaos. Stability becomes the winner of the day. A lot of our folks will be a backup to the transaction coordinator. Or, the listing coordinator will be a virtual assistant, and the operations manager will be somebody who's physically in the office, so you have some redundancy. That way, if somebody's out sick, their business continues. If somebody needs a vacation, he or she can actually go on a vacation.
So, at some stage, the stability of having two people capable of doing one job becomes critical.
Gregory Charlop: One of the premises of this book is that technology, including the transparency of the MLS, enables the top real estate agents to leave these larger firms and, more or less, strike out on their own. They would potentially go to very low cost, or internet-type brokerages that charge low fees and provide few services. After all, they've already got a great client base. They're excellent agents. They don't need much help. So, what they want is to keep most of their commissions.
My feeling is that more and more we'll see a lot of these top agents leave and essentially strike out on their own, as much as legally possible. Do you feel that virtual assistants make that process easier? In other words, a top agent could say, "Listen, I don't need this office anymore. I'll just have a virtual assistant. I'll go out on my own and enjoy more independence."
Daniel Ramsey: What I love about what you're saying is there's a transition going on within our industry. Brokers used to control 80-90 percent of the business because you needed a brand. Associates needed recognition. People were like, "Wait, who are you with?" And, now that doesn't matter.
Through the enablement of technology, relationships have been the winner of the day. If the broker maintained all the relationships with the market, they're winning. If the agent maintained the relationship with a market, that agent has a lot of power. We have several clients who have negotiated with their broker a 98 or a 97 percent split, which was just unheard of 20 years ago.
To answer your question, I think that smart brokers are going to start looking for ways to provide value to their agents, so they stay relevant. A great office is going to matter. All the transaction coordination and listing coordination built in. All the marketing built in. And, you're going to see brokers become the market's relationship. I've seen a lot of this happening, where a broker will create a purpose-based business goal. You know, "We're going to support this orphanage," or, "We're going to do this good work in the community." And then, enlist their agents into that. You have to create some stickiness that is just beyond a name and reputation.
Virtual assistants are just a byproduct of the internet just being so awesome. It's kind of like Netflix. Their business model wasn't streaming stuff online initially. Their business model was to compete with Blockbuster, just doing it through the mail. So, technology changed, and they had to shift. That shift has been great for everybody. I think, over time, our industry is going to transform. It's going to be great for the consumer, it's going to be great for our industry, and everybody will win.
Gregory Charlop: In this book, we've interviewed several executives from online brokerages. I think that this type of technology would be a perfect match for those types of companies.
Daniel Ramsey: Here's what your challenge is: In the real estate space, and I'm sure you've heard this before, it's not an 80/20 rule like in most worlds. It's almost a 90/10.
I mean, 90 percent of the agents do almost none of the business. So, I think your online brokers are going to get all those people. That 10 percent is still very much up for grabs, because the rest of the agents need training, they need business support, they need a brand, they need a purpose-based goal for their business, they need a home. They want to have a business worth owning.
Most real estate companies cannot be sold. Meaning, you can spend 30 years working as a broker and, ultimately, because you've never set up systems and processes, and you never had leverage, and it's all about the broker. That makes it tough to sell your brand. The broker or the team leader is the relationship with the marketplace.
So, a lot of really smart brokers are starting to warm up to the idea of virtual assistants, setting up leverage, and creating processes and brands that aren't centric to them so that they can sell their business. We love that because that's what I did. And, that's what we help people do.
Gregory Charlop: That's an excellent point. Technology and virtual assistants may be a great way of helping you with your business, but it also may be a great way of helping you exit your business when you're ready to retire or move to something else.
I appreciate you mentioning the purpose-based business because we touch on that in this book. I like the idea of philanthropy and the real estate community giving back.
Daniel Ramsey: I got introduced to a guy in Southern California. He's turned into a great friend. We've done some traveling together. He has this tremendous purpose-based synergy around this business where he gives a percentage of every single listing that he gets back into the world. And, they've created a non-profit. Every quarter they give money, and every year they get to choose their three charities. I think it's compelling because the market responds.
You walk into a contract negotiation and the people on the other side are saying, "I'm going to try to get Daniel to sell our property for 3 percent and not take a commission." As a broker, it's like, "How do I
get them to give me 6 percent?" Well, you can make that conversation disappear—literally disappear—by having a purpose-based business. We've created our own non-profit called The MOD Movement, and we give back to our community. For example, we support orphans in the Philippines. Last time we were there we had over 120 people volunteering at Boys Town, which is an orphanage in the Philippines. So, when we join with a client, we're not only saying, "Hey, we're going to help grow your business," but, "We're also going to positively impact the world."
Gregory Charlop: That's great. It's good for you, and it's good for the community at large. I'm happy you've mentioned that. I want to switch gears a little bit. One thing people might worry about with virtual assistants is security. Should real estate agents be concerned about the safety of their client information or trade secrets? How do they know that that stuff will be protected if they use a virtual assistant as opposed to someone in their office?
Daniel Ramsey: That is an excellent point. First of all, we are a corporation here in the U.S. So, you and I, Gregory, we would be in a contract. And, we have certain rights and responsibilities as contracted. We're also a corporation in the Philippines. So, we are a legal entity in the Philippines, and we sign contracts with all of our virtual assistants. We have legal representation with all of our virtual assistants. We have insurance. We're doing FBI grade background checks.
So, not only are we taking the precautions, but we've created legal entities. We are holding the bag in terms of making sure that we're finding the best talent. Now, I'm not saying you should give your credit card to your virtual assistant. I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is that they really can't do much with intellectual property or a client list. Think about it like this: If you're a broker and somebody calls you and says, "Hey, I've got a client list of 10,000 people who have bought or sold a property in Sacramento (my home market). Would you like to buy it?" Nobody's going to buy that. You're going to think “fraud” right away. Also, credit cards don't work over there.
We're in real estate; there are no trade secrets. Everybody who's listening or reading this book who thinks, "Oh, I have a trade secret." Reality is, it's been done before. The secret sauce in being a real estate business owner is execution. It's always execution and leverage. If you can figure out those two things, you win. My suggestion is to go slow with your virtual assistant. Get to know them. Don't give them sensitive information on day one. You might want to hold off. We have a lot of title reps, and mortgage professionals, and lawyers, and insurance brokers who have access to all that stuff. You have to have a system to input the information and protect yourself as a company. However, errors and omissions cover all that. You'll be fine, in my opinion.
Gregory Charlop: Do you have any technological tools that you think real estate agents should be using but are not utilizing to their full potential now?
Daniel Ramsey: If you're a new person in real estate, your first thing is a CRM. You should go with a top three. Just choose the largest one that has the most tools. There's a lot of cool project management stuff. SkySlope is an excellent technology for transaction coordination.
I like Listings to Leads, which is, in my opinion, the number one listing- based marketing platform. However, there are a lot of platforms out there. QuickBooks is easier to use for real estate companies. You can get a chart of accounts inside QuickBooks now, for the first time as a real estate broker, which is cool.
There's a lot of stuff going on with lead automation, meaning a lead comes in, they get a text message immediately, there's a task to give them a call, they get a welcome email.
I like what SkySlope is doing. They're building automation into their transaction coordination. They're spending a lot of money on R&D, which is unusual in the real estate space. So, they're a great partner.
I also like Firepoint and I really like LionDesk. I appreciate some of the stuff at Sales DialerThey're an automated follow-up campaign using a phone. You can get a four-line dialer. As a real estate agent, your highest and best use is talking to people. Yet, most people are still dialing with their cell phones. Now, Sales Dialer says, "We can automate that." They'll link up with your CRM. Then, instead of dialing with a cell phone, you're dialing four numbers at once and automatically dropping voicemails for the ones that don't answer and putting you on the phone with the person who does answer. So, you can imagine, if I have 10,000 people in my database and I'm using a four-line dialer, I can get through that entire database in, I don't know, I week. Whereas, if you were manually dialing, it's just an impossibility to get through that.
Interview with Michael Lam, chatbot expert and CEO of Kaydoh
Gregory Charlop: Michael, what is your background and how did you get into chatbots?
Michael Lam: I’m the founder of Kaydoh, a real estate technology company. I got started with chatbots years ago when I was at GoHire. It wasn't a chatbot company to begin with. It was a job board company, and my responsibility was to drive traffic and get people to look for jobs that met their criteria. But people were just bouncing around the website, and we didn’t know why. We did everything in terms of best SEO practice, but people were just bouncing all over the page. The homepage was a very simple page. All it had was a search screen.
We put in a live chat and started speaking to our visitors. To our astonishment, more often than not, our visitors would come back with a common problem. They would be more open to speaking with us in long-winded sentences. I would introduce myself saying, "Hi, I'm a recruiter. How can I help you?" I would get replies back saying, "Hi Michael, I'm looking for part-time jobs in Kansas City." All I would do was reply back saying, "Not a problem. Give me a few moments." I would take that and do the search for them. We gave them that link and they were on their way, satisfied.
Then, my co-founder Jonathan Duarte and I thought, "How can we automate this thing?" We were bootstrapped. We couldn't hire anyone, and that spawned chatbots. It was perfect timing because that’s when Facebook released an open platform to plug in automated messaging.
Gregory Charlop: We probably have readers who are not familiar with chatbots. Can you tell us what they are and what they do?
Michael Lam: Chatbots are automated messaging systems that reply conversationally. That's all they are. Often, the media will confuse chatbots with AI, but they're different concepts.
Gregory Charlop: How does the chatbot know what to say? Would the creator of the chatbot need to program in responses for everything?
Michael Lam: There are chatbots out there that can chit-chat with you. They use what’s called NLP, natural language processing. Other chatbots are rule-based. You could think of them as a flowchart. They go down a specific path. It may ask, "Are you interested in purchasing this product? Yes or no?" If they say “no,” the chatbot may take them to a sale. If they say “yes,” the chatbot will present the prospect with a list of the products to purchase.
Gregory Charlop: Would someone employing a chatbot program it themselves or would the chatbot vendor do the programming?
Michael Lam: There are platforms that allow anyone to create a chatbot in five minutes. But, that doesn't mean that it's going to be an effective chatbot. There are platforms that let you can create it mostly yourself. You manually update the responses and connect the pieces as people go through a specific funnel. You use a particular script that you have designed upfront.
A lead capture chatbot generally will solicit five key pieces of information, like, "What's your first name, last name, what's your email, possibly your mobile number, and what product are you interested in?" You need to decide how to ask that and in what order. A platform will allow you to plug in those questions and collect that information. However, you do need to be involved to put the pieces together. Generally, it needs to be put in your own CRM or in your email. Platforms may or may not provide that type of automation. If you’re technically savvy and you feel like you can do it yourself, you can use these platforms relatively cheaply. Again, some of them don�
��t require technical knowledge. For example, ManyChat is a good tool you can set up really quickly.
Some vendors have a team to help you. You tell them, "This is what I'm thinking, I want lead capture. These are the five questions that are most important to me and to qualify this lead." Then, have them design a script and put it on the platform you want. This platform could be Facebook Messenger, WeChat, a website as a web chat, on SMS, or even Skype. There are different ways you could use that bot, but then you would have to consider the monthly cost as well as the post-implementation fee.
Gregory Charlop: If someone wanted to use chatbots but they didn't have any idea how to program them, they could hire someone to arrange everything for them—program it, monitor it—and pay them an initial fee plus a monthly fee to do that?
Michael Lam: Yes. Generally, the costs of a vendor are setup, implementation, and maintenance. You have to allocate resources for maintenance. A chatbot is not like software where we can just purchase it and have it automatically work on its own. It's an ongoing project. You can create the script, but then, as a business owner, just like with a website, you always need to figure out how to convert the user. You're making changes to your website. Similarly, with a chatbot, you're looking at the analytics and how people are speaking to your chatbot, trying to figure out a better way to have a better conversation that can lead to a sale—
if that's your goal.
Gregory Charlop: Bringing the discussion back to real estate, how would a real estate agent use a chatbot, and why would they use a chatbot rather than just answering questions themselves or hiring someone to answer questions for them?
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