They are two of the most common questions real estate agents ask us: How do I get more HomeLight leads? How do I convert more HomeLight leads? To answer those questions, we have to begin by doing something most companies won’t do: explain how our algorithm works. That’ll help you understand what you can do to get more leads. To convert them, we’ll share what we learned from our internal study of what successful agents do when they first call a new HomeLight lead. On this week’s episode of The Walkthrough, HomeLight’s Director of Agent Success, Steve Mason, explains what agents can do to get more HomeLight leads, and shares excerpts from a top agent’s first call to learn how you can convert more HomeLight leads. If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe to get future episodes delivered automatically: Apple Podcasts/iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | YouTube If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe to get future episodes delivered automatically: Apple Podcasts/iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | YouTube We’ve launched a Facebook community . Come join us to connect with other listeners, connect with the guests that you hear on the show, learn from other agents and share your knowledge, get exclusive content, influence future episodes, and more. You can find the group here: HomeLight Agent Community – The Walkthrough. (SPEAKER: Matt McGee, Host) Long before I joined HomeLight, I did SEO for a living — search engine optimization. I helped businesses big and small, rank better and get more traffic from Google, Bing, and back in the day, like, Yahoo, and others. But mainly Google. Now, Google uses hundreds of ranking signals, maybe thousands by now, in its algorithm. And they are constantly changing that algorithm. So I always thought it was cute when a client would say something like, “Matt, you know some of the people at Google, can’t you ask them how their rankings work?” That’s just not how it works. Google doesn’t explain what’s in the algorithm. Facebook doesn’t explain how its algorithm works. It’s just not something that companies do. But how about if we change that today? On today’s show, we’re going to talk all about how the HomeLight algorithm works, how we choose which of you get the buyer and seller leads that come from our website. When you understand that, you can start to get more HomeLight leads. We’re also going to share how you can convert more leads by nailing that first call with the buyer or seller. You’ll even hear some clips from what we think is an almost perfect first call. So if you’re interested in getting and converting more HomeLight leads, you’re in the right place. This is “The Walkthrough.” (INTRO MUSIC) Hello, hello, everybody. How are you doing? I’m Matt McGee, editor of HomeLight’s Agent Resource Center. Welcome to “The Walkthrough.” On this show you’ll learn what’s working right now from the best real estate agents and industry experts in the country. At HomeLight, we believe in real estate agents, and we’re on a journey to find out how great agents grow their business, stand out from the crowd, and become irreplaceable. Do you want to get involved in the show? There’s a few different ways you can do that, you can leave a voicemail or send me a text, the number is 415-322-3328. You can send an email to walkthrough [at] homelight.com or just find me in our Facebook listener community. Go to Facebook, search for HomeLight Walkthrough, and it will come right up. Every Monday, we send out an email to thousands of agents like you. Chances are, you get this email. It’s the one where we’re telling you what the latest Walkthrough episode is all about. And every Monday, as soon as the email goes out, I start getting replies. “How do I get more leads?” That’s the number one question I get via email, the number one question I get when a real estate agent finds out that I work at HomeLight. Back in January, in fact, I was at Inman Connect in New York City, and we had a HomeLight booth there. So I was hanging out in the booth with some of my co-workers, and the most common questions we got: “How do I get more leads?” “How do I convert those leads?” My guest today is one of those co-workers who was also working the booth, chatting with agents like you, answering those same questions. Steve Mason is HomeLight’s Director of Agent Success. This summer, Steve’s team had a big project. They wanted to figure out what the agents who have positive results with HomeLight do differently from the ones who don’t. And by “positive” I mean the call ended with the agent setting an appointment. Well, Steve’s team studied more than 2,000 calls involving 300-plus agents. Steve also did personal interviews with dozens of our best agents across the country, again, trying to find out what they do to convert HomeLight leads. Steve is on “The Walkthrough” today to share what he and his team learned. Before we get started, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page, so here’s our jumping-off point. A buyer or seller calls HomeLight or visits our website to find a great agent. We ask them a few questions, like, “Where are you located?”, “What price range are you looking in?”, “What’s your timeline?”, stuff like that. And then once we know that info, the algorithm kicks in and says, “Here are two or three agents that we think would be a great fit to help you buy or sell this home.” So the first half of our conversation is all about HomeLight’s algorithm, how you get matched with buyer and seller leads, and what you can do to get more leads. Then we’re going to talk about converting those leads. What makes a great first call when the lead comes in? So grab a pen or open up your laptop, whatever, you might want to take some notes as we go. Here is my conversation with HomeLight’s Director of Agent Success, Steve Mason. (BEGIN CONVERSATION) Steve: A buyer, seller, they know they want to transact, they don’t necessarily know how or who they’ll transact with. They find HomeLight through a bunch of different ways, and eventually they arrive at us, and more times than not they’re speaking with an actual human being that’s going to go and qualify that lead. That human being, a home consultant, in Phoenix, Arizona … Scottsdale, Arizona, is asking them all sorts of questions to try to uncover what’s going on. And then we take that into account. So what the actual algorithm is looking at, because, again, that’s what’s gonna produce those two to three agents that we’re serving up to that client, you nailed a couple of them, is taking geography. What kind of property type are they interested in, or are they selling? What’s their price point? Are they looking for someone with a specific expertise? So we’ll parse through transaction data to see…let’s say that you’re really great with lakefront properties, something simple like that, or maybe not so simple, but that’s your expertise. We’re gonna try to uncover that when they’re talking to that home consultant. The other things that algorithm is looking at is, what’s your transaction volume by year? What’s your sell-to-list price ratio? What’s your average days on market? So those are kind of the data entry points. Then we also take into account your history with HomeLight referrals. And what I mean by that, it’s two things. Do you have a fast initial response to HomeLight referrals? So when we send you something, are you getting on it within the first 5, to 10, to 15 minutes, or are you letting it sit? If you’re letting it sit, obviously, we don’t want to send our really well-vetted client to an agent that’s not going to take action on it right away. Are you providing us timely updates? So we have an agent portal in which we’re asking you to give us updates along the way, “Did you meet with this individual in person? Oh, great. You won the listing. Fantastic. Is it coming soon? Is it in escrow?”, etc, etc. We’re asking for those updates. And then finally, where I really hammer in on these call coaching is your success rate with HomeLight referrals. Meaning, the more you win, the more favorably the algorithm will view you. Matt: Okay, so let’s break that down a little further, because you just sort of listed four or five different things. So number one, I think there’s this relevance factor, right? So if somebody is looking for a home in… all right, I’m up in Washington, somebody is looking for a real estate agent in Tacoma, we’re probably not going to match them with an agent in Seattle because that’s 45 minutes or an hour up the freeway. So there’s relevance that would be neighborhood or town, zip code. How granular do we get there? Steve: Yeah, that’s a great question. I could give you the internal answer, we look at a bunch of different things. But yeah, zip code is primarily because the agent can set zip code preferences within their agent portal, and so we’re going to look at zip code. Matt: Okay. So there’s also then, you talked about market performance, right? We’re looking for agents that sell a lot of homes in that area, but also sell…you talked about the type of home, so lakefront. Maybe is it safe to say then if we have an agent that does a lot of sales in condos or co-ops, we may be less likely to match them with somebody looking for a single-family home? Steve: Yeah, that could be. I tend to think of that one as, like, price point, right? Matt: Okay. Steve: Price point and property type, in my eyes or my head, kind of go hand in hand in that way. Or if you’re someone that is looking in Tacoma at a million-dollar property, we’re probably not going to try to match you with someone who that would be a big stretch for them. We’d want to make sure that we’re matching you with someone that has the experience level there in order to execute on that particular transaction. And so again, like, you said, relevancy is a really great way to put it. We’re trying to serve up the most relevant matches to what the client, eventual referral, is telling us so we can facilitate that transaction is as effortlessly as possible. Matt: Okay, so that makes sense. So relevancy and then market performance. Obviously, we’re looking for agents that are having success that matches what the buyer or seller is looking for. Then you also talked about HomeLight performance as well, right? So their success with, specifically with, HomeLight leads is part of the algorithm as well. Steve: Yeah, how they respond to HomeLight referrals, how they update us on their journey along the transaction process, and then how far they’re able to take those referrals through that transaction process. In other words, are they able to transact with our clients that we send them? Matt: I think maybe agents or listeners might be a little surprised where you were talking about responding quickly, and that that is part of the matching algorithm. And I would just say to listeners, think about it this way, right? Like, you are not only our client, but the buyer or seller is our client as well, and we want to provide the best experience for that buyer or seller that we can. And in order to do that we need to match that buyer or seller with agents that are going to respond in a quick way. And if the agent doesn’t, then it makes HomeLight look bad. Steve: That’s right. Yeah, the way that I look about that is they’ve taken the time, they have dedicated the time to going online to fill out some kind of documentation saying, “This is the thing that I want.” And then even a step further, if they’ve talked to a home consultant, they’ve taken the time to actually answer their phone and talk about what they want. That person is never going to be more ready to have that conversation. So much so that one of the things that we’re really pushing right now, and we’re seeing great success on both ends, is this idea, this concept, called warm transfer, in which, at the point that that home consultant has that client on the phone, we’re directly transferring and involving an agent at that point. Because again, the intent is never going to be higher. And the fear there, if I could expand just for a second, is we get off the phone with that potential referral, they’re excited, and they’re waiting now on these two to three agents to contact them. If that doesn’t happen quickly, they might just go out and hit up a friend, “Do you have an agent?” They might go to Google, Facebook, a Yelp, a Bing, wherever you might find that information. And so we feel really confidently that the agent partners that we’re working with are going to be the best bet for those clients, and we want to make sure that we’re matching them up as quickly as possible. Matt: I have a feeling some listeners might be wondering and wanting me to ask you, Steve, “Why does it matter how quickly they provide updates in the agent portal?” Steve: It’s a way of checks and balances, right? It’s we want to make sure that not only are we doing a great job on the upfront, because like you said, we’re servicing both sides of the fence here. We have an entire operation just trying to make sure that clients are aware of us and that we’re doing a really great job with clients. And then another side that I help, which is making sure that agents are winning… In order to ensure both of those sides are happening, we want to make sure that we’re aware of how far along in that transaction that’s progressing. Matt: One more thing I want to unpack from what you talked about in terms of the algorithm, you talked about account preferences. Can you expand a little bit into how that impacts the algorithm? What are the things that an agent should be looking at in their account to sort of influence the leads that they get? Steve: The main things that we want to make sure is, as far as the overall question, to go back to it, like, “How do I show up in this thing?” It’s like, make sure your transaction data is really up to par, you’re uploading your transaction information, and then you’re setting accurate preferences. And so let’s say that you only, that example we had of the million-dollar home in Tacoma, let’s say you only want to deal with luxury purchases, and you define luxury as $1 million up. Great, you’re gonna want to put that in your preferences so we’re not sending you that single-family home valued at $300,000, whatever it might be. Let’s say you are only interested in talking to buyers, you want to talk to buyers. You want to make sure that you go in and update those preferences. And vice versa, if you only want to chat with sellers, you’re updating those preferences. So you have a decent amount of control over what happens. Of course, what I tell agents when they ask me about that — the more you limit your preferences, the more you limit your preferences, meaning that just the amount of potential referrals we send you goes down, and down, and down. Matt: They can also specify what areas they work in, as well. And that, obviously, that has to be part of the algorithm too. Steve: Yep, exactly. Just like we talked about with the geographic portion or component of the algorithm. Yep, just like you said, there’s plenty of … A lot of people like to use Phoenix, where I’m at right now, as the example where there’s 55 miles of driving in the Greater Phoenix area, it’s very sprawled. One side of that, if you have expertise in there, most likely you don’t have expertise on the other side. So you definitely want to make sure that those location preferences are up to date. Matt: So that’s a look at how HomeLight’s matching algorithm works. There’s four main pieces, as you heard, relevance, your market performance, your HomeLight performance, and your account settings. I’ll give a deeper recap of all those during the takeaways segment later. That’s the most common question Steve and I get, “How do I get more leads?” The number two question we get, is, “How do I convert HomeLight leads?” Remember all those phone calls that Steve’s team studied? This is where they come into play. I asked Steve to share what we’ve learned from studying those calls. What are successful agents doing when they get a HomeLight lead? Steve’s going to talk about that. And we’re also going to play three sound bites from one of those calls. You’re going to hear Katie, an inside sales agent with the Lance Loken Team in Houston, Texas. You’ll also hear the homeowner, but we’re going to disguise her voice for the sake of privacy, so a heads up about that. All right, let’s get back to the conversation. I’ve just asked Steve, “What does a successful call sound like with a new HomeLight lead?” Steve: There’s three main sections to these calls. There’s the intro, introduction, the convo, which is the meat of this thing, and then the close. Pretty simple, it’s three steps. And so the intro, what we found is that these clients, these referrals, have already gone through HomeLight. So they’ve entrusted HomeLight to help them make this decision. When agents introduce themselves as being referred by HomeLight, it went a long way. It immediately alleviated any confusion that was coming in, and the client or referral immediately knew what this call was about. The other thing that’s important to keep in mind there is if you’re calling on a part of a team, on behalf of a team, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re putting in some kind of reference to your team lead. And so you wouldn’t want to say, “Hi, this is Steve, I’m calling as referred by HomeLight,” when the referral could potentially be, “Well, I wanted Matt. I wanted Matt.” And you’re like, “Oh, yeah, I’m calling on behalf of Matt’s team. Sorry about that. I forgot.” So we want to make sure that we’re really upfront, “Hey, this is Steve, I was referred by HomeLight, I’m calling on behalf of Matt’s team.” That’s a really solid intro. It’s that simple. It’s making sure that they know that you’re calling as referred by HomeLight and who you’re calling with. Matt: Can we listen to sort of a sample phone call? I think you shared a couple clips with me. One of them, I believe, is just a real quick, good example of what an intro should sound like. Do you want to introduce that? Steve: Yep, for sure. So this is a very short clip. I think it’s like three seconds long. And it is the first interaction between this member of a team, she’s an ISA on a team in Houston, a very large team. And I want you to listen to how this first interaction goes, because she’s going to nail that intro part we just talked about. She’s going to introduce herself as her name, the team that she’s a part of, so there’s no confusion there, and the website, HomeLight, that referred her. Steve: Yes, see, that was very simple. It’s not a whole lot in the actual conversation of the intro that we found that was a similarity from one agent to the next that’s winning listings. But what we did here was exactly that. They’re referred by HomeLight, they’re introducing themselves, and they’re talking about their team. There’s a couple other things that Katie, this agent here, and other agents that find success, do before the call that don’t necessarily come out in the actual calls themselves. Let me go over those real quick. And some of them are kind of high level like, “Of course, they would do that.” The first one is, be fast and focused. And what I mean by that is, again, we talked about how fast and how quick you’re able to respond to these referrals impacts the algorithm. So I’m encouraging you to be as fast as possible. The focused part is really interesting. So in my interviews with top agents, when I ask them how they think about these calls… There is a gentleman by the name of Chris Benson. He is out here in Mesa, Arizona, although I did interview from all over the country. He let me know that when he receives specifically HomeLight referrals, because he knows the quality is so good, and if he’s at something like an open house, he will literally jump into a closet. Matt: Into a closet? Steve: He will excuse himself, maybe it’s for the acoustic ambiance, but he will excuse himself, he will jump into a closet in order to take that phone call. There’s other agents that I know that will literally pull over their car so they can really focus. So those are really good examples of being fast but also focused, meaning they’re not answering it while they’re doing five or six other things. It’s a first impression phone call. The prospective client is going to remember that phone call. Matt: What else makes for a good conversation? I feel like in a lot of conversations, there’s got to be objection handling and things like that. Steve: Yep, yep, for sure. So the conversation, or the convo we call it, it’s all about discovery questions and motivation. We’re really trying to find that motivation. If you are a real estate agent, you have been drilled into your head this from day one, LPMAMA, whatever the acronym that you use, makes sure you’re — that you’re asking location, price, motivation, etc, etc. This really isn’t that different other than we’re also doing it for you, meaning, on those conversations, we’re trying to uncover those things. So first and foremost, again, it’s, be engaged. We want to make sure that during this conversation, like the actual middle of this, you’re not zoning out completely. What we heard from agents when we were listening to great calls is they’re so intently listening. They’re actively listening, they’re asking questions, they’re asking follow-up questions. Some of those questions, not anything brand, brand new — price, location, timeline. Those tend to be the three that we really hear. Price, location, timeline. Makes total sense. And then we’re discovering motivation. What’s the why? Why are you doing this? And what we found from the best-best agents, what I found, personally, from the best-best agents is they’re not stopping at, “Okay, cool, that’s your why. Let’s move on.” The best agents are reinforcing that why. Tonya Peek, who is an agent in Dallas, Texas, I was able to Zoom call with her entire team. So I think it was 10 buyer’s agents…or listings agents, excuse me. Tonya told me that their team has a… They go three whys deep, “We need to uncover and hear three different times why they’re deciding to do what they’re deciding to do.” You can probably guess, you know, why they do that. Because they’re going to use that as fuel when times get tough, and times getting tough might just be like a simple objection, like, “Oh, I want to sell my home for cash, so I’m willing to take less,” or, “Oh, I don’t know if it’s right for right now.” And then you can immediately reference back to, “Great, earlier you said this thing. We confirmed it three times. Let’s talk through that again.” Matt: Okay, and so speaking of whys and handling objections, let’s go back, if we can, to the sample call with Katie from the Lance Loken Team in Houston, Steve. This is, I think, from the same call where we already heard the intro. And the lady on the phone, if I recall correctly, she says that…she raises the objection that you just mentioned, that she’s more interested in getting a cash offer and doesn’t want to talk to an agent. So that, I think, is probably an objection that a lot of our agents have heard when they reach out to their leads. Steve: And more and more frequently. Yep. Matt: Right, with the growth of iBuying and what have you… So this is going to be a couple minutes long. Let’s listen to how she handled that objection as part of the conversation. Steve: Great. So a couple things that you notice there that Katie was doing well, her questions are really good. So it isn’t just a, “Why?”, and then waiting. It’s, “Great, why is that important to you?” It’s a really empathetic question. She’s getting at the core of what this referral, this client, this potential person she’s going to help transact and make this huge, important decision, “What’s her motivation?” And she doesn’t just stop with the one. You’ll hear the client give an answer, and then she’ll say, “Fantastic. And why is that important to you?” It’s like peeling an onion. Katie continues to peel this onion, and by the end of it she’s uncovered what this referral actually wants. And because Katie’s team is a really great team, she says, “We can do all those things for you. All those things that you wanted to accomplish by doing it one way, you’re actually talking to the person that can do that.” Katie’s leading with service here, she’s not trying to… She’s gonna end up winning the in-person meeting here. Spoiler alert. But it isn’t because she’s pushing, she’s actually seeking to understand this entire time. Matt: And speaking of winning the appointment, that’s the goal right here. When you make that first call with a lead that comes in, we are encouraging our agents, “Set that appointment, get that appointment set.” So what did we learn from reaching out to agents? What are the keys to getting to a point where you’re able to schedule that appointment? Steve: What you said as far as, “That’s the goal,” every single top agent, when I ask them, “What’s your game plan here in this first call?”, hypothetically, every single one of them, “I’m booking that appointment. That’s my number one goal.” Now, how they got there was a little bit different, each one of them. But their number one goal on this, it seems obvious, but they want to secure that appointment. Matt: And we have a short clip. Again, let’s go back to the same conversation that Katie had, just talking about… Just let’s hear how she handled the close and getting the appointment set. Steve: So a couple things that Katie’s doing there. Number one, you can tell from a comment that she made, this is not the first time she’s looked to book this appointment in this call. I believe it’s once or twice earlier in the call she asked for the appointment, the client shows some hesitation, and she goes right back to value prop, she goes right back to uncovering that motivation and using that motivation. And so finally, when it’s time to actually book the appointment, check out how assumptive Katie is. She’s saying, “I’m opening up this calendar so I can book this thing.” It’s not, “Well, do you want to…? Should we, maybe, look at her calendar and see…?” It’s, “I’m opening this calendar, and let’s book this appointment so we can get started on this.” And so she’s super assumptive and she’s super confident there. One more kind of funny anecdote about setting appointments. In my interviews with top agents all over the country, I talked to a gentleman by the name of Nathan Dart, who’s out of Washington, D.C. And he told me that every single phone call that he makes is about setting an appointment, even when he leaves a voicemail. And I thought that was really funny. And then he walked me through an example, we role-played on this interview what that would look like. It’s pretty spectacular. Like, even just in this voicemail, he’s saying, “Hey, I heard that you wanted to see 123 Main Street. Sounds good. I’m gonna give you a call around 4 p.m. I can show you that property as early as 4:30 p.m. I’ll give you a call there.” And then Nathan tells me, “I just booked myself an appointment for 4 p.m.” Whether they show up to it or not, it’s booked. But it’s that mindset, right? It’s like, he’s a very, very high-producing agent. It’s that mindset. He’s always setting appointments. He’s always booking something out in the future. (Speaker: Matt McGee, Host) So there you go, everything you might ever want to know about the HomeLight algorithm, getting more leads from us, and converting those leads. Steve Mason, thank you so much for sharing all of that. Who knew that our experience at the booth in New York City would someday turn into a podcast episode? One thing I did not mention earlier about those emails I get, if you do email me about leads or your account, I’m going to have to pass that on to our support team. They’re more able to help with those questions than I am. Big picture, I do know this: make sure your HomeLight profile is complete and keep it up to date with your latest transactions. Those are both really, really important. As far as takeaways go from today’s conversation, here’s what stood out to me. HomeLight’s algorithm, it looks at things like relevance. Are you relevant to the buyer or seller? Things like geography, price point, property type, those are the things that matter here. If you mainly sell million-dollar homes, you’re not really relevant to a seller who owns a $300,000 home. It also looks at market performance, your annual volume, price-to-list ratio, days on market, all of that matters. Your HomeLight performance is part of the algorithm. How quickly do you respond? How well do you update your lead status? How many HomeLight leads do you close? The algorithm also includes your account preferences. This is where you can influence the leads you get. So make sure to set your zip codes, your price range, and stuff like that. And then when it comes to converting HomeLight leads, that first call is so important, respond quickly. Get the introduction right, so they know who you are and that HomeLight made the connection. Nail the conversation. Be focused, be engaged, ask questions, get to the person’s motivation and how you can deliver what they want. And then close by setting the appointment. That’s what we consider a successful phone call. Okay, if you have questions about leads or your profile, the best thing to do is email our support folks, it’s support [at] homelight.com. They are really on top of things and you will get a reply, usually within a day, sometimes within hours. If you have questions for me, about this episode or this podcast, you can leave a voicemail or send me a text, it’s 415-322-3328. You can email walkthrough [at] homelight.com. Or just find me in our Facebook listener community, go to Facebook, do a search for HomeLight Walkthrough, and the group will come right up. That’s all for this week. Thanks again to Steve Mason for joining me and thank you for listening. My name is Matt McGee, and you’ve been listening to “The Walkthrough.” At HomeLight, we believe in real estate agents. We’re on a journey to find out how great agents grow their business, stand out from the crowd, and become irreplaceable. Go out and safely sell some homes. We’ll talk to you again next week everyone. 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