In this episode Gus Munoz Castro, a former engineer, shares how he started his real estate career. Next, Gus describes what ISA is and goes on to explain how he started his business and the insane demand there is in the market for his services. Last, Gus talks about social media and gives tips on how to be effective on these platforms.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
For more information on PowerISA you can contact them through sales@powerisa.com or 425-286-8851.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by power isa the largest and most trusted inside sales for real estate company in North America. Whether it’s outbound prospecting for sellers or converting more of your buyer leads into appointments, you can rely on power ISA to help you get the job done, learn more about how they can help you at power isa.com. And now onto our show.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show as usual. And in a moment, we’re going to be speaking with Gus Munoz from power Isa. And it’s a very interesting conversation that we had with Gus, about setting appointments. His company schedules actually over 100 appointments a day for agents, which is super cool. So we’re gonna be speaking with him about how that works. Also, I want to remind everyone, and I haven’t reminded our listeners of this in quite a while, which is to say that please send us your suggestions or your questions or maybe your challenges, right, that’s we always find most interesting is where are you getting stuck right now as a realtor? Where are you struggling? Is it you know, multiple offer situations for your buyers that are getting outbid by incredible amounts of money? Is it prospecting? Is it negotiating? Is it getting listings? Is it systematizing your business is really anything where you’re struggling with, let us know and we will create content and we will seek out experts for those particular issues. And that just helps us give you more of what you want and need. So the best way to do that, there’s a couple of ways you can visit our website, which is keeping it real pod.com We have a contact form there. Also, you can find us on Facebook and send us a message we’re facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and or you can just send us an email, you can send us an email to zonna who za na at keeping it real podcast dot info so zonna at keeping it real podcast dot info. So also, just please remember to keep telling a friend about the show. Think of any other real estate professionals that could benefit from hearing from top producers and send them a link to our website which is keeping it real pod.com or have them pull up a podcast app and subscribe to keeping it real. So thank you so much for continuing to listen and support our show and now on to our interview with Gus Munis.
All right, today on the show we have Gus Munis Castro from our is a.com are originally from Mexico. Gus is a former Microsoft senior engineer turned real estate agent turned inside sales guru. He runs one of the largest inside sales teams for real estate in North America. His company is called Power Isa. That’s power isa.com. And there’s 100 agents strong making and this is incredible about 50,000 Outbound dials a day to buyers and sellers and setting about 100 appointments with buyers and sellers every single day. So 50,000 dials 100 appointments, mostly from Facebook leads in real estate and Gus runs a seven figure your business and has over 600 active clients. He is very passionate about helping business owners become successful through online marketing and lead follow up and conversion. Please visit power isa.com. And for our listeners and viewers, we have a special promo. So if you go to power isa.com forward slash keeping it real. There’s a special promo going on just for our podcast audience. So Gus, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.
Gus Munos Castro 4:04
Hey, did you how’s it going glad to be here.
D.J. Paris 4:06
I am really excited to talk to you because before I became a basically a real estate or realtor recruiter, which is what I’ve been doing for the last 10 years, I worked in the in the lead space. And I worked in a different industry, it was for health insurance, but we were producing leads and and selling them to call centers is what they call it at the time, because it wasn’t your real estate related. But I am so excited to talk to you because you’re a tech guy. And and I appreciate, you know, bringing tech into real estate in a way that’s effective. But tell I’d love to hear your story about how you came to work, you know as having an ISA company. can you start us all the way at the beginning of your real estate career?
Gus Munos Castro 4:47
Yeah, absolutely. You know, like you mentioned, I’m an engineer by training. I was born and raised in Mexico on the border with the US. So even that’s kind of I have a California accent. You know, born and raised in Mexico, but I was I always, you know, close to the US a lot of family in the US. All the TV I watched as a kid was in the US. So it was always immersed in the culture, right? Like, hey, you know, this is America is awesome. Let’s check it out. Let’s be close to it. It’s a little bit of a unique upbringing. Well, not unique for that area because of the border areas, kind of it’s kind of weird on both sides of the border, because it’s so mixed, right? The two cultures are so mixed sure product of that, right. So I went to school for engineering, because that was the thing to do to really, you know, it was the late 90s When I went to college, and the internet boom was in full swing. So I went to school, I got recruited by Microsoft in Mexico, in contrast, and they flew me out to Seattle, this was the early 2000s. And for in case folks don’t remember what that was, like, back then, Microsoft was the only show in town with regards to technology, the Windows Mobile, the browsers, the consoles, like everything was making productivity off. Obviously Windows and Office it was like it was it was the be all end all of technology.
D.J. Paris 6:00
And after the after the.com crash. They were one of the few, you know, big behemoths, obviously, they weren’t really part of that bubble. So they were still standing and stronger than ever,
Gus Munos Castro 6:10
like nothing happened. And then all the Microsoft, he’s coming back, right, they had gone off to start their startups that didn’t work. Everyone was coming back to the mothership. Right? So it was kind of a crazy time. And I got to, you know, kind of see a transition of the whole industry, I started from Microsoft being number one in every single area imaginable to app the emergence of Apple, the emergence of Google the emergence of Facebook, Amazon, and more of a diverse ecosystem, right. So all of these things were happening, transformation was the name of the game. Well, I also transformed during that time, right, because I went in as an engineer, it was the dream job. It was amazing. Until I kind of realized it wasn’t my dream, right? 100% was exactly what wasn’t aligned, you know, put it in, you know, in different terms, it wasn’t aligned with my purpose. And once you kind of figure that out, it’s a tough idea to get out of your head, right? This is not exactly what I’m meant to be doing. The way I discovered that was by all my hobbies, and side gigs and side hustles that I was looking for those kinds of opportunities. My wife got licensed in 2008, as the world was ending is below, remember that that was a long time. It was not a seller’s market forever, guys. You know, so So yeah, that happened. And she became licensed. And she became the Rookie of the Year. By selling like nine deals, by the way, it wasn’t it was not that hard. But you know, it was it was hard to get deals, you know, as was ending. And then he kind of kind of pulled me into it. I helped her nights and weekends, I had a lot of fun with it. I realized it was really good with people, you know, I kind of always kind of knew that. But in the engineering space, it’s not a an enormously important trait. It’s not really right. It’s more about the technology and the work. And if you’re a good people person, I became a manager that right I’m a more of a people person I can I can build teams, I can train folks. So I became a manager, Microsoft slowly climbing the corporate ladder there. Until I realized man, I’m having much more fun helping my wife nights and weekends that I’m doing this, right. So there came a point in my life when I said, You know what, I’m gonna give this a try. I’m gonna jump go all in into real estate. And the excuse was, I’m going to help my wife build a team. I’m going to organize her team, build it up it myself six months of runway, and then come back into high tech and take a little hiatus sabbatical. Let’s see what happens, right. And then if I would either go back to Microsoft, or some other company, I was in Seattle, I could go to Amazon and Zillow as it was all these other different companies. I could go, I could join. Let’s see what happens if I go on on my own. And that happened in the summer of 2013. And I haven’t looked back since then. Right. So I ran the real estate team. I started this company power Isa, which is kind of consumed everything that I’ve done in 2015. And now now where I have 100 full time employees working for the company, another 20 people training, getting ready to join the company on top of that, and servicing, you know, a bunch of people in the US and Canada, hundreds of clients all over the place.
D.J. Paris 8:56
It’s absolutely incredible. And I know that there’s probably a lot of listeners or viewers right now, who go I know, I’ve heard the term Isa, but maybe, maybe, you know, I’m an individual practitioner. I don’t really know what that is. I’m not on a team that has an ISA or you know, I’m just not really all that familiar. I’m new to the industry and I’m not familiar Can you just we just define what ISA is.
Gus Munos Castro 9:19
Yeah, I use the term as inside sales agent inside sales agent and some folks you know, read a little bit differently. That’s the term that I like to know and love inside sales agent and that refers to someone on a team, a member of a team that is on the phone in converting lead generating on the phone, right? They’re doing outbound calls and doing they’re handling inbound leads. They’re having conversations with them either to generate it as a brand new lead went from cold cold list, a brand new lead or an already identified a warm opportunity, convert them into employment, convert them into a live transfer. That’s, that’s essentially what the role does.
D.J. Paris 9:56
And tell us a little bit about what power isa does specifically for Are you agents who sign up with you? Yeah,
Gus Munos Castro 10:02
so we help folks. And we staff that role for real estate teams for loan officers, real estate investors all over the US and Canada, if they’re in their company, if they’re at the level where they need a full time person or a part time person to do this role, we help staff that role and provide and manage that person for them. If they’re a little bit earlier in their journey, we actually have a pay per lead service they can do, they’re only generating maybe 50 to 100 leads a month, then they can actually send a smaller amount of leads and pay per lead basis. And we’ll follow up, call them and convert them for them.
D.J. Paris 10:32
Okay, so will you do lead generation or just lead conversion or both,
Gus Munos Castro 10:37
we just do the lead conversion part, we’re really, really specialized when the lead generation happens. Either the agent is doing it on their own, or they’re paying a marketing agency to do it, or they’re buying them from a portal like Zillow, like realtor.com. Like all these different kinds of online lead providers, they’re doing the lead generation, our team specifically focuses on the conversion aspect for those inbound leads. On the outbound aspect of it. I mean, this kind of goes down to like definitions, but our isas call do outbound calling cold calling on these lists. So in a sense, they are lead generating, but they’re doing it from truly cold lists, like cold uncalled on nurtured on touch prospects.
D.J. Paris 11:17
That’s amazing. So so if I’m an agent, and I’m looking for somebody to, you know, look, agents have to spend so much time as you know, with you and your wife’s agency, just doing every part of the business, you have to do lead generation, you have to do lead conversion, you have to service your existing clients, of course, you’re going out and doing showings and, and open houses. And then of course, all the paperwork, and you know, everything from from list to close, or from or from offer to close, and there just isn’t always a lot of time to nurture leads, and to convert them into appointments. And that’s where you guys come in.
Gus Munos Castro 11:54
Yeah. 100% and I have empathy with that, right? I totally understand it. I’m gonna tell you a funny story, how he started the company power rise, and I think it’s gonna go to kind of address that, that that thought, right. I was, you know, running the team. I think we were four people at the time, doing about 10 million a year about 30 transactions in my marketplace at the time, it was a suburb of Seattle. And I had a nice, I had my first Isa bunnaman. House. Um, you know, and I wow, this is really, and I think he was able to do what he was trained up, was able to set about 22 Different listing appointments, attended listing appointments for me in a month, and I’m like, Okay, I’m on this amazing, this is, this is interesting. This is okay, this, this has this, this can work, right. And I said, I bet I could have a build a team like this from from folks like this. In back in my hometown in Mexico, I bet I could do it. And I bet that would be worth the trouble to do as that was my big idea. That was my big bet. And people by that point, people knew that I was doing this, they kind of weren’t spreads fast, right? It wasn’t my Market Center. And there was hundreds of people there. And then people found out about this right pretty quickly. And I always loved doing now as you can tell, I love talking. So you can do a class, I would always tell me what it was up to you, right? So after one of these classes, it wasn’t Hey, I discovered this model. At the time, you know, I went to a kind of women’s conference. And I learned about it, I took a class I took you know, I went and visited some of these super high performing teams and implemented the inside sales agent model at highest level. And I went back and I implement it. And people were like, wow, tell us how that went. And I told them about it. And it’s an eight. My next thing I’m going to do is I’m going to be with you in Mexico. And I’m going to see if I can replicate that kind of a model for Mexico based isas. And you know, DJ, immediately, three other, Adobe ended up being four, but immediately three other people signed up with me, is it Hey, Gus, if you’re going to do that, then here’s some money. And can you do that for me too? I mean, you’re already set everything up. I mean, you just need one more person, and let’s get him on there. And then you know, and then eventually, a fourth person called me and they said, Hey, you haven’t been returning my calls, I’ve been turning my emails, I need you to sign me up for this thing you’re doing I want to end right. So DJ, it was a thing about you know, with sales, you know, with real estate, especially, we’re always chasing the client, right? We’re always trying to get their attention. We’re trying to get in front of them and show them what we can do for them at your value, et cetera. This was the first time people were calling me right, they were trying to get in on what I was doing. And that was very eye opening. For me as a business owner. This is a business okay, this there’s a need here. There isn’t an unmet need. And this last month, we’re recording this, you know, in the beginning of the month, last month, I should have launched 14 new campaigns, I only launched 10 Because I didn’t have enough people to launch 14 with even with 100 person team even with everything I have, I still cannot meet the need of the marketplace. And I’m not even close to me in the in the marketplace for this role. But it’s a very important and impactful role because of what you said a minute ago. It is hard for agents in this day and age to do all of those roles. So as soon as they can you in for the folks that you know know how to build a team If you’ve got to add, leverage that administrative role, you’ve got to add leverage in some part of the lead generation and lead conversion role. This is what we do we help people add that leverage, whether that’s converting more of the leads, you’re already getting, getting a bigger ROI on those leads you’re already getting, or helping you generate new leads by doing outbound prospecting.
D.J. Paris 15:19
Yeah, and, you know, I want to just to tell our audience a quick story from from my background that I think us will appreciate, and hopefully the listeners will appreciate. So I worked at an IT firm that was generating health insurance leads. And so we were we had web properties, websites that were, you know, poised to attract people who needed to purchase their own individual health insurance. And at the height of the, when I was there, we were generating about 15,000 leads a day, and then we would sell them to insurance agents. And then we would have to train those agents on how to convert those leads, because of course, if they didn’t convert them, they’re not going to buy more leads from us. So it was in our best interest to convert, we had a few 1000 agents across the country buying them. So one of my roles was to, to educate the agents about how to actually convert these leads, even though I had never sold an insurance policy in my life. But what what I did have was access to all this data. And Gus has incredible data for all of the amount of phone calls and conversions his team runs. Well, what we found with health insurance leads, and this is, you know, more than 10 years ago, and maybe it’s changed since then. But we found out that we were always interested in why does a health insurance agent buy some leads from us, they don’t have the success that they want. Other words are not converting these people and, and with health insurance, you can do it all over the phone, you don’t have to meet in person, it’s nice and easy. It should be a really clean transaction, you know, just uncomplicated. However, we found that we had a huge residual set of ism, right, where people were just dropping off, and not repurchasing leads. And we’re like, Well, we know all of these other people are having success, what’s going on? Well, we did all this data, we started serving the customer, the people who wanted to buy health insurance, and we said, hey, you know, did you buy health insurance? Oh, yeah, I bought it, hey, we sold, you know, we gave your information to so and so they call you Yeah, they called me. But they stopped calling me after we found the average person to buy health insurance, it took them like 11 to 13 days, I can’t remember the exact number. But it was it was a while. And the average person we sold the lead to the health insurance agent, they stopped calling, they gave up after about day three or day four, because well, they’re busy, or they just didn’t want to keep calling or they didn’t have a system in place to continue that to nurture that lead. And all of a sudden, they would just go well, the leads don’t work. We everyone on this call can can talk to 15 different real estate agents and say, Hey, I was thinking about, you know, buying some leads from Zillow or realtor.com, or, or or one of a million other places that will do that. And somebody goes, Oh, that doesn’t work. But then you know that it works because other people do have success. And this is where I think the power of pardon the pun, but the power of an ISA comes in, because really what you’re doing is the hardest part, which is staying on top of the customer and doing the thing that most individual agents or even teams simply just don’t have the time to do.
Gus Munos Castro 17:59
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s a great story. Because I think it’s very key, I think that’s very common. And you know, and I wish that people had that, that goal of hey, you’ve got to reach out to these people. If you’re in the real estate space, and we’re talking about Inbound internet leads, those seven to 10 days, maybe maybe those 12 or 13 days is a better idea, you’ve got to have that number in front of you. Because that’s the average pace, right? That’s the average, like half of people will be less than that half of it’ll be more than that. Right? They can understand what if you understand if you go into the role, understanding that you have a chance at being successful if you go into it, you know, having with the right expectation, you get very frustrated, leads don’t work, especially internet leads, ladies, they’re the worst, they never convert. Now, they’re like the worst thing ever. And I think for folks, you know, we were talking about this earlier, I think it’s part of making that transition as an agent from a referral and recommendation based business to something that you’re using unmet leads, which is what internet leads? It’s a subset of these unmet leads, unmet leads, is everyone on the planet? You don’t know there’s a lot of people in that group, right? So internet leads are one segment of that. People that are online, they’ve shown some interest in real estate. So I’m interested and might be really strong and might not be very strong. They’ve shown some interest, and they’re willing to give you their information. That’s it. That’s the period in the story. And then what do you do with that? It’s kind of up to you, right? So if you want to treat that and that might build my business as referral recommendation how we started right. So I could call list. This is what I did to get $10 million in sales a year. All I did was call a list of 300 people three to four times a year and I generated about 30 transactions almost like clockwork, right? I had already left Seattle I was living in Mexico now. And I would still make those calls for that probably I think for like 12 to 18 months after I left town and closed 22 transactions I went down when you’re not in country anymore your your conversion rate is gonna suffer probably Sure. 22 transactions still, from calling people from Mexico and telling them hey, are you thinking of selling some real estate or do something in real estate in the next six months? I’d love to help, right? I’m still in the business. So all of these things, you know, I say them because they matter. They reform recommendation is the best. And it doesn’t take a ton, it takes some effort, but it doesn’t take a ton of effort to convert these folks to appointments, my close rate on appointments from my sphere 100% or 99.5%. Right? That was basically it. That was that was it. So but but when you transition to an unmet leads, unmet leads, that conversion rate can drop off a cliff, but I’m here to tell folks, you know, hey, I’m gonna give you hope, the best people in the industry, the best people in the industry, if we’re talking about listing appointments with unmet people, they’re gonna be able to convert maybe 20% of those appointments, maybe 25% of those appointments, and they’re going to be some of the best people out there, right. But even in a competitive market like this, maybe that maybe that conversion rate gets lower in a market, that’s as hot as this for now. But the best people in the industry can convert those appointments at 20 to 25%. That is a reasonable expectation, that is a good bar is set, because sometimes people want them to convert to appointment right away, when I would call a referral, the chances that we’re going to meet with me was not maybe not 100%. But man, it was way too close. 80% 75% right. But man, they’re gonna they’re gonna meet with they’re interested I, Bob told me you wanted you’re going to be selling a house soon, I’d love to chat with you about how I can help you great, let’s do that very easy transition, when you’re talking to someone that has no idea who you are, they don’t know they can trust you, the situation is different. And if you don’t recognize that difference, and adapt to it, then you’re going to fail with a lot of these unmet leads.
D.J. Paris 21:50
And also to boy, you just said so many great things and also to the skill set that it takes to be effective with your sphere of influence is a completely different skill set than working these leads these these will call them cold leads in the sense that they don’t know you there, they’re possibly really hot leads people who want to use a realtor, but they don’t know you. So we’re gonna call them cold only because you know, they don’t know you, but but they could be hot. But the amount of effort it takes. And the type of effort it takes is just like you were saying radically different effort. And for a lot of realtors, they’re amazing at the referral side, they take such great care of their clients or clients or for business, like you were saying you had 300 customers, you were getting, you know, pretty, pretty clockwork, you know, 30 plus transactions a year. And all you had to do was stay in touch with people a handful of times a year to do that, it was not easy, you worked really hard to get there. But that’s a different kind of hard than then Now switching gears completely changing your process and your approach, and then have you know, going from 100% conversion or close to it to you know, maybe 20% conversion, or maybe 10% That is a different mindset. It’s a different skill set. And you know, we’re not all good at everything. You know, realtors tend to be good at the people side of it, which is the face to face and taking great care and, and that’s where you get the bulk of your business. But why not add in a second? Because so many people are listening right now that goes, I don’t want to make cold calls. I don’t want to try to convince people that don’t know me to use me. I just want to work my sphere. And I would probably say that’s a great idea. However, what if you could have somebody else do the other sub part for you that is much better at it than you are? And that’s why I think you know how not just power isa but isas in general are amazing. Obviously, your your team, and I bet your team might their skill set might be you know, best suited for that. And maybe they wouldn’t be as good at on the referral side, because they know how to pound the phones all day and convert
Gus Munos Castro 23:42
as well. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and it’s like you said, I 100% agree with what you said, DJ, it’s a different skill set. Right? Yeah, it’s a different skill set that you utilize when you’re when you’re referral recommendation. It’s people that know like and trust you emphasis on you write things about you, right? They’re like, hey, I want to talk to Gus, because Gus can did this for my friend. So I want some of that. And then Gus is great at this. So I want I want that expertise. I want Gus, I want Gus, this is what I need. They told me that I should talk to you. So I need to talk to you referral recommendation, even in this day. And age is still the strongest way to refer someone and for it to be a valuable kind of transaction. Great. That’s awesome. When you’re talking about unmet leads, people that don’t know I can trust you already. This is this is what the fundamentals if I ever had to like put it all together and say what the hardest part is, is for agents to realize that it is no longer about them. Right? They are not reaching out to you because of you because of you unless your marketing is amazing. You know, I don’t want to go down that route.
D.J. Paris 24:41
If you’re Ryan serhant or something maybe they’re reaching out to you but that’s about it.
Gus Munos Castro 24:45
Possibly pie if you already have an enormous personal brand will and maybe but but for everyone else, everyone else. It isn’t about you. It isn’t about you and none of your advertising your marketing. None of it should be good. It shouldn’t be about you. That’s not it’s very unlikely it’s going to be successful. It’s all about you. And then you know, I love talking. I have a Facebook group, right? And I love talking about realtor ads. And I see oh, it’s the best art. Billboard and I was driving over to Austin the other day and I saw two billboards. This is hilarious, right? One bill, this is the middle of nowhere between Houston and Austin. There’s a lot of open space there. And there’s realtor billboards. I hadn’t seen those in a while. Take a look. One of them said it was agent name your agent in a big huge photo of the agent. I was one billboard I was on the way on the way to Austin, Texas. I mean, what’s interesting, that’s well, yeah, that’s big face out there. Wow, very confident realtor putting their faith Great, good for them power to them. I think that myself, I have no idea why I would call that person right, I’m gonna get right out there. They must be a really well known person in this in this town because I I didn’t see any reason to call them other than they can afford a billboard. Great, right. On the way outside of Austin. I saw a billboard that said, you know, hey, I’ll sell you know, it was I’m gonna butcher this offer, but it was essentially, you know, I’m going to be able to sell your home within 30 days, or I’m going to buy it from you. Right. Right. That, you know, within? No, every within the timeframe was because right now three days might be way, way too long in this market. It was a really interesting offers when the point I want to make right if I think was the target price, if I can sell it for this price. I’m buying it right, right. I can if I can get no, here we go. If I can get you a qualified offering 24 hours, I’m buying it myself. Wow. It was aggressive. It was like I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s I wanted to dial in that website. And I want to see what that’s about. That was interesting for me. I was that. So that’s, that’s an interesting offer. That gets my attention. Right? What are the details? I have no clue. But but at least that was an attention grant, I get that I remember the URL off a billboard. For me that should go back when I got home. I went and typed it right. As soon as I could. I typed into my phone. And I thought that was it was a new take on that 30 days. And all by it kind of off. It was a brand new take for a really hot market like Austin. So the point above those two billboards, is that one of them is focused on the person. I’m awesome. How awesome I am. Look my face. Awesome. I am obviously work with me. And the other one was focused on the offer. Yeah, I’m really focused on the client. What do they want? What’s interesting to them? What’s going to catch their attention? How are you addressing their hopes, needs and desires, right, their goals? That is what that’s about. And so I thought one was 10 times more effective than the other one, I’m not even 10 times 100 times more effective than the other one. If we were to measure how many signed clients one billboard generated versus the other, I think it would be a 10x If not 100x
D.J. Paris 27:40
Oh, I couldn’t hear in Chicago a few years ago. Redfin has a pretty strong presence here in Chicago, and they have their own agents. And I don’t know if they do that in every market, but they do here. And they have a billboard on one of the major highways here in the city. And it basically said to your point, it said, well sell your home for and I forget what what their fee is, you know, one and a half percent or whatever it is. But but whatever it is, you know, I first I thought I looked at it, I go, No one’s going to understand what that means. You know, people in the industry know what it means by said, and I thought about it more because I kind of went that’s a dumb billboard because no one’s gonna even understand that then I read you know what, though? People who don’t understand what that means are gonna go is that a big that sounds there’s something about that and they’re gonna go on to Redfin’s website and go oh, they’re gonna look it up just like you were saying they put an offer on the Billboard they didn’t really make it about them. They just said hey, we can sell your home for whatever percentage, obviously dramatically undercutting what Realtors typically charge and whether whatever you feel about that all I’m using it as an example of that’s a really smart second job board. Yeah. And so yeah, let’s let’s talk about what myths not necessarily all only mistakes agents make but I want to talk about social media because I know that you you convert SO MANY, or get so much of your team’s business from Facebook. So we’re talking about providing value is is you know, providing an offer giving some somebody something to think about other than Hey, look at how cool I am I just listed this home I just sold this home, you know, what are what do you have? What advice do you have for agents that are looking to sort of up their social media game to be able to attract those people maybe the just listed and just sold posts are okay for your existing sphere of influence. So people can see that you’re successful. They know already know you they like you know, he’s DJ is doing pretty well. Maybe I’ll reach out to him, but for but for people who don’t know me, like me, or trust me, you know, what are your suggestions for how to be more effective on social media?
Gus Munos Castro 29:39
Yeah, so it’s a really good question that kind of goes to the heart of you know what we’re talking about. I think you have to put yourself in the shoes of the consumer and kind of think if you’re trying to attract buyers buyers are the most effective and efficient and a lead you can generate online. That’s still true to this day. Probably the most effective way to generate businesses to generate buyer business online. If You’re a buyer in this market, there’s a specific set of challenges you have as a buyer. Number one is inventory. That’s what they want. That’s what they desire. That’s what they don’t have enough of, if you have a way to show that you have access to inventory, whether that’s, you know, like a specific list that you’ve curated, right, even off the MLS, gives them the specific list you made, that’s awesome. The digit check out, okay, check it out, the best deals in this neighborhood and this school district and this city, you know, you know, what is more applicable to your area, find it and use it, you know, if you have access to off market properties, if that’s allowed in your area, do that talk about that what you’ve done to generate a list like that for your qualified and Exclusive Buyers, right? All the things you can do to address some of their inventory concerns. If they are nervous, and stressed out about bidding wars and about negotiating a deal, then tell them how you’re going to help address that concern. How to talk about you know, your last bidding war that you want, how did you win it? What was your What was your you have that secret sauce is going to help them win a property in this kind of a market? So I think, general DJ in general, it is put yourself in that in those shoes. And your ad on Facebook has to speak to that in the image. And then that very first headline for the ad, it’s rarely going to get more of a chance than that. Right? Yeah. What is your headline, say? And what does that image say, beneath that? And that’s super, super key.
D.J. Paris 31:27
Yeah, and the wheels just turned for me, when what you just said, I wanted to run this, this idea by you. Because I know our audience is probably thinking of ways they can do some similar things. Now, I’m not a Producing Realtor. So I’m just going to give you as a marketing guy, my idea of what what one thing you just mentioned. So if I were an agent, and I was specializing in a particular geographic area, maybe it’s a neighborhood, maybe it’s a development, maybe it’s a city, or suburb or just some geographic area that has a name. So for example, right now I’m in Lincoln Park, Chicago, which is a very desirable neighborhood here in Chicago. And, you know, there’s going to be a lot of people online searching for homes in Lincoln Park now, can they go to Zillow, Redfin realtor.com, and look up Lincoln Park homes, of course they can. And you know that that is a good experience for the consumer. But what I might do on Facebook is I might create a group or a page, a page would be easier to create a page that just says Lincoln Park homes for sale or Linkin Park deals or something. And every single day, I would be posting MLS ads for only homes in Lincoln Park, I would try to spread the word and try to make it easily searchable. Because, you know, again, what we’re talking about is creating value for the consumer. You know, are there people that are wanting to see all the homes in Lincoln Park that are available? And do they want daily updates? Well, could they call the realtor and get put up on an automatic mls search? Of course they could. But maybe they’re not doing that maybe they’re going to Facebook more often than checking their email. And I’ll bet you very few people have done anything like that. And that would be a way and you could then create an ad and link back to that page and create an ad saying looking to buy a home in Lincoln Park. Right. And then, you know, push right over to that page.
Gus Munos Castro 33:10
Yeah, absolutely. So what I mean, that’s a great idea if people are listening, because it has something that’s really, really valuable, which is that that hyperlocal content, it addresses inventory. And you know, it makes it attractive, it makes it interesting. That’s how people actually search for homes. That’s how people actually search for homes. They’re not, you know, and this is funny, because a lot of these internet search portals, you know, some of them have the knowledge of the neighborhoods, but you know, it’s like, most, most don’t most don’t, you know, so people love that name and the red fins of the world, the zeros of the world. They caught on to that, you know, a few years ago and tried to create, you know, neighborhood based portals and information. It’s not really well done, right? It’s not really well done, because they did it for the whole country within an hour. You know, so it’s automated, so it’s as good as an animation is going to be, but I think the realtors can take a huge there’s a huge opportunity doing what you just said, of not just curating listings and driving traffic via listings, generate content for that area for Lincoln for Linkin Park. Right. What I mean, again, I know that Chicago, like the school district are the restaurants for if there are people moving there, because you know, I don’t know, they’re working for the Obama campaign. I mean, talk about you know, whatever was driving, you know, jobs and interest in that area. You should be talking about that, because that is how people actually look for places they want to go live. Yes. What’s what’s around there? What’s the mass transit any good? Are the schools any good? Are there any daycare places? Are there any restaurants if it’s a younger kind of clientele, they’re going to care about bars, restaurants, culture, all those kinds of things. If it’s errands, they’re going to care about the parks, and the schools and the and the nannies and the daycare and then babysitters and all these other things, right? So carpools and commutes and all of these things. So you know, it’s it sounds really, really obvious. We talked about it, but it is it’s challenging. Most people never do that. But most people don’t do that. Those are the kinds of hooks that you need. We call them hooks that you can hook that you need to get someone’s attention, bring them into your funnel, your conversion machine, your lead converting machine, and put them through that kind of a marketing plan that’s going to turn them into a client.
D.J. Paris 35:18
Yeah, so let’s, let’s talk a little bit about what, how power Isa, you know, does the conversion. So obviously, they’re making outbound phone calls. I don’t expect you to give up your secret sauce, of course. But can you just walk us through a little bit of what that process looks like? Once we hand the lead over to your team? You know, how they begin to work it and how long they work it?
Gus Munos Castro 35:37
Yeah, so Greg, great question. So what we recommend, and this is the plan that we implement on our pay per lead system, which is the what we offer to hundreds and hundreds of clients and across the US and Canada, is that we recommend that you do seven touches within the first seven days, at least right seven touches within the first seven days. And we mix it up between calls and texts, we mix it up, because we just do phone calls. I mean, yeah, that is very easy to block, it’s very easy to get rid of, if it just two text messages, it’s also very easy to ignore. If if you combine the both, then you’re gonna get the folks that prefer phone calls, and you’re gonna get the folks that prefer those text messages, I think it’s the truth is is a combination. A crazy story is in the last 90 days, we have seen, the leads that we are contacting via text are converting to appointment at a higher rate than the leads that we initially contact via the phone, which is kind of blows my mind, because we measure this really closely. And we’ve seen the trend towards messaging or texting. It’s true, it’s happening and it gets larger every year. But we had never seen the conversion number change with regard from text reverses call, we’ve never seen that before. Like, wow, what that means to me is that more consumers are preferring text message and at least text message first, to kind of figure out who you are, what you want, what value you can offer them, and then they’re willing to jump on the phone with you. Because that’s still the number one way we convert appointments. But when you initially talk to them via text and via phone, the text message is winning for the first time since we’ve been doing this since 2015, which is pretty crazy. But you want to combine both. I think that’s the most important thing. Because the number one thing we do on the text is an excuse to get you on the phone because phone is the best way and two way conversation, I have not found a better way to convert someone, maybe zoom is a second next second best thing, right? A two way conversation with someone over the phone is still the best way to evaluate them, qualify them and set that appointment in person.
D.J. Paris 37:30
Yeah, just it just makes all the sense in the world. And you’re, you know, what you said was, hey, a lead comes in, that’s not part of your sphere. And now you have to recognize this person doesn’t necessarily know like or trust you. They might have inklings of knowing liking and trust you but but you know, they raised their hand in some capacity. And now you have to get them to know like and trust you. And you know, as God says, you know, really seven touches in seven days, a mixture of texting and phone is really best text first, as Gus is saying, however, that’s just a tremendous amount of work to set up. You know, if you don’t have a system, it’s all done manually. But if it was me, I would much rather say, you know, I’m going to push that off to someone else. I’d rather pay somebody to do that. Who spends all day who looks at the numbers, because let’s be honest, how many people are keeping track of their actual conversion numbers? Pretty much nobody other than companies like us is because they live and die by those numbers. You know, agents are pulled in a million directions, they don’t really have time to say, well, in the last 30 days, I made 500 phone calls and I converted you’re probably not, you know, honestly, most people are not tracking that. So I would hand it off, I’d pay somebody to do it. And then I’d focus on what I’m best at, which is once I get that face to face appointment or voice to voice appointment, or Zoom appointment. Now I know how to close like you were saying with your business.
Gus Munos Castro 38:48
Yeah. 100%. And I think you know, for agent, that’s an important distinction to make, right? What are you going to be best at? Right? What where’s your time best spent? And I think the answer is gonna be different for each person. But if the answer to that is meeting with people getting to talking to motivated buyers and sellers on the phone, meeting motivated buyers and sellers face in person face to face and converting them to sign on the dotted line. If that if the answer is that, then you should add leverage on any single step that’s before that. So you can spend most of your time doing that. And calling people that want to do that right? Spend your time with a more effective phone call. So this is one of the funny things when people hire an ISA work with us. They think they’re gonna get rid of the phone. And I tell them absolutely not. Right. That’s not that’s an incorrect expectation. When you hire an ISA, it’s that your phone calls are going to be worth more, they’re going to be with more motivated prospects, you’re still going to have to follow up with stuff that make that phone conversion, but it’s not going to be with 10 people that didn’t even pick up the phone today. Right? You’re moving yourself up in the value chain, but you don’t get rid of the phone. Right. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but you don’t get rid of it entirely, but your time becomes much more valuable.
D.J. Paris 39:56
Yeah, that’s very true. And I think right now we’re in such a you know, in a unique position, because there are more buyers, like I don’t know the exact statistics, so I’m kind of just guessing that there are more buyers today than there were obviously a year ago, not just because the pandemic is, is hopefully starting to subside, but but also interest rates we know are so incredibly low, low, I know I just bought a property for that exact reason, I can now buy something before then that I couldn’t afford previously. And there’s so many people in that same boat. And yes, inventory issues aside, there’s a lot of people raising their hands going, I want to buy. And this is a great opportunity to if you’re listening or watching and saying, Well, my sphere just isn’t doing that right now. You know, I’m reaching out, I’m staying in touch, I’m commenting on their social media posts, I’m calling them I’m emailing them, I’m doing all of the sphere of influence stuff. And, you know, my well isn’t really all that full right now. While there’s a lot of other people that you don’t already know, so why not add in another stream, and see how it works for you. So that to me would be a great, great time. Now, if you’re flooded with business and you can’t handle anything else, well, maybe bring on a partner and or an associate and then add this additional stream in. But but this is, it is not an either or thing. I’ve always kind of felt that, you know, this idea that we’re only working by referral is hey, that is great. And you can build a wonderful business like you and your wife did without adding in, you know, sort of colder leads. But you at some point, you’re going to be trading hours for dollars. And at some point, you’re just going to hit that ceiling. And it’s going to be a certain number of the stuff you can handle. And you can’t really easily scale with that model, even though it’s a wonderful model. So I totally understand. And I really challenge everyone listening to you know, it’s the same thing where back many, many years ago, people talked about calling for sale by owners calling expireds. And, and some people go oh, it just doesn’t work. You know, you get hung up on time after time. Well, yeah, of course, that’s part of the deal. But I know a lot of people that have success with those. And so it definitely works. Internet leads work, fizz bows work, it’s just a matter of art. Do you have the skill set to do it? And you have to be honest with yourself and say, That’s just not good at that. So hire someone else to be good at that. And then work on the just focus on the appointments. Right?
Gus Munos Castro 42:13
Yeah, I 100% agree with you, DJ. Yeah, absolutely. And that’s, you know, that’s a decision to know that I think everyone reaches, you know, depending on the maturity of their business, depending on their own individual skill set. But absolutely 100% If you ever want to scale the team, and this might be this is your goal, to grow your business to scale. At some point, remove yourself from being the heart, soul and only person working in your business. And you absolutely have to add leverage in those key areas. There’s no other way to do it. Right. So absolutely. That’s part of the journey. That’s part of how you build a big business under percent by leveraging those key aspects of your role and moving yourself up that value chain, you get more important and more important and more important. What does that you know, thing that you have to do that is going to move the business forward. And it might not be making the phone call to that brand new lead that came in this morning?
D.J. Paris 43:00
Well, we are huge fans of power ISA and really encourage everyone to reach out to them have a have a phone call with them. Obviously that’s their business, but have a phone call with them and say here’s where I’m at in my business. What can you guys do for me? We use isas in in I use isas in recruiting. So just because I’m not a producing agent, I do the exact same thing Gus does. Or I have a team, I’ve built a team that does the exact same thing Gus does but for recruiting purposes. So for me, I have you know, there’s 40,000 realtors in the Chicagoland area, I feed them to my five cold callers. We don’t call them isas, because you know, they’re not really sales agents. But we have five cold callers. They pound the phones all day. They’re very polite. They’re very nice. And they book all my appointments because guess what, I hate making cold calls. I hate it. I don’t want to do it, it freaks me out. So I pay other people to do it. They booked my appointments. But guess what, I’m really good at the appointment. So that’s where I spend my time. So I do the same thing that Gus is doing. So you need to think about your business and I look there is literally just reach out to them Go to power isa.com There’s a special promo if you go power isa.com forward slash keeping it real. And you know, they’ll give you a special promo, but you can have a free kind of conversation with them and talk about what your business goals are and say, here’s what I need help with. And, and you know, see what happens I really encourage everyone to do so this could be the thing that takes you know, you’re not even your social, you’re close transactions, but just your number of appointments up to the next level. So I’m big fans, please, please, please go to power isa.com forward slash keeping it real and learn more about what they can do for your business. You know, Gus, thank you so much for being on our show. I could talk to you for another several hours, because this is right in my wheelhouse. So I love it. But I am big fans of big fan of what you guys have had built and accomplished and we obviously wish you all the success. And just to wrap up the show. On behalf of Gus and myself. We want to thank all of our listeners and our viewers for continuing to support our show. Please support Gus visit power isa.com forward slash keeping it real just to see if there’s anything they can do for your business. But also, please tell a friend about this podcast think of one other agent yet benefit from hearing from this great conversation we just had with Gus and power ISA and send them a link to our show the easiest way to do that. Send them over to our website, keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve ever done, you can stream right from the browser or have them pull up a podcast app search for keeping it real. Hit that subscribe button, and you’ll get every episode we do going forward. Thank you so much Gus and everyone go visit power isa.com. And Gus, we’re so excited to watch you continue to grow and now you’ll be up to 120 Agent callers very shortly, right?
Gus Munos Castro 45:43
Yeah, well, you know, hopefully they’ll graduate they’ll make it and eat the bar. They will for sure. Thanks so much.
D.J. Paris 45:48
Awesome. Thanks, Gus.
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