#142 Mail-Right Show With Special Guest Kevin Charlie

Kevin and his team are in the works of developing a “SmartAgent” system. With more realtors moving towards smart systems in their businesses, Kevin wants to help teach them how to do it for themselves (it’s a heck of a lot easier than you think)!

This is a lead generation system specifically designed for agents to assists in the collection and nurturing of leads (in both buying and selling homes.

 

Here’s A Full Transcription Of Our Interview With Kevin 

Jonathan: Welcome back folks to the Mail-Right Real Estate Agent show. A long title but we keep it on subject here folks. We’ve got a great guest here. We’ve got Kev Charlie here and we’re going to be discussing funnels. Yes, online funnels. We’ll delve deep into that. 

Robert: And how it can impact your Real Estate business. How funnels can impact Real Estate. 

Jonathan: Exactly.

Kev: That’s the bread and butter baby.

Jonathan: So, before we delve into this, I’m going to let our guest and my co-host introduce themselves. Kev, would you like to quickly introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers?

Kev: Yeah, sure. My name’s Kev Charlie, like Jon mentioned, and I’m the founder of the Addicted to Marketing podcast and also the wildly successful Instagram motivational page Kev Charile, just self-branded. But I help entrepreneurs make more and work less so they can spend more time with their loved ones.

Jonathan: That sounds good to me. And I’ve got my great new co-host, Robert Newman. Would you quickly like to introduce yourself, Robert?

Robert: Certainly. I’m the founder of Inbound Real Estate Marketing. I’m an SEO specialist. I’ve been in Real Estate Marketing for 10 years. I’m evangelical about Content Marketing and I have not an awesome Instagram. I’m heartbroken about it. I’m going to check yours out and steal all your ideas.

Jonathan: You ought to be ashamed of yourself Robert.

Kev: I might have something for you.

Jonathan: Before I throw it over to Robert to start this discussion, I quickly want to tell you about me folks. I’m the founder of Mail-Right. Mail-Right is a Marketing online platform that helps you get quality leads with a focus on Facebook. Over to you Robert.

Robert: All right. So Kev, I’m actually becoming familiar with what you sent over to us. But I’m going to ask you a couple of questions. 

Kev: Sure.

Robert: So, just for our audience. So, guys, I’ve discovered over the years that’s it’s really bad to make the assumption. Many people that get into Real Estate often times get into this industry and they don’t realize how deeply emersed inside Digital Marketing they have to get to have a chance to become successful, especially when it comes apparent to them that they need digital for lead generation. So I know a lot of our listeners, Kev, they may not even know what the basic language is that you’re referring to. So I’m going to explain some of it and then I’m going to hand it over to you.

Kev: Sure, sure.

Robert: So first of all, it appears to be that you are doing what we would refer to as a Marketing Funnel, Funnel system. Now, what that is, for those people that don’t know, is essentially it’s a defined pipeline. In other words, you have taken each and every single step of finding somebody that might be interested in a service, directing them to a destination, communicating the Marketing message at that destination and then once that person has potentially expressed interest in your Marketing message, often times a funnel also nurtures them. Am I correct? Is that a good explanation or would you like to add something?

Kev: No. That’s great. I think it’s so important that people, they embrace this. There’s so many marketers out there, gurus out there who will use all this crazy lingo and it will just scare you to death. It’ll make you want to run the opposite direction. You explained it really well. But I like to explain it often in these three concepts. 

Robert: Sure.

Kev: So there’s the attracting, the converting and then there’s the nurturing. You really nailed it hard on the nurturing one. So the attracting, just like you mentioned, you have to craft that offer. You have to figure out what your target audience, like the home buyer or the home seller is specifically looking for. Once you craft that offer together, it’s really just about getting that traffic, like with Facebook ads like Jon mentioned before. And then, the second thing is converting. So you’ve got the traffic, you’ve got the attention, you need to do something with it, right? So the best way to do that is to convert it. 

There’s so many different ways to do it out there. But like we mentioned here, a funnel is the best way to do it. Often times in the Realtor market industry you’re trying to get customer contact information. But you need something that can capture that. And then lastly, there’s the nurturing. So a follow-up system. So many people, they leave money on the table, so much money on the table that it’s beginning to fall on the ground and they’re not picking it up. It’s a disaster. So having some type of nurturing follow-up system, whether that’s emails or a little hint hint, we’re going to jump some Facebook chatbot follow-up system.

Robert: Right. I am definitely going to ask you some questions and let you expand on that because I know that you’ve mentioned that that’s an important part of your system, what you’ve created and I’m really excited to talk about it. But before we do that, again, guys, just my experience says that a lot of our listeners don’t even understand what the basics are and they get hammered over and over again with language like attracting, converting and nurturing. And believe it or not, many of the Real Estate people that I talk to, they don’t understand what those things are. So, I’m going to cover one thing just to give an example. Converting, for those in our Real Estate audience that might not understand what a value proposition is to a person that’s looking at a web page in Real Estate, a popular way and I’m not saying this is your way Kev, I’m just explaining what other ways are, is that it could be such as offering to give you an appraisal on your home.

What is my home worth is a real popular one. There’s a system out there called that focuses on that heavily. They differ from you if I’m understanding correctly in the AI or the chatbot that we’re going to talk about in second. So there’s a big difference there. But the other thing is that often times you can say, for instance, the amazing part about Facebook is that you can define your audience by zip code or area or interests or all of the above. So some of the time, a kind of funnel that would not normally work unless you were working with Facebook would end up being, I’m going to talk to a person inside the zip code 0902 and I’m going to specifically say, “If you want to see homes listed in this one complex or unit, you can then send me your information. I’ll send you specifically those listings in that area”. You would think that that would not work. But it does.

Kev: Like gold.

Robert: That’s one of the things that Real Estate people would be really confused by and I’m just explaining it because they really don’t know that. I promise you. They don’t get that that works and I know it works. So having said all that, once you’ve got a name and an email which is the converting part but now you have it, my understanding is, is that you now do something additional with it using a chatbot. So why don’t dive into that?

Kev: Yeah. I just love how you touched on how simple it can be. It can be as simple as targeting someone in a specific zip code and offering them, “Do you want to see the houses in your zip code?”. It’s like as simple as that. And people are so interested that they’ll give you their name, their email, maybe their social numbers. But it’s so funny. That’s exactly our offer. And let me tell you what’s worked like gold, what’s so awesome about this Spark Convo system that we’ve implemented into our own system, is that people, they often go to Zillow to find homes. For people that are home buyers, they’re interested in buying a home. 

Robert: Right.

Kev: And they go to Zillow, they the home in their area, they eventually get connected with a Realtor, they talk to the Realtor and then the Realtor’s like, “Hey. You need to get your offer in by tomorrow”. And you’re like, “I haven’t even looked at the home yet”. I mean, that’s probably not for all areas. But I live in the San Franciso Bay area and homes are selling like hot cakes over here and it’s a stressful thing. So what we love about creating an offer is this chatbot, it’s just a beautiful thing.We’re skipping a few chapters ahead here. But this chatbot actually integrates with your, your backend Realtor system. And you can shot an offer out there and just say like, “Hey. Do you want to see the homes before they hit Zillow?”. And this is where the game completely changed for us. That’s exactly where it’s happening. And a few other things you can do for your home buyers . . .

Jonathan: Oh, Kev?

Kev: Yeah.

Jonathan: Before you delve in, it’s a bit like what Robert just said, I think you’ve got to explain a little bit, Kev, what a bot is and even give a quick outline, Kev, what messenger is.

Kev: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I totally understand that because people often know like, hey, well, if I’m doing Marketing, it’s getting people’s email addresses or their phone numbers and I’m reaching out, cold calling them or cold emailing them. That’s the standard modern day Marketing and reaching out to the customer, to the home buyer. Well, just in the last, I mean, it’s got to be 6 months to a year, a new thing has hit the markets and they’re called chatbots. And basically, it’s like a robot. So say you’re instant messaging your client, your home buyer and you’re going back and forth. You’re like, “Hey. Is this the address? This is the location you’re looking for. This is the zip code. Here’s all the different homes that are meeting your criteria”. Well, this chatbot does all that automatically for you. So you can get someone plugged into this bot and I say messenger because it’s a part of Facebook’s Messenger, Instagram system. So if you have a Facebook account, the way you message your son or your daughter or your wife, you’re using an instant messaging program called Messenger.

 There’s actual automated bots that will a lot of the heavy lifting for you. So if you’re selling your home, I’m just going to give a few examples here why this bot is so powerful. If you’re selling your home, you can plug in your address, the bot will actually look up Google Maps, you know how you can go on Google Maps and you can go on Street View and you can see the image of the house. You can check it out before you drive over there. The bot will actually look at the house on Google Maps, Stree View, take a picture of it, send it back and say, “Hey. Is this your home that you’re looking to sell? We just want to confirm it with you”. I mean, it’s so powerful. There are so many other things it can do. But that is what a chatbot is and they’re beginning to become extremely powerful. A few years from now, I mean, that’s why I’m so excited. I believe a few years from now every Realtor will be using these, just for how personably it is, how it reduces a lot of your workload. There’s a lot of communication you can simplify.

Robert: Right. And any type of channel of communication would probably be, I think, personally, I believe is going to be simplified by the ever increasing about of AI that we are all using. Our Real Estate clients would not probably understand the basic application there so I’m just going to express an opinion which is standard qualifying conversations which all salespeople are familiar with that term would be highly affected by a chatbot. For instance, have you qualified for a loan? And all the questions that go into that. The type of property that you’re interested in. As in, how many bedrooms? What’s the location? Does the location have a zip code? These are questions that the average Realtor has to have every single day with anybody that they speak to. A chatbot is perfectly capable of learning that dialogue and then having a set series of responses. It doesn’t eliminate the human factor but it works very well with it. 

Kev: Exactly.

Robert: That’s just an example. Sorry, go ahead.

Kev: Yeah. And you can build profiles. Imagine going back and forth on the phone or an email or text message and you’re learning all these things, all these different factors and details about your home buyer. Imagine having all that information in one place and you can build up these profiles or you can see all your buyers in one spot, what they’re interested in. Because like you just mentioned, the bot, it’ll send a simple question like, “What price range are you looking for in a home?”. It could be 150,000 to 200,000, 200,000 to 250,000. And all the user has to do is click on the option and that automatically gets added to their profile, cuts out a ton of your heavy lifting and my goodness, these profiles that you’re building, you can automatically alert your lending partners and help them get approved for that loan. There’s so many things here. It’s endless.

Robert: Right. And I like it. Just to keep this directed at you, is that all things that you address as part of your system or is that just ideas that you have in general?

Kev: Yeah. So, to explain that question the best way, that’s a part of the system that we’re building, the package we’re building that is getting a lot of Realtors excited. But I want to explain my story.

Jonathan: But before you do that Kev, we need to go for our break.

Robert: Okay.

Jonathan: And when we come back, you can tell us . . .

Robert: We’ll start off with your story.

Jonathan: We can listen to Kev’s story.

Kev: Stay tuned.

Jonathan: We’ll be back in a few moments folks.

Male Voice in Commercial: Do you want quality leads from homeowners and buyers right in your own neighborhood? Then you need Mail-Right. It is a powerful, but easy to use, Online Marketing system that uses Facebook to generate Real Estate leads at a fraction of the cost you’d pay from our competition. We stand behind our work with a no question asked 30-day money back guarantee. So don’t delay. Get started today. Go to mail-right.com. 

Jonathan: We’re coming back. We’ve had a technical feast here folks. Bots and Artificial Intelligence. 

Kev: Taking over the world.

Jonathan: Yes. We’ve tried to explain what the hell we’re talking about and hopefully, we’ve done a good job. Now we’re going to hear a bit of Kev’s story. So off you go Kev.

Kev: Love it. I am not this incredibly genius online guru marketer. I actually came from a Brick and Mortar business myself. It took me a while to learn these things and I’m so happy I had Robert here to help me explain some of those concepts because they are really new. Don’t beat yourself up. This stuff, it takes a little bit of time to learn but I can tell you it’s worth it. So diving into my story, I actually left a very very successful elevator business with my father. Believe it or not. We actually built the elevators that are there today. They don’t just magically appear. I was just fed up because it was a super grind like hustle 24/7 type of business. I was working 11 hours a day with a commute. I quit it and decided I’m going to take a break. I’m going to use some of the money I saved up, travel the world and get rid of this hustle game mindset. That’s what my whole brand is about.

That’s why I said like, “Hey. We help entrepreneurs, we help business owners make more and work less so they can spend more time with their loved ones”. And the reason that I preach that is because I sat down and looked at myself, I’m like, “I could play the safe route. Do this elevator thing for the rest of my life. But I’m not going to be able to spend very much time with my family”. That’s when I realized I wanted to get rid of this hustle 24/7 mindset because you can have a six or seven figure business working less. I honestly believe you can work part-time and have a six-figure business. So I got out there. I wanted to share my message. I built a huge Instagram motivational page. That’s where it came from. I just wanted to tell people that life is more than just working and I wanted to help entrepreneurs live and leave a family first legacy. So that’s why I do what I do.

Jonathan: That’s great Kev.

Robert: I’m just going to throw in here guys because I promise you again that with Real Estate a lot of people just probably have momentarily checked out because Real Estate tends to be a super time-intensive business. And most Realtors believe that there is no way around it. For instance, if you want to see a home, the traditional thinking is that a Realtor has to get in their car and drive to the home and show the home, which means that things like quality of life and family are often times mysterious concepts to a Real Estate agent.

The exciting thing is though is that if you’re willing to do a paradigm shift Kev, I actually believe that the things that you are saying are like an intrinsic part of your mission can be achieved with tools like the ones that you’re talking about. But there would have to be other technology tools that a Real Estate agent would embrace such as virtual tours or creating a virtual tour once you’ve taken a listing and basically allowing somebody to walk through the home and doing your entire qualification process online. I know Real Estate professionals that already do this, even in the million, 2 million, 5 million dollar space. There’s no limit to where you can take technology. So I’m going to add that little element in so that people can see the vision of what you’re saying because I promise you a whole bunch of people just got kicked in the nuts when you’re saying, you know, you said part-time and single Real Estate agent said, “Hey”.

Jonathan: To be honest, between you Robert and Kev, I take the middle ground.

Robert: Sure.

Jonathan: I see technology, the technology that Kev had just outlined in our first half of our show folks, as a method of easing the burden and removing the risk or you getting totally burnt out completely.

Kev: Yeah.

Robert: Right.

Jonathan: But on the other hand, I disagree with you Kev. I think being a successful Real Estate agent, even in the next few years is probably going to necessitate a little bit more hassle than you indicated in your little chat about your background. So I’m stuck in the middle. But let’s get on to the meat of this Kev. So we’ve discussed Messenger and messaging systems have been around a long time, haven’t they? You know, around Yahoo. You know, they’ve been around and they’re popular. These automatic responses. So, can you describe the actual funnel? So you’re using something called Click Funnel which me and Robert are well aware. It’s a hosted platform, isn’t it? It’s a hosted SaaS system. With your help from your team, I would imagine that you produce certain landing pages with certain lead magnets. You set that up for the client. Plus the integration into the bots and the messaging system. Is that correct Kev?

Kev: Exactly. I know Marketing can be intimidating. So we like to sell a completely done for you services. And then, we’ll make these little videos. Once we transfer the system over to the Realtor, we create little videos showing them, “This is each step of the journey and this is how you can look at things and make sure the numbers are making sense for you”. But talking about the funnel structure, what we include in that done for you system, it’s actually pretty simple. It’s three things. And it’s honestly, when it comes to funnels, it’s one of the more simpler funnels. Keep it simple tends to work for most everything. And what we learned was, the least amount of resistance possible was getting us the most affordable leads. We didn’t have to spend a lot on advertising.

So, what it is, is it’s a Facebook ad. Everyone knows what a Facebook ad, we’ve seen it in our Facebook stream. And it’s an ad that simply says, “Hey. Do you want to see the listings before they hit Zillow?”, and that works like magic. People click on it. It goes to a little landing page which is pretty much a website page. They see the website page and it says, “Hey. Do you want to see the homes in your area before they hit Zillow?”. If you’ve ever signed up on a website where it says, “Sign in with Google”, and you don’t have to type in your email and your password and go through that whole thing, well, it says, “Sign in with Facebook”. And that’s it. They click the button. You get the person’s name and email as well as it linking them to that Facebook bot. So the chatbot. That’s where the magic happens because a lot of technical babble went into creating that little button. But it’s one of the best things we ever did because you don’t have to put your name in. You don’t have to put your phone number in. You don’t have to put your email in. It’s not super creepy or anything. You click one button. It gets them on to the email list. You can start nurturing them. You can start sending them emails and building that relationship. And it also gets them integrated into that chatbot, which depending on if they’re looking to buy a home or they’re looking to sell a home.

Jonathan: So what happens? When they click that button and . . .

Robert: Magic happens.

Jonathan: Are they taken then to Messenger? Does Messenger open up Kev?

Kev: Yeah, yeah. If they’re doing it on their phone, Messenger will automatically open on their phone or it will redirect them to Messenger and be like, “Hey. Get Messenger”, if they don’t have it. And if they’re doing it on their computer, their PC or their Mac, it opens up another website to the Messenger. It opens them up to a little chat. If you were chatting your wife on Messenger, if you’re chatting your son or daughter on Messenger, there’s one button that says, get started. And you click it and it starts the entire process of qualifying that lead and beginning profiling them honestly, like figuring out what they are, what they want so you can serve them.

Jonathan: And you help the client with all these pre-design, pre-qualifying questions which you’ve outlined, I would imagine.

Kev: Exactly. No, I mean, the reason we are partnering up with Spark Convos which is the chatbot is because it’s built by Realtors. It’s specifically Realtor oriented. They know what the customer, the home buyer, home seller is going to ask. So they help you actually structure a lot of that. And of course, we spruce it up. We add a little bit of our juice to it and make it even better. We’re actually working with this Realtor who has 23 agents underneath him. And he’s looking to build it out for every single one of his agents on his team. I feel like this might be a turn off to a lot of Realtors because, in my business, I like to personable with my clients, the people I’m working with and the chatbot kind of feels cold. But the way I like to look at it is like, “Hey. If I can automate a lot of the time-consuming tasks, that gives me more time to actually communicate with that person specifically because I’m not hustling around. That’s where my whole working less and making more mindset comes in. So I can do more of the important things like serving and teaching and educating the home buyer. And honestly, I think that helps convert them. It helps you get that customer to buy their home or sell their home a lot better. 

Jonathan: Oh, yeah. I can totally agree. Got a question, Robert?

Robert: No. Just saying right. Just agreeing. Nodding and agreeing. Sorry and doing it vocally. Yes

Kev: The funny thing is, funnels, they take time to get good at. And that’s why I like to sell this done for you service because I want to give people the shortcut. I don’t want people to have to spend years learning how this thing works. I want to build the system. Give it to them. Explain the little pieces that you might need to know for it to make sense. We actually have created two seven-figure funnels. One was E-commerce which was selling. If you guys ever live in a very cold area like Illinois, it’s a like a window scraper. We sold a million of those. A million dollars worth of those in 2 months. And then, another was actually getting leads for a roofing company called Tile 2 Tin. I mean, this sort of relates to homes, right? So we got leads for them, customers for them, for people who wanted to convert their tile roofs to tin roofs to save money. And that one did 5.6 million dollars. And that was on $24,000 worth of Facebook advertising. And that may sound like a lot but once you start to see like, “Hey. I’m spending $1 in Facebook ads and I’m getting $3”. It’s a lot easier mentally to say like, “Hey. I’m going to start trying out advertising on Facebook”. 

Jonathan: Well, it sounds fantastic. I think we’re going to wrap it up for the actual podcast part of the show. Kev’s been very gracious to say he’ll stay on, which you can watch on the Mail-Right website with a full transcription of this interview. So we’re going to continue the discussion a little bit after we finish. But Kev, how can people, our listeners, and viewers, how can they contact you and learn more about what you’ve been discussing with us?

Kev: Yeah. First of all, I’m so thankful you guys had me on. I know I’m not a Realtor exactly but I love to serve. I love to help. And if anything, I just want to communicate. If you had a question or you’re slightly interested in it and want to learn more, you can totally go over to Facebook on my Facebook group by going to kevcharlie.com/group and that’ll actually relink you to where my Facebook group is. And you can totally stop in and just say hi and I’ll answer any questions you’ve got. I do Facebook lives in there and give a ton of value. Another way, I actually have my own Marketing podcast called Addicted to Marketing and you can subscribe to that by going to addictedtomarketing.com. And then, obviously, my own website kevcharlie.com. I’m actually writing a book that teaches how to, a lot of the things we’ve been talking about, saving time and working less and adding systems and building teams and doing all those magical things that allow you to be like, “Hey. Things are getting done and I’m not doing anything”. That type of magic, I’m writing a book entirely about it, how to build those systems and teams out that can work for that. And you can get that by going to kevcharlie.com/freebook and get on the waitlist there.

Jonathan: Oh, it sounds great Kev. Robert, how can people find more about what you’re up to Robert?

Robert: As always, they can go to inboundREM. I’m going to tag one little thing on for everybody on the channel. So guys, I have my own audience and it’s a fairly significant Real Estate audience. It’s pretty decent at this point. So I’m going to let you know Kev that I don’t really promote per se. The way that I’m going to publish this channel is I’m going to say that we’re talking about Marketing Funnels. You seem like a good guy and maybe if somebody wants to ask some questions. But if anybody asks me, I’m going to always say the same thing about everybody that we talk to which I don’t have any experience with these people. I don’t know for sure. I do think that Marketing Funnels are a good idea in general and I think the process, automation, which is what you’re talking about, is something that’s good for every business universally. Again, sorry though, I know that this part of the podcast is how do they find me. Jon, as usual, just go to inboundREM. They can find plenty of ways to reach out to me there should they want to.

Jonathan: That’s great. Thanks, Robert. And if you want to find out about me, it’s really easy folks and the show, is go to mail-right.com. All the interviews are on our website with full transcriptions and links to everything our great guests have tried to say to you and it’s a great education in a way. And we’ll be back next week with either guest or a subject that will help you become a more successful Real Estate agent. We’ll see you next week folks. Bye.