The Art and Science of Diversifying Your Lead Sources

You are investing in leads. You're doing it with your time or your money or most likely both. And as with anything that you're investing in, a diversified approach is typically a healthy approach. We need to place bets, but we need to do it in a thoughtful and measured way. Too few lead sources and you're over reliant on them in a very foundational

aspect of your business.

Too many and you're introducing unnecessary complexity and inefficiency. Diversifying your lead sources and distributing those leads is both art and science. Numbers can't tell you the whole story, but you can't just go on gut alone. In this subscriber only episode, you're going to get the insights of three of our past guests here on Real Estate Team os. This conversation was recorded live at Unlock at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas in November 2025. I appreciate you being a subscriber to Team OS and I hope you you enjoy this subscriber only episode.

No matter where your business is today or where you want to take it, you'll get there faster and more profitably with an operating system. Welcome to Team os, your guide to starting, growing and optimizing a real estate team. Here's your host, Ethan Butte.

So what we're gonna be going through is types of lead sources and ways to balance them. Distribution process for different types of leads, ways to think about ROI and adding, removing and evaluating lead sources. So these are the wonderful folks who committed time and attention to this topic for your benefit. I would love for you to each introduce yourselves. You know who you are, title, role, name of your company, what markets you serve, approximate agent count, and anything else you want to share about your organization. Camilla, I'd love to start with you.

My name's Camila Rivera. I am the chief Operating officer for the Laurie Finkelstein Reader team. We are based out of South Florida and serve the Tri county area. And we have about 70 to 80 agents at any given time. And our focus is building a trusted real estate brand locally.

Hi, my name is Keith Anderson. I'm the CEO founder of Space. We have about 500 agents nationally and now internationally. So we're in 15 states and we just launched in Canada.

Hello everybody. I'm Dylan Onaka. I'm the team leader for the agency team brokered by EXP and I live on the Big island, but we have teams across all four Hawaii islands. And then we just launched in Vegas. So that started about a month ago. So expansion continues.

Let's go.

Cool.

We've got about 163 agents as of yesterday.

Awesome. So let's start with lead sources. Give us a rundown of like your top three to five. We'll start with you, Dylan. Top three to five lead sources and a little bit about how you think about those high level.

I think there's like if I gotta put them in buckets, Zillow is one big bucket. Everything online on top of that, Google, pay per click, Facebook, YouTube, those types of things. And then I think most of our biggest lead sources has to be agent sphere of influence and agent generated leads. And sometimes we don't think about that as a lead source, but we gotta train agents and give them resources and processes on scripts on how to maximize that source of their business. So those are definitely the three that we focus the most on.

Cool. How about you, Keith?

We went through a phase of simplification over the last year or so. We realized that in order to scale and build, the wider you are, the more complex your business is. It's impossible to have that laser focused vision. Like you can't really grow the way you need to if you have 15, 16 lead sources as you alluded earlier. So we narrowed it to three major pillars of our business. We have Zillow as our fuel to really grow from the paid side and then we have open houses. But our business revolves around the network based business plan. So more of a traditional focus of helping agents work their network, build the sphere. They don't need an excess of thousands of leads if they have a really dialed spot for 250.

It's interesting because we're all very similar and you'll see that we all have very different agent counts. We think about it three buckets as well. First is company branded opportunities such as direct mail events, past clients, and then referral based lead sources such as Zillow. Those are pay at closing, referral lead sources, and agent speed year. It's super important to make sure that we're teaching our agents to make sure that they're generating more opportunities out of the leads that the company is offering them.

So the paid lead sources in general are feeders to building books of business.

Absolutely.

Cool. You mentioned pay at close, Keith, I want to direct a question to you on that topic. You already mentioned that one of your pillars is in terms of a paid lead source. Pay at close. Talk about that dynamic. Why does that make sense to you? What did you have a light bulb moment with regard to pay it close versus some of the other opportunities in terms of partnering and acquiring leads?

Yeah, it's so Complex when you're dealing with it. Right. Like what's the contract, what's the length of term, how much money dealing with roi, dealing with spend and managing portfolios. And for us, as we expand, I mean, we're almost in 40 metro markets. And so when you hit each market, each market is different. The way you spend is different. And so that adds to that complexity. And so for us, paid at Close removes all of the chaos. The simpler you make your business, the bigger and better you can make it in every way. And so the paid at close concept alleviates all of the stress from figuring that out and it allows us to scale quickly and effectively. Right. And so I don't have to worry about hundreds of thousands of dollars of spend per month and that risk there. I have a pay at close to where I alleviate that pressure. And I mean, it helps the team tremendously.

When did you make that decision to make that a pillar in order to structure lead flow based on pay at

Close, I think we really solidified it this year where we cut away everything else. And that's where we'll be different than I think a lot of people is. We don't do any Google pay per click whatsoever. We do no lead ad spend in any way anymore. Built because of that complexity. Right. And so we just realized that if we try and become a master of everything, we basically become a master of none. And I'd rather be incredibly gifted at one thing and be better at that than anyone else than try and be mediocre or average at a bunch of different resources. So we just leaned all the way into one and dug deep.

Yeah, I appreciate that message, especially for any of you in this room who thought you were coming to learn which 48 lead sources you needed this year. Dylan and Camilla, same question, and we'll start with you, Camilla. You know, this is obviously about lead diversification. You've been in your role as a partner to Lori building this business for a decade. What does diversification mean to you and the organization? Like, what do you think about when you think about diversification of lead sources?

Yeah, great question. So the first thing that's really important to our organization is we built our model based off a 5050 model. What do we mean by that? We want 50% of our business to come from company generated opportunities and the other 50 to come from agent sphere. Our goal financially is that we are keeping 50% of the company dollar that comes in annually. So just to give an example, if $1 million comes into the organization, we want to make sure that we're keeping 50% of that. So it's really important that you're clear on what you're working towards in making decisions about what lead sources are going to work for you. And secondly, not every agent is the right avatar for every lead program and product. And so a good way for us to offer value to different agents is to make sure that we have options. Just like consumers want options, that agents have options within our organization of what opportunities are right for them.

Cool.

And you kind of work that out maybe in the recruiting process?

Yeah, absolutely. We learn what's important to agents, what are they looking to gain from making a move in their business, and then we focus that conversation around what we have to offer them.

Cool. Before I go to you on diversification, I'd love a quick one pass from each of you on the role of lead sources in the recruiting process. Like, how important? Cause obviously we think about it in terms of generating business, but then there's also the promise of something from someone outside the business. Give me just a quick take on that.

So for us, with our agents that have been with us 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, we, we saw that 50% of their business is agent sphere and 50% is company generated. And that's worked. So that's what we talk to agents about. Our goal at the beginning, if you're a newer agent, maybe you're gonna be more reliant on our business. But our goal is that over time, we'll teach you how to generate opportunities from your sphere and from the opportunities that we give you, and that's how you'll be able to build your income.

Cool.

For us, it was, I think, another one of those light bulb moments. No one got into real estate, signed up and said, I can't wait to do leads. Like, it's just not what they started in the industry. We realized that and we saw that so much of our business is done with referral and based marketing and like that's the strategy. And so we actually removed the main point of leads from our SOP and our onboarding structure. Like, that's where we're a little different. If they join because of leads, they're going to leave because of leads. If they join because of splits, they're going to leave because of splits. Like our value prop has to be outside of the structure of a component that's provided by someone else. So if we build our business model around what we provide directly to our agents, it's different. So our big testament is actually the sphere based business and Helping agents build a foundational business that lasts their career. And then we treat leads in the recruiting process of. But we have an incredible relationship with Zillow as a, as a big provider of our leads to help fuel the trajectory to build a foundational career based organized network business.

Cool. And like I do very often on real estate team os, which you've all guested on. Thank you for that too. I've left you, Dylan with two questions in one.

Okay.

Which is give me a quick pass on the role of lead sources in recruiting conversations and then kind of high level thoughts on diversification of leads overall.

Yeah, I think leads are useless if you don't have the tools and resources and skills to convert them. So we like to lead with that, that, you know, we'll provide you with the skills and resources you need to not convert just our leads, but any lead source that you have or any sphere of influence contact that you have. So it's definitely part of the recruiting process. I think a lot of people are looking for opportunity and that's definitely something I think all of us that have large teams, I mean primarily what we provide is opportunity. But opportunity isn't just leads, it's everything else that comes with it. The training, the support, the culture. So it's definitely part of it. But I agree with Keith, it can't be the primary source. If you're coming just for leads, then you're coming for the wrong reason. And the other aspect of leads that's helpful is it's a filtration process. So like you just don't sign up and then get on the lead program. There's things you got to do to get on the lead program, which gives us an indication of like what your activity level and seriousness as an agent is. And so it's a good kind of carrot at the end of the stick to make sure that we're getting agents that are going to actually work the leads and convert them when the time comes.

Cool. Give me one pass on. As your team has grown from you and a couple of people that were close around you to now 160 plus agents, how has your, the way that you've been building the business changed from a lead source perspective?

The only reason I started a team was I had more leads than I could work myself. So that turned.

And what was your strength, by the way? One thing I've observed about team leaders and talking with hundreds of them over the past couple of years is that you typically get to your point where like what am I going to do with this opportunity that I've created, you're really good at one or two things. It's been very fruitful. But then to really grow the team, you need to diversify the sources.

Yeah, I just recognize that the number one challenge agents have in every single market is opportunities and leads. And so if I could give it started with just a couple of friends, if I could give the leads, extra leads I had away to them and they could close some business and I could make some money. And that's turned into this insane monstrosity that we have today. But that's definitely a piece of it, I think, is that if you can identify, I mean, lead generation and strategies around conversion is a certain skill set that some people are better at than others. And I think, like everything with leverage, if you have that skill set and you can leverage it, you can grow a very big organization. And it's not just like personal lead gen, but it's building relationships with Zillow and other referral partners and then figuring out systems to manage those lead sources, because that's a whole nother thing. If we're not managing that source properly and preserving the relationship with Zillow, we don't get to continue to have those leads if we're not paying them on time and things like that. So it's bigger than just like getting the lead source and converting them. You got to have the operational processes behind the scenes to make it happen.

Yeah. And that's where too many lead sources that aren't productive enough becomes really, really inefficient. Okay, so all of you are similar. Feel free to correct me, but I think you're all similar in terms of approximately 15 to 20 leads per agent per month for agents who are on leads and maximum of one to two lead sources per agent. Does that sound about right? Cool. 90% of your agents, Camilla, are on one lead source. Obviously that has to change sometimes. That's been a process of getting there. I would love for you to share a. What was the light bulb moment in terms of like, we got to get them off three or four sources down to one. And how do you do that and like, manage, we've got a few new agents in or we have a lead source that we don't have enough agents on. Like talk tips in that zone for these folks.

So we've learned a lot over the years. And at the beginning, about five, six years ago, we were distributing leads to agents just if they were buyer or seller. And we weren't taking into consideration the consumer's journey. And what we know is that in order to meet and serve the consumer, we have to understand what their journey was before they got to us. Right. And so we realized, okay, we need to break out our lead sources into different lead programs because all different lead programs and products are going to offer a different level of output, activity, nurture. And not all of our agents are going to be a right fit for all of them. And so it's better for an agent to become a master at one, like you mentioned. And that's one company lead source. Right. We're also teaching them how to generate opportunities from their agent sphere. So it gives them the opportunity to really refine and master that one lead source. And it's important that we also have a retention strategy around maintaining them on that one lead source. Right. Whether that's a increase in split, whether it's after a certain amount of closed transactions, you only get a certain price point. So that people are excited to maintain on that one lead source. I forgot your last question.

It's just how did you narrow down to like, when did you discover in your business that this is way better for the agents and for the business and for our ROI and the source to get it down to one or two? And if there were ever any exceptions, what are those?

We weren't converting. I mean, that's the reality. We realized we were not converting. Everyone wasn't focused, and we didn't have different SOPs for the different sales for the different lead sources. We just had two SOPs, one for buyers and sellers. And we run different programs such as cash offers. Right. So all of our seller opportunities require different level of outreach based on where they come from. Right. Our cash offers are different than our signed calls, than our postcards. And so it was really important that we understood if we're going to invest in postcards, we have to make sure that we have an agent that is best at that conversation, is a local expert, is maybe someone that has lived in that area, is someone who knows a lot of business owners, maybe has done a lot of transactions in that area because we don't do postcards all over. So it's just really important that we have SOPs and the right agents on one to two lead sources share a

little bit on the matchmaking there. I mean, obviously, and I would assume most of you experienced this or intuited it, is that the reason that you can't have someone on four of those different, you know, you listed several different opportunities, is that the reason someone is engaging you is different. It's a different conversation, it starts in a different place. And if I'm picking up the phone and I have no idea which one of those that is, it's going to be harder to be effective in terms of developing your skills for handling that conversation. How do you match make or how have you learned to matchmake agent interests and skills and the nature of their strengths and the kind of business they're building with the different opportunities?

Yeah. So there's a different onboarding process for every lead product. And that's essentially our way to find out if they're going to be the right fit for this lead product. Because during the interview process, let's be honest, everyone says that they're going to do all of the things that are required. And we learned that the best way to find out if that is true is to have a process in place of the activity that is going to be required for them to be successful. So once you onboard into our organization after you graduate grit week, we decide, okay, what is the best options for you? And then we have an onboarding to that specific lead product to ensure that, that they're gonna be successful before we invest all this time and money. And now 90 days, 120 days, we see, okay, they weren't doing the dials, the conversations, they weren't using the CRM, all of the things that were required for them to succeed on that lead product.

And that's burned opportunity and inefficiency.

Yes.

Cool. Keith, you have a pretty sophisticated leveling system to kind of move people off lead sources. I'd love for you to share some practical advice on qualifying into lead sources and leveling out of them.

Yeah. Like when you start to look at it from a different point of view and perspective, you realize that a burnout of leads is real. Right. If you're still working leads two years from now, then you did it wrong. We have such a strong belief in the relational side of the business. If you help an agent do 24 deals a year for two years, that means they have 48 past clients to establish an entire business plan off of. So if they're still working as hard two years from now than they are today, we did it wrong. We didn't serve the agent as well as we should have. They need to build a foundation in real estate that lasts forever. So our logic is thinking that an agent shouldn't have to lead generate forever. I think that's a common theme that we hear a lot is like, oh, every day, your three hour lead block, you got to get into the weeds and you got to prospect every single day. Well, my argument would be is like you shouldn't have to. If you do a better job of building relationship based business. And If I have 250 close friends and family a couple years from now, what if I just spent my life with those 250? What if I just made an impact on their life every single day in such a way that they would never use another person? And so we teach that and we've built a playbook to establish that for our agents. And what we realized through the leveling process that we can check based on their production levels and their skill of their network and where it's at, that is now time to transition them off of leads. Right. Like it's this concept of, you know, you don't want to do leads anymore. Stop randomly showing up at houses you've never seen before and meeting people you don't know. It's time for you to evolve your business. And then we lean into those agents and help them do that. Right. Like we know those agents want to do that anyways. And they're going to leave our teams, they're going to leave our systems if we build a vision that only feeds the brand new agent that's working on their network. So a big focus for us was build this leveling system so that we can't be outgrown by agents. And Robert Palmer, a close mentor of mine, our broker, owner, he told me something that resonated with me pretty heavily. It's as leaders, we have to have a vision so big that they can have their entire vision for their business within ours. So if our vision is lacking, they will outgrow us. So if you look at your business model, if you don't have such an outstanding business plan that they could fit their entire vision within it, they're going to outgrow. So we built the leveling system, which I guess we could just keep adding levels at certain points in time to where we won't be outgrown. We can empower agents no matter where

they're at in their career and just characterize levels a little bit more specific to lead sources.

Yeah. So our first level is for brand new agents. So training, teaching, molding them, getting them into the business. Really, leads start at that level two phase where they're now ready and able to take leads in the appropriate way. And then our leveling system is built around marketing and establishing that network. Right. So really we see leads as being a heavy influence. Levels 2 through 4 and as they level up, we empower their marketing, we build out full brand kits for them, we take over their social media for them. We pay for all resources in every single way. We plan their client events, their housewarming parties, basically every way through that process. And we get to the point where at about level four, heading into level five, agents are looking at us saying, I don't want leads anymore, please turn them off. Like I have so much past client business and network business, I don't have time to do the leads. And so that allows us to use our scarce resources that we all have. We know they're scarce. We can then feed and fuel newer agents coming back into the ecosystem and help paint that picture for the newer agents or younger agents in their career to then reach those same levels that a different agent got.

Good, good.

Dylan, give us a quick go at qualifying agents into leads. Like what does an agent need to do to qualify, for example, for Flex or Preferred Connections?

Simple onboarding into the company onto the team. Basic stuff you got to do to set up your systems and your profiles and things like that. And then we have a four day bootcamp that we do for Flex where it's an hour and a half of instruction and then a list of things you got to complete. Online courses, additional training, practice purchase contracts, things like that if you're not an experienced agent. But, but that process basically filters out anybody. And we only have like a 60% completion rate. So like if we send 10 agents through it, like six of them will do it. So that helps get the right people onto the program to begin with. So, and then I wanted to just, you know, give a different perspective on what Keith was talking about. That's what's good about these panels is like I personally believe you can never build a big business without outside lead sources. And that's definitely in our team's experience. You know, our best agents that are doing 30, 40, some one's doing 80 deals a year, they have a ton of sphere business, but they're also taking Flex leads like that's a part of their business and it may become smaller over time, but I just feel like I haven't met anybody yet that can do 30 sphere deals a year in our market. Doesn't really happen. So even myself personally, as long as I've been doing this, I might get 10 easy fear sphere deals a year, which is cool. I could make a decent living off of that. But you're never going to scale your business up and get really big, you know, just focusing on your Sphere. So I think leads are always going to, you know, are an important part to continue to expand your business over time.

And I'd love to touch on that because you're right. Like, I think it's different based on the markets you're in as well. Right. Like, so we're in a lot of

major markets when our, when our sellers sell, they never come back.

They like, they're gone.

Right.

Like, you can't keep, there's no repeat business from selling.

I don't know how they're selling from Hawaii. I'm going to be there the whole time. But like, I agree with you in a lot of that component, especially early on. But what I realized is the reason people haven't done 30 plus deals for their personal sphere is we all know they're not actually working their sphere the way they should. How many of you guys feel good about the agents on your team and what they're working inside that operation of their network? They're choosing to allocate their time opportunity on something that's different. Now I'm a big believer in the individual definition of success for those agents. Right. Like, that's big for me. And I would rather help them do a third of the transactions and make three times the money. Like, so they get to a point where they don't want to keep doing. Maybe they don't want to do 80 deals, maybe they're good with 25, but it's all their best friends and family and they get to live a quality of life. That's what they signed up for in real estate. That changes how, like they're actually excited to get up and show a house now because it's their, it's their good friend. They're excited to pick out that house with them. And so the fatigue that I've seen at scale is real and we need to address it and we need to help agents graduate out of this turnover, this churn of our industry. And it's not good.

Yeah. What I typically hear around being on leads as a level four or five agent is that it just kind of like fills in like somehow, you know, there's like a little just dip in the conversations in your sphere. And so I want to fill it in. I want to go back to it a little bit. I would love to hear from you really quickly, Camilla, before we move on to roi, which lead sources are handled directly by agents, which ones are handled by ISAs? How do you think about that and maybe how has that changed over time?

So it's all been different at all different times in our career, just to be honest.

To figure it out or because things changed.

Both because we had to learn what worked for us and then also certain things changed. So Zillow Preferred goes direct to agent all the nurture opportunities, all the live connections. Anything that is a live connection goes directly to our agent. Now, our company branded opportunities that we spent a lot of capital on and marketing dollars go into our inside sales department because we believe that they're going to be the best one to help us choose who will be the right agent for that opportunity. So we get a lot of insight before we choose who will go on that appointment. But there's also been times where we've needed our ISAs to support our Zillow nurtures and our six plus month opportunities that haven't been touched. So currently in our business, anything that's a live call or live transfer, someone calls in, goes directly to the agent. All online registrations go to inside sales.

Cool. Just lay out in really straightforward terms, what are those lead sources that the company's investing in that the ISAs are handling? Give me a couple examples of where those leads are coming from.

Postcard gls, SEO, Geo mostly, all digital aspects.

Cool. So roi. Something I've heard in hosting conversations on real estate team OS is there's no bad lead, there's just bad systems. Does that sound about right? Yeah.

Okay.

So Dylan, I would love to hear how you all nurture. I mean, you just mentioned some of like the ISAs are working, some of like these longer nurtures. Talk a little bit about what the nurturing process looks like. Maybe a couple tips with regard to CRM. Follow up to make sure that these opportunities that you've invested time or money in, I mean the ROI is obviously in the conversion and the conversion isn't always three months from now. How do you manage that process across your teams?

Yeah, I think the first thing to keep in mind is like the mindset around roi. I think it's always annoying when I sit in these crowds and I hear somebody up here say, like, I do this thing and I get 12% ROI on that. And it's like, I don't know how you measure that. Right. Because if you get a Facebook lead and then you put them on your email nurture list and you do a YouTube video every week about quality information of your market and you send that out via the email and. And two years later that person clicks on a link on that YouTube video description which either funnels them back in through your website or through a calendar link or something like that, and then you meet with that person and you convert them two months later. Like, what do you attribute that lead source to? Like, what do you attribute ROI to in that?

Right.

I mean, I don't know. Like, I don't know how to answer that question right. So that's a big piece of. It is like, no lead source is bad, but every lead source has to have. And going back to, like, diversification, you can have a really diverse lead source, but I think you have to have a very un. Diverse process of converting that lead and following up with them long term. Because as we know, I mean, especially in like a market like ours, like, very rarely does somebody buy within 30 days of first contact. I mean, our average contact to close is like 180 days. And so a lot of times years go by before we actually can convert somebody. And it's our ability to stay sticky, provide them with information, build that relationship digitally sometimes before they actually will make any real contact. But that's super important is that everybody always asks, like, what's the best lead source? What should I do, you know, to generate leads? And my answer is always, what is your process first? Like, if you don't have a really solid process of following up on those leads forever, not like for the first 14 days forever, then you shouldn't generate any leads because it's just all going to be a waste of time and money.

Yeah. Does that 180 days vary across lead sources? And if so, how.

That's Zillow. So it's like, that's the easiest one to measure because, again, like, you have

a clear start date.

Yeah. You have a clear start date.

Yeah. I don't know when they subscribe to your YouTube channel, but I know when they connected with me.

Yeah. Yeah.

Cool.

I know, Keith, that you have that you do, like, these database blitzes. Talk a little bit about that process because I think that's probably key to roi and maybe start with that. Like, when did this process occur to you and then how is it executed?

Yeah, when you frame it around the database component of it. So one thing that we do different, that it will be very distinctively different than a lot of other people, is we're probably one of the largest teams that don't have any ISAs. Like, we don't have any. It's one of those things we kind of drew the line in the sand that we didn't want to play in that game or manage it. And because we don't do a lot of the Pay per click or some of these other sources that you're hearing. We didn't really have the need for this team to operate with what it is, but we wanted to re nurture and rekindle in kind of some outside the box ideas. So one of the ways we do it, which has been fundamental for us as we've learned and grown, is we can use meta and social media to run targeted specific ads that are not based on asking for business but for creating attention. So we can run boosted ads with specific targeted audience list based on the leads, data and performance stuff we have and we can put emphasis on there. And it doesn't have to be a lot of spend because we're just playing for impressions. But when you wonder why someone sees you all the time on social or meta and then it brings them back. It's kind of the same concept for like you were saying with YouTube, but think of it as like your digital billboard. And instead of me being on the side of a highway, I'm on their Facebook channel all the time. So they're like, man, why do I keep seeing this agent over and over again that I spoke to six months ago? Well, that's us re engineering behind the scenes. They don't even know we're doing it. But we have all the data and it's very easy to manage and do. And so we can create some energy

with very low cost, good roi. Any thoughts on roi, Camilla?

I think in a digital world the days of attribution are over. Right?

The irony there is that I feel like when we went to all digital marketing, it's like, oh, I can see all these things that I didn't know before, but it's like, well, you could put a custom phone number on a postcard and do that attribution. Back in the day, it's just a different form of it, but now it's. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but

I'll give you a perfect example. So we do bus benches, billboards. It's not like we're saying, hey, we got this lead from this bus bench, right? That's why we put them in buckets. Right? We know postcard, bus benches, billboards. I mean, this is something that our team leader has been doing for 28 years, right? Because she was very intentional on building a local brand. And that's why I mentioned you have to understand what your goals are. Not everyone is interested in building a local, trusted consumer brand. Right. There's a lot of real estate companies that are not investing money in that and that's okay. Right? And that's how you will decide where your marketing dollars will go. Right. Is it in time? And hiring the right team leaders isa so that you can optimize your referral base opportunities. So being super clear on what you want to achieve or what your goals are are really important when you're investing in lead sources. I know I talk about that a lot, but it's. Sometimes you come to these events and you're like, oh, they said GLS was great. I'm going to go spend all this money. Why is that lead source important to you and your business? And what impact is that going to have? Do you have the right agents for that? Do you have the right sales process for that? Right. And making sure that you go into it with a mindset of, am I going to give it 60 days or 12 months? I don't know. In real estate, how you do anything for less than three months and decide if it's working or not working. Right. Most of the opportunity. When we're looking at something, we understand that we have to be willing to commit to it for 12 months before we can say this is working and not working. Which is why we don't really add a lot of lead sources often because we're not always in a position to invest for 12 months before we can make a decision. Yes, this is working. This is not working.

So where in the budget do bus benches and that type of thing fit? I think a lot of people are like, I mean, we all know agents who run a ton of billboards. And you're like, okay, in this conversation about diversifying ways people reach out and connect with us, where does that budget fit? Like, mentally, how do you all think about that? Because to your point, kind of what you were talking about, Dylan, it's not like I can say this dollar invested here produced $1.73 in the end, therefore it's good, let's spend more here. It's like, it's more amorphous than that. So how do you all think about that? Philosophically? I mean, it's obviously at some level, it's a continuation of her, of Lori's vision. But you also have taken the reins on a ton of this over the past decade. And so you need to justify it to yourself. Like, how do you think about that spend versus a more measurable dollar?

So for us, we want to make sure that it goes back to our goal that we're retaining 50% of the company dollar. Right. So how many more opportunities or at bats do we need to bring into the organization so that we could protect that end number. And so to your example, we know that someone gets the postcard and then they go Google us and then they go read our reviews. And so that's why we make sure that sometimes you say, okay, there's one lead source per client, but not really. There's like three lead sources per client. A YouTube channel, right? Your email campaign, your action plans, all the things that you're doing, your client events, your charity events. And so I think it just has to be a commitment that you're willing to make to set a certain amount of money into client events, direct mail or bus benches and billboards. And knowing that you need to attribute about three different lead sources per client in today's world.

So we reshaped it. And maybe this helps with a little bit because I agree with all of you guys 100%. Like the lead source ROI conversation is different than what it has been in the past. The attribution's gone. I 100% agree. So what we did is we changed the conversation because our clients are agents. They're not the consumers like those of you guys that are team leaders and broker owners. We're serving our agents, those are our clients. So flip the conversation of ROI on a based on a per agent experience versus a consumer based one. Right? And then I can reshape that because now I'm looking at how much spend am I putting on per agent at what phase in their career and what is that attributing to company dollar being made. So then it's a little easier ROI talk. Because now I'm looking at agent A. I spend this on their entire marketing ecosystem and agent A generates this much revenue. Here's my return. And then I can scale that up to a per profitability standard on a per agent basis. And now I can put that lens under a certain market, a certain city, a state, a metro or even a country. So like that helps me dissect that data and bring back that ROI discussion where it's gone on the lead source component side of things. Especially if it's pay it close. Because if it's we're talking pay at closed sources, what is that roi? It's opportunity cost of time. So then now we're using that resource in a different way. And so paint the lens back to agents. And I think the ROI convo comes

back and that is love to add

something really quick back to the bus benches and billboards. That's also a funnel for our recruiting, right? Because There's a lot of agents that want to be associated with an influencer in the local market. So we don't just look at that as for buyers and sellers, it also helps build our brand presence amongst the agent community.

Yeah, that just. And there's the art and science part of all of this. Okay, so I want to hit before we wind down, I want to hit adding or removing or evaluating lead sources. What I've heard so far is, Keith, you're simplifying. In general, three months is an absolute minimum, but probably more. And so let's start with you, Dylan. Share a story, a tip, or an example related to adding a source, removing a source, or how you think about evaluating a new opportunity that's come your way.

I think the first thing you got to have is an evaluation criteria, right? And to have an evaluation criteria, you got to have a standardized process on what you're doing with that lead when it comes in so you can, apples to apples, compare different lead sources. And so if you get a lead source and you apply your process to it and it doesn't work, you don't get some level of conversion out of it. I mean, to me, you kind of got to wait six months on any, on anything. But if you don't get any level of conversion out of it at all, and you know you did a, you applied your process to it, then you have to evaluate whether or not you want to continue to, to use it or not. But another criteria for us is like, we had an investor lead source for people that were looking to invest in fix and flips or vacation rentals and things like that. And what we found was the contact information was good, conversations were good, but the expectation of the people that were coming from that lead source was something we couldn't deliver on in our market. Because in the Hawaii market, if you want to do a fix and flip, like get ready to spend a million bucks, right, you're not going to come in and spend 150,050 grand extra and then make 50 grand. It just doesn't exist in our market. So if you're from Kansas City and you're looking to do it in Hawaii, your perspective on what's possible is super distorted. And we just found that we couldn't deliver. The leads were okay, they were good from a contact standpoint, but we couldn't deliver on what that consumer was looking for. So it wasn't a lead source that made sense to continue to spend money on. But that's a big one, I think, is, are you Equipped to handle the leads and deliver on what they're looking for based on wherever they're coming from. Because it could be general pay per click stuff, but it could be more specified too.

Cool. Keith, I've heard you talk about simplification. No contracts like anything else. Zone of like. Because I assume that given your pace of growth, you're getting solicited and unsolicited opportunities to get onto new heat sources. So like, how do you, how do you think about that zone?

Yeah, I'll give you guys a big tip. If they require a 12 month contract or any contract at all, don't sign up. And if you're a lead provider, change that crap. Like, don't do that anymore. Like, stop offering contracts. Like that means that you don't believe in the service that you're providing. If you have to lock someone in and handcuff them for a year, that's not good value. So for us, that was the easiest and quickest one. If someone offers a contract and that's the only way to sign up, I'm not signing up. And we can end the convo early, save time and energy there. And then as you dissect that further and further, it's simplifying. Does is this going to help me or is this going to change the way I do business? If it causes your business to restructure, maybe it's not the best fit right now. So simplifying. But the contract one's big for me. We just don't do it.

One thing to add on I thought about earlier and I get to it was, you know, he's talking about the pay per clothes and how much more advantageous that is to our business. And if you think about it from a team standpoint, like the way I view the team is like the team has no value to an agent unless we're a partnership and they're closing more business than they would have without us. And I feel like from a lead source standpoint, the same should apply. Like if you're not willing to partner with me and we both have skin in the game and you only make money if I make money, then it's not somebody I want to be in business with. So I think, you know, looking at it from the agent perspective, we got to apply that to our lead sources.

I even think about it in the same lens of our own teams and our own contracts. If we're telling our agents, hey, you have to be on our team for 12 months, 24 months, it's the same thing. Like I Wouldn't be believing what I'm saying. That means you don't have any value in what you provide as a team. And you have to convince somebody to say, stay there, provide great value and they'll stay with you for life. Like, it's plain and simple.

Cool.

Camilla, how have you thought about. I mean, obviously the business today is a lot different than when you joined the organization. You've been through a lot of things, especially around lead sources and the way that you're growing and building the business. What have you learned or what would you like to share about adding, removing, or evaluating lead sources?

So we like to ask ourselves two questions. Do we already have an existing sales process or SOP that we could use to implement this lead source that is going to give us conversion? And when we talk about conversion, it's important that you're also looking at your set rate, your met with rate, not just how many deals did you close? Because I think that's a lot of times people give up on lead sources because they're like, it's been four months and we haven't closed anything. Well, how many people have you met with? Right. There's different points of conversion. So I think that's important to look at when evaluating lead sources. And then we also ask ourselves, do we have the right agent avatar currently within our organization to serve this customer lead source? If we do, great. And can we commit to recruiting more agents that will fit this lead source? Because we know that, you know, there's agents that come and go and we never want to invest in an opportunity that if we only have five agents on that lead source, they all leave tomorrow or life happens. We want to make sure that we're always protecting the organization and continuing to attract and recruit agents for that lead product specifically.

Cool. That sounds a lot like what you just shared, Keith, with regard to, like, I don't want to contort the business too much to accommodate a particular lead source just because it's come in front of me. Let's double down on our strengths in and repeat things that we already know work.

Absolutely. We just recently added a cash offer. We do a lot of cash offer marketing in our market and someone called me and they had a unique opportunity. I'm like, this is easy for us to implement. Our agents are knowledgeable on the cash offer. We have 12 plus cash offer partners. Our inside sales agents know how to manage that conversation. So that was a simple yes for us.

Cool.

Well, we're gonna wind down here. That doesn't mean you need to get up and leave. I challenge each of them to share one takeaway that you would all enjoy and appreciate. And if your face is on the screen, you can speak to your idea.

This was big for me. And we can see our businesses get out of control.

Okay.

You should never let one paid source ever make up more than 50% of your business. And I'd love to make that smaller. Like, you guys have heard me talk. Like, I'd love to even make that 25%. It's so important to diversify your portfolio from paid sources. That means you, you're not reliant on someone else to build your business. Because if you become so reliant on another source to build your business, then you really are just an employee for that business. You're not running your own company. So this is just kind of a big piece that I speak to.

Cool.

Build a clear, repeatable plan so that you can maximize your ROI past that first closing. Right? That can look like commit to events, commit to charity events, whatever that looks like. Make sure that you're looking at your ROI past that first closing. And if you have ancillary services, make sure that you're also looking at the ROI on what you're making on those other businesses.

This is just one of my favorite concepts in life, not just in business, but discipline equals freedom. So the more discipline that you have in everything that you do, right, if you're discipline and you exercise every day, you can eat more of what you want. You have more freedom in what you eat. If you are disciplined with your finances when you're young, you have more financial freedom when you're old. And I think when we apply this to business, if you have a disciplined process and you're going to do the work every single time the same way every single day, you have a lot more freedom in your business because you can have better decision making, you can have better data to look at. And just at the end of the day, if you show up and do the work every single day the same way, it's like success is inevitable. And if you apply that to lead sources, it doesn't really matter what the lead source is. And you're going to see, you have to see some level of success regardless of where it comes from. And the good ones will rise to the top because that process will help uncover the gold.

Awesome. I realized I never introduced myself off the top. I asked you all to do that. My name is Ethan. I work for Follow Up Boss and Zillow. One of the main things that I do is host a show called Real Estate Team os. It's about starting, growing, and optimizing a real estate team. All three of these wonderful people have been guests as of many of you that are here with me. So if you hit that QR code, you can learn more about each of them and their business and learn from a diversity of people across North America and the different ways that they're building their businesses. Sometimes we talk lead sources. That's all we did today. I appreciate you all clap it up for these three fine folks.

Thanks for checking out this episode of Team os. Get quick insights all the time by checking out real estate team os on Instagram and on TikTok.