Q&A with an Inbox Brain User: Real Estate Agent
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
My name is Thomas Lonnar and I’m a realtor in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). I got my real estate license shortly after graduating from university in 2010 and have been in the industry ever since.
The past 5 years have been an exciting time for the Toronto real estate market. We experienced the largest boom in Toronto real estate history in both annual sales volume and price appreciation between 2014 and 2016. Because of that people have been flocking to become realtors meaning it’s become even more competitive than it was 9 years ago.
I’m a competitive person by nature and always strive to be the best whether it be in my career or on the golf course. With the new hyper aggressive environment I started looking for ways to gain an advantage to land more clients. That’s where InboxBrain came in.
Q1. Why did you start using Inbox Brain?
A1. As a realtor I’m a solo entrepreneur. My income is purely commission based and in order to be successful I need to have a steady stream of new clients coming monthly. The average person stays in their home for almost 9 years, meaning I can’t wait for my current clients to buy or sell.
I do a lot of outreach through email, following up with new prospective buyers from open houses and different home show exhibitions. Usually people don’t reply on the first email so I thought if there was a tool that could do that for me I’d land more business.
I didn’t want to commit to hiring and training an assistant so I looked for inexpensive software that could perform many tasks that a secretary could.
Q2. How did you find Inbox Brain?
A2. I was referred to IB by a friend of mine in the industry. They have been using it for over a year now to automate their email prospecting and told me I need to have it if I want to double my sales.
Q3. What’s your favourite feature of the software?
A3. I have 2 actually: the auto follow up sequences and the open tracking.
The sequences are a deal saver. I have a lot of things on the go and rarely remember to send a follow up email in an appropriate time. Having this task automated is as good or better than having a personal assistant.
in the first 6 months of using IB I saved 11 potential clients and closed 3 sales.
The open tracking confirms that my emails are being inboxed and not marked as spam which is reassuring. I can also use it as a warm indication to call the client, or potential client, as they may have read and not had a chance to reply. Life is busy, it happens often.
Q4. Before IB, what was your routine for following up with leads and existing clients?
A4. It’s a little embarrassing but I used to make a note in my calendar to manually email X,Y,Z on such and such date. It was super tedious and labour intensive but that’s how I was taught so what’s what I did for years.
Q5. Do you prefer to pay monthly or yearly for your subscription?
After the free trial I signed up for the annual subscription. There’s a discount involved and the value of the product speaks for itself.
Q6. You mentioned value, can you elaborate?
Of course. For me it’s easy to quantify the value of your product. I pay $480 for the annual subscription and in the first 6 months of using IB I saved 11 potential clients and closed 3 sales. My commission is 1.5% and the average price of the homes I sold was $580,000. I’ll let your readers do the math on my comp to date.
I’ll never NOT use this product. It’s paid for itself 1000x.
Q7. Apart from realtors, who do you think can benefit from using IB?
Anyone in sales really and probably collections agents. Mortgage brokers, insurance brokers, car sales men and women. Anybody. If you send emails to prospect new clients or you need to follow up regularly, this tool will help you immensely.
⁃ Thomas Lonnar TREB
Are you currently using InboxBrain and love the results? We’d love to hear from you! As extra incentive, all interviewees receive one month of InboxBrain Free.
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