Syed Mohsin On Becoming Our Own Zillow and the Ultimate Defense Against Disruption

Next Level Agents: The Kevin & Fred Show - Interviews with the best and brightest minds in the real estate industry

In real estate, whoever controls the leads, controls the business - they call the shots. The rise of online lead sites like Zillow Flex means another way to generate leads, but also another entity making a claim on our earnings. The fact that a marketing company can come in and do something we can be equipped to do says a lot.

Our understanding of online leads and what the process of generating them needs to be corrected. Generating leads and taking them from the top to the bottom of the funnel is something we’re all capable of with the right tools.

If we want to future proof our businesses beyond next month’s and next year’s deals, learning to leverage tech and generate our own leads is a must. It’s how we stay relevant in the consumer’s mind, and how we defend ourselves getting disrupted out of business. If not, we’re doomed to basically become Zilow’s showing assistants.

For Syed Mohsin, teaching agents how to become their own Zillow is his mission. He shares how technology became such a driving force in his business, and why that’s key to our survival and continued success.

The biggest brokerages and teams who are doing big numbers are leveraging technology, online lead gen and automation. -Syed Mohsin

The company that spends the most amount of money to acquire clients will always win. -Syed Mohsin

Key Points

How tech became Syed’s superpower

New real estate agents are taught to generate business from the people who already know, like and trust them. When Syed dropped out of college a lot of people who already knew him didn’t like or trust him. That meant he had to learn to generate business from people he didn’t know, and that’s how tech became such a huge factor in his business.

Real estate agents have online leads all wrong

We think a lead we bought from Zillow was generated just yesterday, but they attract and nurture it for months before handing it to an agent. That would be no different if we generated the lead ourselves and nurtured it until they were ready to sell. The problem with agents is we think if a lead isn’t ready to do a deal right this second, the system isn’t working. The life cycle of a real estate lead is long, and the people who make money are the ones who are willing to play the long game.

Work the whole funnel

In real estate, we’re either taught to work top of the funnel leads or bottom of the funnel leads, but not both. We actually have to learn the art of generating a lead and moving it from the top of the funnel right down to the bottom when they are ready to sell.

The best way to approach online leads

If you’re going to generate business through lead aggregators, you better not be transactional about it. Once you’ve done the deal, you have to put that person in your database. If not, you won’t be able to get repeat and referral business, and you’ll never get off the hamster wheel of buying leads.

The fight to stay relevant in the eyes of the consumer

A lot of consumers don’t think real estate agents add as much value as technology does. In fact, technology has left a lot of them feeling like agents aren’t necessary anymore. Not only are tech companies making a claim on our commissions, they have the pieces in place to make us look obsolete in the eyes of the consumer.

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