Your CRM Is Lying to You

Your database is not working for you. It is working against you. And today we're going to fix that. One expert, one tool, one thing you can use before your next client call.

We got a whole bunch of agents to provide data for a study, and we go, "Look, this is going to hurt, but we'll do it like a band-aid and we'll tear it off real quick." And God, that stuff was just ugly. It was just a murder fest out there. Agents were only closing 7% of the transactions in a 12-month period. They were only closing 7% of the transactions in their database themselves. Yeah, 93%. That's insane.

Think about the number of transactions that you did last year in your own database and go make that times nine. That's roughly the volume that you would have of transactions in a given database. What AI is really coming for — and it's your pocketbook, not your job — if you're using AI wrong, right? Like, if those of us who are using it to add more value to the transaction, amplify what we're doing so that our clients are getting more from us, then they're not going to ask for less. They're going to be like, "Wow, what a tremendous value you offer."

Welcome to AI Agent Advantage. I'm JMan, and this episode is brought to you by our founding partners, Wise Agent, Subi, and the CE Shop. These are the companies that believe in what we are building here, and we're grateful to have them in our corner. AI is not replacing you, but the agent who uses it will. This is AI Agent Advantage. One expert, one tool, one thing you can implement today, with your host, JMan.

You know that feeling when you look at your CRM and think, I've got thousands of contacts in here, why am I not getting more listings? Here's a stat that's going to keep you up tonight. A recent case study of 500,000 contacts in agent databases found that 50% were missing physical addresses, and 93% of the transactions from those contacts, they listed with another agent. Not you. Someone else.

Your database is not working for you. It is working against you. And today we're going to fix that. One expert, one tool, one thing you can use before your next client call.

Today I'm sitting down with Chris Drayer. Chris is the co-founder of Revaluate, a data and AI company that helps agents identify who in their existing database is most likely to move. He has spent 20 years in the rating and ranking business, has lived in eight states, and built Revaluate around one powerful idea: you do not need more leads, you need better data. And the tool we're breaking down today does exactly that. Chris, welcome to the AI Agent Advantage, my friend.

Thank you so much. I appreciate the kind words, and it's a pleasure to be here, sir.

So let's get right to it. Chris, in plain English — I know how data guys, you get excited, we start to talk — but in plain English, what does Revaluate actually do? I will try and not use the complex words. So, in one real quick sentence, we're trying to find leads for real estate agents and teams from inside their database. From inside their database — what does that mean exactly? How are you doing that?

What do you say, data or data? Is there a right and a wrong? Is this like GIF and JIF? Because I noticed that we just did that. So I want to, you know, for clarity — data. I have a Rochester accent. Rochester data. Data. Let's say data. We'll say data for the rest of the time. I don't, you know, I think it's tomato, tomahto, so I'm not worried about it, but I thought I would call it out.

So, I'm sorry, your question again is how — yeah, how. Like, how does it actually, you know, using the data, how does that help people to find business in their database? Well, the case study that you just referenced is just absolutely gross, right? It's sickening. Real estate agents get out and they drive around a neighborhood and they see a sign in their neighbor's yard, and you know that that's just a stab in the heart. Like, what happened?

A gut punch. Yeah. Happened the other day. It's never happened to you. No, obviously. No, somebody that looked like me.

But that's absolutely the worst, because you've got this relationship with somebody — whether it's good or bad or close or not, but you know them — and that sign pops up in the yard, and it's just like, ah, that's terrible. So we were like, well, I wonder how often that actually happens, like, in databases across the nation. And so we did that. We got a whole bunch of agents to provide data for a study, and we go, "Look, this is going to hurt, but we'll do it like a band-aid and we'll tear it off real quick." And God, that stuff was just ugly. It was just a murder fest out there.

Agents were only closing 7% of the transactions in a 12-month period. They were only closing 7% of the transactions in their database themselves, because we could then list all of the physical addresses and then look in the last 12 months of MLS data and match them up, and oh my God, bloodbath. Yeah, 93%. That's insane. So if you think about the number of transactions that you did last year in your own database and go make that times nine, that's roughly the volume that you would have of transactions in a given database.

When you're tracking it, like, what is it that you're actually tracking in people's databases? I get it, and it's easy to say, okay, this person in your database listed, you lost the business, but what are you doing? Like, what's the misconception agents have about AI and how that works in the predictive analytics, you know, where you're — right, I'm guessing — is that what you're doing, you're kind of saying, based on the data, we think these people are likely to do something?

Yeah, that's how we do the prediction stuff. And I should say that that's very different than reactive stuff. So what we were just talking about is reactive, like that. Okay, before and after. Yeah, before and after. So last 12 months versus the next 12 months, if you will.

So agents that come to us are most of the time trying to evaluate whether they want to go buy leads from somewhere else. They want more business. All of them want more business. I don't know any agents that's like, I got too much. So yeah, they want more business. We could say this: they want more business that's easier and costs less — but better ROI.

Yeah. What can you give me that gives me business and is close to free and I don't have to do a lot of work? Or the question is, like, well, dealing with new leads that come in — can it just do it all for me, please? I just want to sit at the laptop. No, agents are social people. They want to be out and talking with people, otherwise they shouldn't be in the business, right? Right.

That's what a cold, faceless company can't do that agents can, is have relationships. And that's when you ask what's the kind of thing that agents have wrong about AI. I think a lot of agents think AI is coming for my job, and it's like the old Expedia thing from back in the day, taking away travel agents, right? That's what I think they're worried about. Maybe they don't lose sleep over it, but they have this probably idea that AI is going to come for their jobs. I don't think that's the case. Do you?

I don't. I mean, there's always something coming for the job, right? The internet, and, you know, as tech advances, everything's going to replace us. But I think what we do is so personal, you know, and there's so many decisions we have to make based on our expertise that it won't — so subjective.

Yeah. If you're running a shop that just buys leads and you don't have relationships and you're just churning through them and working and working and working, those paid leads, whether it's PPC or from a portal or whatever, that's less relationship-driven, and that can be duplicated. It's my belief. But that's not the majority of transactions and not the majority of agents. It could be scaled, but if the machine stops going, there's no output. Right. If the hunters stop hunting, there's nothing to eat.

Right. Where you're saying is mining it — more like, I like to use the farmer analogy, right? Like, well, I'm hungry, go grab some corn off the stalk that's sitting there waiting for you. As long as you planted the seeds and watered it and fertilized it and weeded it. And then the seed said, "You know what? I'm ready." Yep. I like this analogy. We could go on with this. Yeah, that's good.

That's the thing is, I don't think AI is coming for the agents' jobs, like, full stop, but there are companies that are coming for agents' commissions and continue to grow the piece of commissions that they're taking. And AI is doing that for sure. That's not coming for the job, but that is coming for your commission. So I think there needs to be a conversation about what AI is really coming for, and it's your pocketbook, not your job. Exactly. Right. Exactly.

Have you seen all these — the young kids today with their throwbacks? Well, I'm certainly not in that category anymore. I passed that a long time ago, but they're going back to all this analog stuff, right? So, the throwbacks. Yeah. Do you have some examples of that that you're seeing?

A record player that my son has. He's like, "Dad, have you seen this?" I'm like, "I used to scratch on that." I wanted to be a DJ. Yeah, I remember.

My daughter is 17, and the car that she drives is not like a brand-new car, but it's relatively new. And she asked me one day, like, "Could I get a CD player?" I'm like, "Why do you want a CD player?" And I'm like, "By the way, it's got one already. You've got it." Just didn't know what it was. Yeah, no, I didn't know. Like, how do I use a CD player? And I'm like, oh, this is so cute. Like, this is awesome.

And she's got the record player and stuff, but this is a drive to go back more to this analog, conversational, real relationship, you know, that's tangible. You and I are having this conversation right now. You and I know this is real. We're not AI bots. People value that, and there's going to be, I think, a continued desire for real human interaction, conversation, and emotion that doesn't exist in the AI world, on a real soulful value.

Man, no, I love that, because I'm going to use the same analogy as the record player, right? When you listen to sound on a record, it's different. Just like working by relationship. And we're so inundated with AI slop that we're like, oh, now I have to say in my videos, "Hey, this is Jeremias JMan Maneiro, the real JMan." I'm a human. And now it adds more value. But it was always me before — but now, because there's not the real me, the real me has more value. Oh my God, this is a breakthrough. I love it.

And so I see that being a really good illustration of what's happening in people's databases. The humans, the relationships, are going to only increase in value as time goes forward, and the AI slop, whether it's a lead generation thing or not, that's not as valuable. And people are getting that. They are seeing through the cracks. The young ones are getting it first, but, you know, my mom will figure it out at some point. She's not going to watch this, I don't think. She might. She might.

So what's the gap then, you know, when we're talking about, like, your CRM is supposed to be your relationship manager — we're working on these relationships — what's the gap between that and data that you're using to kind of bring the business forward? Because I think so often we want to just throw people in there, scrape them wherever we can, pull them off my Facebook, and then wonder, like, oh, come on. Hit refresh on your CRM going, where's the business? Hello. Totally right. Yeah. So what's the matter there? What's happening?

There's kind of three parts to this. One of the mentality ideas that agents have is, my database is trash. It's not working anymore. It's got all these errors. I get spam all the time. And so the first bad thing that agents will do is they'll delete all the stuff that they don't know, like they're unsure about, or there's an error or something is wrong, and they'll just delete the whole database and, like, start over, like a clean wipe. And I'm like, good God, don't do that.

Okay, I was going to say, how do you feel about that? That gives me anxiety just talking about it. People are like, I threw out all that stuff because I didn't like it — to start over. That's not the best way to do it.

The people that had buyer leads — and if it was in the past or not — they've got a relationship with them. They've had some communication with them, because they're a buyer lead, like an open house or an inquiry or something. Yeah, there might be some brand recognition there. It's not like a cold relationship. Well, might not be a warm relationship either, but it's not — it's tepid. Is that the right word? I like that. Tepid. That works. Room temperature. Yeah.

Those are all missing physical addresses, because buyer leads, by their nature, they come in without a physical address. So in that case study that we talked about early on, 50% of the contacts in databases didn't have physical addresses, because a majority of those are buyer leads, or they're people that they do have relationships with — church, golf club, soccer, whatever, kids' musical, I don't know. All those things — those contacts that you have as an agent, you don't know where those people actually live. You have their name and their email, probably. So what we try to do is say, all right — so, so sorry. The first one is they go and they delete all, and the second one is they just have a total mess of all the contacts in there, and it's just a burning dumpster fire of a ton of stuff.

So, quality of the data. Yeah. Right, depending where they get it from. I've heard that from agents where they say, "I've got 10,000, 20,000." And it's like, "What do you got?" I got a name, or a name and email, or just an email. And it's like, so how many points of contact should they have for each? Like, what makes a — if you're looking at it and say this is a really good contact, what should that have?

In my mind, there's four primary pieces that make up a record — not like the kind that you play on your stereo, but a full contact record is name, email address, phone number, and physical. And because we're in the real estate business, physical equates in my mind to inventory. So if you're running a shoe store and you don't have any shoes in the back — right? Right. So you're in the real estate business, you should have, in your neighborhood and in your farm and in all the contacts in your database — you sell real estate, you ought to have the physical address.

And so to facilitate that, Revaluate identifies the contacts in your database that are missing addresses, that are missing phone numbers, that are missing all the different pieces. And we categorize it and break it down so it's nice and tight. And we do a — it's a report card. You can call it an audit. It's a review. Audit scares people, especially during tax season, so that's never — I don't want to talk about that. But it's a review of the data, so we can analyze it and look at it and tell them, here's what you guys have. Here's what's in there.

And then obviously what we would try to do then is fill in the gaps. Can we fill in the gaps? Can we append it with physical addresses so you know where JMan lives, so that you can have a conversation about real estate with JMan? If you don't know what state you live in, and you're only licensed in New York, but you actually are in Rhode Island — you know, nothing against Rhode Island, but you can't sell there. And so is that worth having that contact in there? And are you going to send the same marketing material to somebody that lives in South Florida as Rhode Island? No, obviously not.

And so that's kind of like the first step — you do an audit for them of what their database is like. And do you help to fill in some of those gaps, like you said, like the address and things that might be missing? And do you also tell them, like, hey, some of these are bad, let's just at that point kind of tell them, let's get rid of these, because I don't know where you got it, but it's not — bought another house, or —

Well, the bad, it has a lot of different flavors. We call them suspicious contacts. Super sus. Yeah, they look like a lot of different things. So your Bugs Bunny — you know, when people fill out lead capture stuff and they put in Bugs Bunny, right? There's any profanity at gmail.com, right? All of those words we will flag as suspicious so you don't have to see them.

We're going to de-duplicate everything, obviously, but then the other category is real estate agents and professionals in the industry. So, right, in your database — for sure. They can be in there, but you can't be marketing to them, and they're not prospects, right? That's so annoying. And I get — yeah, I'll get an email like, "JMan, thinking about selling your home? Now is a great time." And I'm like, no. I'm glad it's a good time, but do you have a brownie recipe? Yeah. Right. When do I change my clocks back? Right. Right. So we categorize those separately and put them in a special place so that they can be dealt with accordingly.

So, less is more, right? Quality over quantity. Like, let's focus on really good contacts that will give us better data, which then we can use to predict. Now, how do the predictions work? You have a crystal ball back there at the office? It's black magic. Yeah, it's voodoo. It's pretty sweet. Yes.

So the tools that we've built, the AI, the algorithms that all tie together, it's all based on kind of one specific thing. And the one specific thing is, I want everybody listening or watching to think about the last three or four transactions that you did. And of those three or four transactions, what was the reason? Why did those people move? Like, what was the cause? The root cause — conversationally, what was the root cause?

And nine times out of ten, that is a life event. There was some life event that caused them. We call them the D's. It's sort of overused marketing speak, but death, disease, divorce, diapers, diamonds, diplomas, downsizing, discretionary income, the daily grind, dumpsters, like, dogs, whatever. But it's these life events that cause people to move.

Let me tell you about one of our founding partners, Subi. If you ever felt like the transaction side of real estate is where your time just disappears, Subi was built for you. It's your AI transaction genie. From contract to close, it keeps everything organized, your timelines on track, and all the details accounted for. Their tagline says it all: your work is my command. Check them out at oksubi.com — link in the show notes — and be sure to tell them J Squared sent you.

So, we were talking about dumpsters and how that leads to future sales. But the D's — life changes. So that's — you're monitoring their everything, socials, searches? And all that data is being sold, right? I mean, yeah, of course, but it's like, data is the new currency, really. It's like every time we sign a terms of service for our credit card, for Google, for Facebook, like, in there somewhere it says, "Hey, we're going to monitor what you're doing and we're going to sell it to somebody so that they could predict future behavior."

Exactly. Yep. They're in the business of selling signals, and I ingest that data and weight it all, and — yeah. Yeah, I was like, "Okay, mama."

So yeah, we take all that in. We assign it a weight and a score and a time. And that all magically turns into a score so that we know that Bob and Betty are probably likely to move in the next six, eight, ten months. And so we then assign them to a score — so they were at a 40. We've seen that they are having children, and that he got promoted, and that now they're getting married — hopefully, whatever order, I'm cool with whatever, you know. But all of that increases their score, and so we raise the score inside Revaluate and we flag it so that the real estate agent or the team can pick up the phone and say, hey, let's grab coffee.

That's the core element. Now, there's more nuanced versions of that, and there's bigger patterns. So you can say, in a CRM like Wise Agent, for example, you can use the Revaluate score to then trigger automated campaigns that encourage them to raise their hand.

Yeah. And I love that, because I think that's the misconception, is that people think with predictive analytics that it's likely to sell — you make one call and then they put their house on the market — when really it's like, in statistics, it's six to 24 months where they're in that information-gathering phase that triggers it. So we need to create a campaign, a soft one, that's like long-term, to just stay top of mind and provide value. Is that right?

100%. Like, I think layered on top of that is the question: can you prevent all of your customers, your prospects, from going to Zillow, Realtor.com, or some other website that's not yours? No. Absolutely not. Obviously not. Yeah. So you're trying to re-engage with them at a point prior to them filling out a lead capture form on one of those sites, so that you are that first agent that is having the conversation about their house prior to them doing a lead capture on one of those portals that's not yours.

Well, we're trying to wean the agents off of depending on the portals, but also provide value before they reach that point and they reach out to that Homes.com or that Zillow or anything else, right? So they're like, "Oh, you know, it was funny." It's because I sent an email, and then they go, "Funny you should reach out." Like, I know — funny all the time. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. We were just talking about it, thinking about it. Yeah. How does that work?

You know, Barry — Barry Jenkins — he gave me a really good script, and I'm not good with scripts, but this one-liner is pretty good. Because you pick up the phone and you see the score has gone up, but you're not really sure how to do it. This is how he has his ISAs doing it. It's basically like, "Hey, blah blah blah, good to chat with you. If there was one thing that you would change about your house right now, what would it be?"

Okay, so you're not asking if they want to buy or sell. You're not saying it's a great time. You're not actually talking about the market. But, like, just tell me, for my record, what's the one thing about your house that you would change if you could? They will then say what?

I wish I had a bigger home office. Oh, I wish I had a finished basement. Oh — pool. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. I don't like my commute. You know, I wish I could have this house but closer to my job.

So you're not talking about moving or buying or selling, but you are figuring out what is the catalyst for causing them to move, for the conversation to start thinking about it. It's like, oh, you know, now I got a new position where I'm working remotely, and I need a bigger home. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And you're like, oh, okay, where are you working now? And start, you know, actively listening, asking better questions. Yeah, I love that.

It works. It works great, because then they're not feeling the pressure — oh God, there's a real estate agent calling me, they definitely want to sell or buy. And you don't talk about that on the first call. Just like, okay, registered. Great. How are the kids?

Yeah. I was talking to somebody the other day, and they make calls like, "Hey, thinking about buying or selling?" No. "Hey, thinking about buying or selling?" And it's like — well, you know, I did hear a story that you hired your 16-year-old daughter to make calls. Was that the script she was using, or did she just say, "Dad, I'm going to do my own thing," and crushed it?

Yeah, she was a lone wolf. We didn't do any training. We just set her free. I love it. I'm getting paid in CDs, though, Dad. Right — paid in CDs. Yeah, well, she does, actually, come to think of it.

Yeah, she worked for me for two summers in a row. I don't know if I'm going to be able to hire her this year. She's commanding higher. She's getting expensive. Yeah, she's getting a little expensive for my taste, if you ask me. Out of budget. Yeah.

But she's a good worker. Yeah, we hired her to do kind of appointment setting and following up with customers, both separate years, but doing different things. And it was really good to have her get some experience doing that. And she enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. She didn't enjoy it enough to come back this summer, though.

Well, I feel like there's some life lessons there. There's skills that she can bring anywhere, you know, to be able to make calls and have conversations like her dad. Yeah, she needs to, because she's a screenager, right? Screenager. Yeah, that's what we call him — my son, too. That's so funny.

Like, prior to that work, she was nervous to talk to the guy that was running the ice cream stand, because, like, that's an adult. Not really an adult — it's like a 19-year-old, but still. Right. You've got to be able to do that. But it does make me think, like, what will her home-buying journey look like in ten years from now? What is she going to be going through? What does that look like? Is that an all-AI process? Is she working with an agent?

I think she's still going to be talking to an agent. She may research the houses more — like, she may have a really good idea if she can afford it, and she may know all the things, and that may be through AI, but I think she's still going to facilitate a transaction through a human. Now, Opendoor says they can help you buy a house in — is it 12 seconds or something? 12 minutes. It was something ridiculous. Yeah, sure. Just like Carvana — I'm going to order my car, it's going to be delivered, I don't have to drive it. No. Yeah. So crazy.

But I think there's a good lesson there. If your 16-year-old daughter can make calls — warm, warmer calls, right? I mean, she's never talked to these people, so it was cold calls on her behalf. But yeah. So if she can, then agents who are watching or listening to this — like, this is your database. You should be able to call them and be like, "Chris, what's up, man? How are things? Oh, you know what?" And you just have a conversation like a human being. Those are the easiest calls to make, instead of calling a stranger and getting hung up on because their house just expired, or they're for sale by owner, or you're just calling blindly in a neighborhood.

I like the agents that use our data. So, I told you about Barry, but we have other agents that are really event-based, and so they'll do — you know, it's baseball season right now — they'll set up a baseball game, or they'll do, you know, events. This is also around the pie stuff, around, you know, whatever holiday. Hey, I just want to know if we can get you a pie this Thanksgiving. Do you prefer pecan or pumpkin? Yeah, reverse pie. That's an easy question. And then you ask the Barry question after that.

Well, they should be doing it on March 14th, too, though. Pi Day. Pi Day, 1:59. 3.14. Yeah. Yeah. See, that's a little dated humor. Nerds. What are they going to do on 420? Well, that's a Colorado thing. Well, New Yorkers can, too. Okay. Yeah. If you got them — rates are high, but you can be too. It's a big flower on there. Yeah. Maybe that's not such a good idea. I don't know.

What do you think is the single biggest mistake that agents make when they're trying to use AI with their database? I don't think that they are leveraging their contacts the way that they ought to be. It's like apathy or inaction is the single biggest mistake. They're not leveraging this huge asset.

When I say that you can 9x the number of transactions in your database — it's 9x what you did last year, 10x that — that is the single greatest opportunity. If we can show you that there's that much value in your contacts, in your data or database, there's no reason for you to have to buy more leads. You can leverage the contacts in your own contacts database to produce more revenue going forward. You're not going to get them all. You're not going to get all of those 2x.

What you're saying is, the mistake is not taking action on what we're talking about here. Wasting money on things that you think are the quick fix, when you could be investing less by working your database and then reinvesting that into the people that matter more, which are your existing clients. And I think even then, like what you're saying, you got the 9x, but then those people transact with you and are happy. Lifetime value of that client — exponential.

If you're a short-term agent, you're not going to be in the business for a long time. You need a short-term fix, and you should rent your leads. If you're a long-term agent — love to rent your leads — then you should buy and own your database. That's excellent. Stop renting your leads.

All right, last question. Okay. Same one I ask every guest on the show. What is your single best tip for someone who's just getting started with artificial intelligence?

I will provide two answers. One is self-biased, because I would say, hey, if you're just getting started, or if you're just changing CRMs, we are a great tool to analyze all the contacts that you have from all the different sources and to de-duplicate and put that all in one spot. We can do that for you really, really easily. And that's the full-stop answer that I truly believe we can do. And frankly, we offer a free audit, so there's no reason not to do that. And you can find that at revaluate.com/audit. And that's the report card that we talked about. That's the — we're analyzing the contacts. We'll put it in the description and the show notes so it's easily accessible for them. Yeah. Sweet.

And then the more fun answer is, man, when you have someone that you have to write a letter to, that you just do not know how to say what you need to say — just the very most basic version of a GPT or anything else, to take your thoughts and put them in there and have it create a wonderful response that will elicit the reaction that you want. I feel like that's a no-brainer. And if you haven't been playing around with that, that's the easiest first step. Yeah. So, just get your feet wet. It's easy, it's free, and it doesn't hurt.

Get your feet wet. Have fun. And then do a little mining. That's where the gold is, folks. Okay? And we're going to get you that free audit with Revaluate. It's going to be in the show notes.

Now, if you got value from this, do me a favor. Share it with one agent who's still spending money on cold leads while their database collects dust. Just one. That is how we grow this thing. Subscribe if you haven't already. And next Friday, we'll be breaking down another tool with another great guest. You don't want to miss this one.

But before I let you go, I want to say thank you to our founding partners, Wise Agent, Subi, and the CE Shop. They make this show possible, and they are building tools that actually help people in the industry. Check them out. All the links are in the show notes. And thank you for spending time with me and Chris. This is not something we take lightly. Now go make it happen.