KGCI: Real Estate on Air - The AI Enforcement Loop: How Tracking Field Appointments Boosts Conversions by 10%

Episode Date: August 29, 2026

Summary: In this episode, mega-team owner Chris Waters details how real estate teams can drastically boost conversion rates by enforcing strict standards using AI-driven call and appointment auditing tools. Instead of relying on low-intent pay-per-click leads or endless training without accountability, team leaders can use automated tools to mystery shop and grade agent listing presentations in real time. This objective feedback loop pinpoints conversion bottlenecks, elevates agent skills, and captures higher-intent lead conversions from major life events like probate, divorce, and pre-foreclosures.

Team leaders, have you ever wished that you could know exactly what your agents were doing out in the field? Not to micromanage them, but to better train them, provide feedback. You can share what they did well, where they missed the mark. Or agents, have you ever wished that you had a mentor built into your pocket that could train you on the spot as you go? Hmm, well, if any of this speaks to you, then today's episode is for you. Chris Waters has been in the game since 2006, and he owns a team where his worst performing agent does 60 deals a year, 60 deals a year, the best one 120. And on today's show, he breaks down how. And it is not by giving them more leads, which is what naturally everyone thinks.

So stay tuned for that. And in case you didn't know, you're listening to the Agent Goldmide podcast, the show for agents who have been around the block and are finally ready to build sustainable, scalable, businesses that they actually. left. My name is Shelby Johnson. My other half, Ali Garcett and I are both military veterans turned real estate entrepreneurs and we have closed hundreds of transactions as agents, real estate investors, icon agents in EXP, etc, et cetera, et cetera, and we're here to share everything that we've learned along the way, plus are still learning because we are still active agents. One last note, if you're considering joining EXP and Ali and I would love to help you hit your goals so we can all do that together, hit us up. And now,

Welcome, Christopher. Chris, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I want to jump right in. As we were talking, you mentioned that real estate teams don't need more leads. They need more standards and enforcement. Can you go into that? Well, I think there's like these typical expectations with teams that the agents are going to average two deals a month to stay on the team. I don't think a lot of teams actually maintain those standards.

There's other standards around like how many, you know, calls you need to make to get an appointment books. How many appointments should turn into a met? How many Mets should turn into face to, you know, into signed contracts face to face or agency agreements signed face to face. So when I say standards, I mean like just what you expect, you know, out of the effort you apply. I think to the, to the point around, you know, standards, I had one of the biggest like breakthroughs

I think of my career about a year ago, which is. why I'm glad to be talking to you guys about this. And that is that, you know, if you think about how most companies operate, it's like, you know, they hire salespeople, they give them leads. They train them how to convert those leads into, for example, contracts. And then they train them to, you know, convert those contracts into, you know, deals closed. And after they go through that training period, they're not just like left out there to dry and to figure it out. I continue figuring it out. They have someone going behind them inspecting what the company expects. One of the best examples is I remember my wife joined this like massive property management company called Grey Star. Have you

guys heard of Grey Star? I mean, they have an insane amount of apartments, like hundreds of thousands of apartment units. It's one of the biggest property manager companies for multifamily in the U.S. And they would every single month mystery shop the leasing agents. Every month they mystery shop. Right. And a leasing agent is kind of like an agent on a team where that agent is given everything, right? They just have to convert. But on teams, I would be willing to bet a lot of people are not, you know, mystery shopping their agents and inspecting what they expect around, you know, all the little nuances of how to go about getting business.

And so, you know, mystery shopping gets expensive, right? It's like 100 bucks a person per month and like to do it every single month like clock where it gets really expensive. And so I always wondered like how could you implement that in a team or a brokerage? You know, we started testing AI to be the virtual ride along with our agents on face-to-face appointments. And we also started using AI to listen to the call. And immediately after the call or immediately after the appointment, it's literally sending a summary to the agent. And it's telling them what they did that worked out really well and then what they did that they need to improve upon. Well. And what I realized is, is like, I think most teams and brokerages spend so much money in training and onboarding. But then there's not this like enforcement loop, you know, and they say people only remember 10% of what they hear. right and so it's like not our fault as humans that we don't remember that much and so we have to be constantly reiterating the stuff we learn but in teams and brokerages like when you think about how many

agents is per team leader or per broker the ratio is insane it could be like you know 15 agents to one person or 50 50 to one person i heard Shelby talk about you know i heard you talk about your experience in the military and i think the military has like the best organizational structure that has ever been created by mankind. You know, an Alpha Team Leader, a Bravo team leader, and they have somebody over both Alpha Bravo teams. It's like, you know, and you talked about being in a brigade, right? And so the military, like, man, if anybody's, I mean, Shelby, you should totally do a whole

podcast on this on like the structure of the military. Because if you created a real estate team or brokerage using the structure of the military, like you would have this, you know, badass team. Allie was also in the military. Okay. And I felt like a team. I did have a team. Yeah, I was going to jump in.

So I did use a lot when I built the team back in the day. I used a lot, I mean, basically everything that I knew out of the military to implement in conjunction with Gary Keller's book. What is it? The red one. It's been a while. It's been a while since I also shut down the team. And it did. It does work.

I totally agree with you. what you said that teams are not mystery shopping because I know from my personal experience and from the vast amount of team leaders that Ellie and I know or have even interviewed on this show, most of them are in survival mode because they were not, they did not get into real estate to become a team leader of a massive organization. Most of them were just really good agents that happened to attract more business than they could handle or other agents who wanted to replicate what they did. And then they just fell into team leadership because that's what you're supposed to do. So totally agree that they are not mystery shopping. And I'm so curious about

this AI. So you're saying that it's already implemented, like it's working. It's not just some hypothetical. No, no, yeah. My group has been using it for about a year. And it gives the agent a skills score, whether they're on the phone or they're face to face. It gives them a skill score. And it's got these grading rubrics upgraded, uploaded into the AI brain based off like how a buyer call should go, how a seller calls should go, how to buyer face-to-face appointment should go, how a seller face-to-face appointment should go. I was looking at one of the reports over the weekend and one of my agents showed up to an appointment without a CMA. Like you like put the AI put in quotations. I couldn't find any sales comps around you. The AI put in her feedback like if the

buyer is going to go get a loan on this property and appraiser will find cops. So anyways, what you learn, I don't know if I mean, for me, that was a little mind-blowing because it's like, I can't imagine an agent showing up to an appointment without sold cops, right? For sure. Oh, I can. Oh, I can. The amount of agents that are out there doing what the fuck ever they want. Yeah. I am with. I can imagine. But also it is, it is tough to think about the level of standards or lack there of across our industry. Regardless of in a team, across the industry,

it's just like absolutely wild that people, these eight, sorry, now I feel like I'm shit talking agents, but like that you're helping with the biggest financial investment of someone's life. And it's they, anyway, not the point. I mean, like, if you think about the big box brokerages, right, they have like 200 agents, every one employee at the brokerage. Like, whether it's century 21, Keller Williams, XP, it doesn't really matter the name of the company. Like, that, you know, if you're not on a team and you're in a brokerage, it's like, whatever. It's some insane number of agents per broker or team leader per trainer. And that ratio like doesn't work.

You can't apply enough hands-on experience. And so, you know, to lead people to self-discovery after they go and meet clients, they need this immediate feedback loop. And with the structure of how brokerages work, that feedback loop can't happen. It's impossible. So anyways, the, what's interesting about the AI, stuff is like, we've been using it for about a year. And a lot of our agents are being led to self-discovery. You know, the AI feedback is very objective. And so instead of us getting into this like

parent-child relationship where they feel like we're constantly critiquing them, it's like the AI is telling them like, hey, you have to show up to a house with comps. You know, side note. And I saw another one. I saw another one last week for one of my agents where they got into a dispute around commissions. And the AI said, you know, you didn't spend enough time showing the seller what you were going to do to market their house for sale. Like you, you know, it said in the strengths, hey, you did a great job building rapport. You did a great job time about the numbers, but you did not go into detail around how you're going to market their house for sale.

So, of course, they're going to object around commissions. And then I saw another one where they got into, you know, it puts in quotations like, you know, the seller objecting the price. Like, I'm not listening to my house for 400,000. Hell no. That's what it literally said, like, in quotes. And the, what the AI said was is you need to lead the seller to their own. own conclusion next time try asking the seller the question hey mr seller if you were a buyer and i'd

showed you all these active pendings and sold what would you pay for your own house and so instead of you telling them like let them figure it out on their own so anyways it's it's it's something that we've been using for about a year and it's it's something that i've real and this is what i mean by it's been like the biggest epiphany for me the past year is like it's this this enforcement loop that happens post training has been completely missing in our industry. And it's just like every other, every other industry inspects what they expect. And ours, it's just like structurally we can't because of the agent to broker ratio, right? And just like in the military, it's like three. I don't know what branch military you guys were in, but alpha team is only three people. Bravo team's only three people.

And then they have an alpha team leader, bravo team leader. And then there's somebody over the alpha and bravo team like, you know, that kind of structure doesn't work in our in our business, which is, which is why the ability to inspect what you expect is not possible. And that sounds so cool. In the very beginning, when you first started mentioning it, I was thinking something along the lines of like the note takers, just so more passive, like, oh, this is what happened instead of the future?

Like, hey, this is what you should do instead? What other categories, or I guess are they broken? You mentioned a rubric? Something like that? What different categories does it cover? Yeah. So like the grading rubric that's uploaded, it is grading like key impact zones. So like how good a job did the agent do building rapport?

How good of a job did they do around subject matter expertise? How good of a job do they do explaining everything that they're going to do to market the home for sale and differentiate the home? And then, you know, the home plate is did they ask for the business? And then if they got shut down with an objection, were they able to address the objection to, move forward and did they ask for the business more than once. So that's kind of the general like framework of the different impact zones. Our transaction coordinators love, love this stuff more than any, like they've been my, the biggest fans of this. It's like our TCs, our transaction coordinators like get all this feedback. I don't know if you guys ever like looked at the transcript

of a listing appointment. I mean, I hadn't until we started using this, but like it's 700 to 800 pages long of text because the average listing point is two to three hours. And so that's a lot of stuff. You can't digest all that, right? And so there is a component to it that's like an AI no taker that you can copy and paste in your CRM, you can send it to your client, send to your TC. And that's actually been one of our biggest raving fans of it is our TCs, like because they get so much material on the house. Super curious about the house. So right now we've just teased everyone listening. You know what I mean, they're like, oh, that sounds so cool. They're either a team leader or maybe they're an agent and they would love to implement

this for themselves because maybe they don't have someone to provide this feedback. So is this, like, is this something that you are rolling out? Is this something that you're sharing? This is your tool, your giveaway to our audience. Like, what's the deal, Chris? If you're on a 50-50 split, it's time to rethink your brokerage. At EXP, the split is 80-20. And once you cap, you keep 100%.

We show you how to get there faster. I'm Ali Garcet or Ali the agent. My sponsor, Shelby Johnson and I, each close over 40 deals a year. We are full-time agents actively producing. And everyone in our upline is an icon agent. When you name us as a sponsor at EXP, you get full access to all of our systems and checklists and templates, our 200K GCI playbook to help you make 200K your first year, direct mentorship and direct access to us.

no huge group calls. We also help agents add another stream of income, which is RevShare. We will help you with all the tools and trainings you need to build revenue share that will help you retire early. If you're interested in building an actual business, book a call at theagentgoldmine.com. This is a giveaway to your audience. So anybody that wants to test it out can try it for a month. Our team created this out of necessity.

I'm based in Austin, Texas, and my market's been getting obliterated. We went up crazy hot during COVID, and then we went way down. And so I'm very transparent. I've done lots of Zooms, and I show all my numbers, like gross profit, net profit. I've shown it all. And so our business is typically doing like $10 to $12 million in commissions. And that's in my corporate teams. And our EBITDA is typically about $2.5 million bucks after all expenses per year.

And my, and our conversion rates after prices went down from 600 grand to 400 grand, our conversion rates started tanking. And we were trying to like flip every stone imaginable to figure out how the heck do we improve our conversion rates. Because the average homeowner that put down 20% still had to bring money to the kitchen table or to the closing table. Excuse me. And so this was like one of those things. We like flipped the stone on this and started like hearing and listening to our. appointments, our agents on appointments and on calls and everything started to change. Like we started learning so much that we had no idea about.

Like, you know, sometimes you think an agent, you know, is, I don't know, like, man, there's just the number of things I've learned is, it's, it's my, I'm like in my head thinking about all the craziness that's happened this past year. People talk about like getting into ruts. They're like, oh, man, I'm in a rut right now. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And like, now I get it. Like they lost their confidence because they couldn't get, you know,

two or three at listing appointments won. And now that I can hear them, I can be like, hey, okay, you didn't win this one over price. Let me tell you how to win it next time. You didn't win this one because of commission. Let's, let me talk to you more about how to win this next time. And so like, you know, the, the AI notes and all that stuff is it's great. And it's a great, it's a great starting point.

And it gives the team leader or whoever your coach is, the information to make they can help guide you in the right direction. I'd say that's like half the other problem is like, you know, an agent thinks their problem is X, but it's actually Y. And to solve why you got to do something totally different. Okay. So how, what is the, what is the process for becoming a trial test dummy for? Yes. So the whole tool was created by Real Sync, R-E-A-L-S-Y-N-C-H.

And Real Sync is a, are you all familiar with like, like Maverick or Shiloh or Sisu. Have any of those ring about? Sisu. Sisu. Sip is partnered with Sisu. So like imagine combining Maverick Shiloh. So Shiloh grades calls.

I think Maverick has like an AI role playing partner. And Sisu's all the KPI. So imagine combining all three of those and putting them together. That's RilSink. And then RealSync added this on the agent mobile app. You hit the record. button when you walk in the house and it records a whole appointment. So that if anybody wants to check this out, there's a landing page, Real Sync set up for this AI tool and it's table like kitchen table

s.aI. And you can go to the landing page and you can, you know, read about it. But it's all powered by Real Sync. So a lot of people don't even know this. Real Sync powers a lot of the real estate platforms out there behind the scenes. So like Zillow, Sisu, follow up boss, Boomtown, they all pay RealSync money to basically, you know, power the guts of their platform. And so Real Sync has built this like integration network in the real estate space. And so because of that, they built some really amazing tools. And one of them is the AI record component of the Real Sync app. And you can find this on Android and on the on the Apple store and download it. It's very easy to set up, but you do need a CRR.

It's like you need, you need, if you have it, if you have a, if you're a team owner for your broker owner, you got to get your CRM hooked up to it. It takes like less than five minutes. And then you need, you know, you need to get your agents to download the app. I think a lot of, you know, I'll tell everybody like some of the challenges we had when we launched it.

one is consent. Do you have to get consent? That's where I was going. What we found out is like when we walk in the house and we ask us to sell it like, hey, can I use this AI note taker? Every single person was like, oh my God, that's amazing. I'm using chat GPT. And so tableOS.

OS. AI app is actually built off of the Gemini large learning model. The difference is it's got uploaded 10,000 plus hours of training content, and it's got uploaded all these grading rubrics so that it knows how to give feedback to the agents, whether it's a buyer call, seller call, buyer appointment or listing appointment. And so that's, you know, that's the key thing that makes it works so that it's not just some like AI no ticker. I'm so glad you mentioned that because that's always where my brain goes. So when I was in the military, I was a special agent and we recorded a lot doing like interviews of subjects, victims, witnesses, all that. So yeah, every state has different laws, whether it's like a one party consent state or two parties slash all parties. So yeah, liability and like legality is always where it goes.

But yeah, so as far as like you covering your tracks or the agent covering theirs is, is it enough for them to walk in the door and say, hey, do you mind if I record this for my own sake and blah blah? Is that enough? That's enough. Yeah. Cool. And then you mentioned CRMs. Is there any CRM that doesn't work or is it all that works so far? It's every single CRM that's in the real estate space.

I don't know. Real Sync basically helped every single CRM vendor build out their API documentation. So like they've literally helped them all build their connection. So they can connect to any CRM. There's no limitation on that. Does it do Go High Level 2? Yep. Okay.

Because I'm like, that's not specific to real estate. But I feel like Go High Level is getting increasingly popular. Maybe. Maybe. Nice. What have we not covered so far, Chris? Yeah. So I think the two like biggest things that I hope people get is first off, like my MO is to help agents get to selling a lot of homes.

My worst performing agent sells 60 homes here and my best performing agent sells 120 homes per year. And we've been doing that for over a decade. So this isn't like an anomaly. It's not like a one year of it. Like this like right now like last year was like the worst year ever for us in the past 15 years. and my agents are only selling 60 to 70 homes a year. Peasants. The other kicker is my agents are relatively new.

My agents have no sphere of influence. They have no database. My agents don't make a single cold call. They never jump on the phone and make any cold calls. You know, my don't even call leads. My lead to appointment ratio is 1.6 to 1.6 to 1. So for every 1.6 leads, we get one appointment. So literally every 1.6 leads to one, we get one appointment.

So there's two really like huge shifts that have to happen to get to this level of productivity. And my like, I want to, you know, make sure everybody knows this. Because when I got started in real estate in 2006, I was like this young 21 year old that, you know, was hungry and ambitious. But like I felt like it kind of got chewed up and spit out by the industry because it's like, you know, I was at of college. I didn't have money to pay $1,500 a month for Maps coaching. I was already living super, super cheap, like, $300 a month in rent. I was like, I didn't have high expenses. I shared a house for like four other guys. So the industry is like, it's tough to like get going for, you know, an ambitious person. And what makes it even tougher is when you join these teams,

they give out these, you know, really crappy leads where it takes a lot of leads to get one appointment. And so like when I joined this team as a buyer's agent back in 06, Google AdWords had just launched the, you know, AdWords algorithm. That was like the big thing in 06. And so they started giving me 100 leads a month, which sounds amazing. But, you know, the best case scenario was one out of 50 would close. And so you can only manage so many leads in your pipeline, right? And so you only have so many hours in the day. And so there is a proverbial ceiling to your income. when your lead to appointment ratio is, is that,

you know, that low. And so what, I hope everybody knows is like, there, there are high intent leads that close really, really fast. Like I mentioned,

ours is 1.6 to 1. So every 1.6 leads, we get one appointment for every two appointments. We get one deal signed. And 90% of those go to the closing table. This is not, and this is not like a one year off flute for me. We've been doing this for 10,

plus years. And I think if you go to a lot of the kind of mega teams, if you will, this is like the key thing they figured out. Spending money on PPC and Facebook, if it's not done right, is a complete waste of time. And it will just burn your, burn your agents out. Because they'll get demoralized. You know, the number one complaint from team owners is their agents don't make calls. The reason the agents don't make calls is because the leads suck. You have to get 50 to 100 of them to get one deal closed. Like, who's going to be excited? about calling 100 leads to get one deal closed. Nobody. So what, sorry, go ahead.

I'm talking this whole time. You've got to shut me up. You're good. You're good. I have a question about the back end. So, or what happens after? The follow up after the follow up. So like the agents go and the team leader is looking at what the main feedback is, like commission or not enough rapport or not enough comps.

You don't even bring any comps. Just so crazy. What would you suggest to team leaders? to be able to help the agents get better. Because it's one thing for the agents to look at it themselves and learn just from the AI and have the initiative to do so and the discipline to do so. And it's another thing for like the team leader to be like, okay, this is a common occurrence. What do you do in your team to be able to get the 1 to 1.6 to 1 conversion? Well, the 1.6 to 1 conversion is more a function of lead quality.

It has nothing to do with follow up. I looked at last year, 90% of our leads that came in were converted in less than 90 days, 90%. So most of the time when the lead comes in or the call comes in, the appointment's getting booked right away. Like there's not a lot of follow-up required. It's very, very minimal follow-up. The thing that's really interesting about the real estate business is the majority of people that have to sell a home, for example, are going through a major life event. So they inherited the home.

They're going through a divorce. They are facing foreclosure. By the way, those three things, I think, equate for like 60% of the reason people sell. Divorce, probate, financial distress, i.e., facing foreclosure. It's like those three things are like some crazy high percentage of the reason people sell. Like the move-up buyer, somebody that's like moving up into a nicer, or bigger house is like less than one out of five, you know, or job relocation, like put that in lifestyle upgrade category. That's less than one out of five people. So the ones that the vast majority of people going to sell are facing like, you know, some kind of major, you know, major life event. So what's interesting about those life events is like people have to, you know,

when you go through those things, like you have to go file paperwork, right? You go file a divorce proceeding. You go file probate proceedings. If you're facing foreclosure, they go file foreclosure proceedings against you. Well, all of that information is public record. And if you're going through one of those three life events, like guaranteed, you have to transact really fast. You know, this isn't some piece of shit Google PPC lead that's one to two years out. This is somebody that like literally is going to have to sell their house. Worst case scenario in the next three to six months. And so that's a really fast, you know, conversion cycle. So I think that, sorry, I meant more so a little bit like of the training after. So like the, the AI captures all the notes of what the agents did well and what

they didn't, where they can improve. Like, what do you suggest afterward? Like, once the, once the agents have gone out to X, Y, Z number of appointments and, like, they're starting to see some trends. What's your process of, like, collecting that information and, and doing the, the training to increase the conversion? Yeah, great, great question. So all of the feedback gets aggregated to the team leader also. And so when you're in your, what we do is in our one-on-ones, we go through each one of the reports and just highlight real quickly like,

hey, here's where you got stuck on this one. Here's where you got stuck on this one. You know, let's talk about how to overcome that. So we do that in the one-on-one. And then when we see a trend, we host them, we'll host a training for like the wholesale team. When we see a trend of like one specific thing, people are getting stuck on.

So it's great for leading one-on-ones And it's great for helping create training content for sure. Nice. Nice. So for everyone that hasn't yet been on the agent goldmine.com, this is where you can get today's golden nugget. Chris, thank you so much for sharing. What does the price look like after? You mentioned a one or two month free trial.

What does it look like after that? Yeah. So there's a couple different components to it, the platform. So like the KPI dashboards, which is like showing like how many calls the agent made, How many appointments got converted? How many of those became ones? Like all that stuff. If you just want that and no and none of the AI functionality on the mobile app, it's

300 bucks a month first up to 10 agents. And then if you want to add on the AI component, it's $150 per agent per month. Yeah, I don't know if anybody on here has ever used Mojo Dialer, but we had Mojo Dialer for a long time. Our listeners have. Yeah. Yeah. And so like, you know, Mojo dialer and like this table AI thing, they're very expensive because of the data storage. So for anybody that has Mojo, it had a record functionality, multi-line dialers, multiple lines you're paying for. And so the AI is very similar. It's it's storing massive amounts of information. So like each listing appointment, the file is 600 to 800 megabytes, each one. And anybody that knows anything about AI like burns through a lot. I tokens like crazy going through 700 to 800 pages of a transcript for each appointment. Now, I'll share with you guys what happened to us in Austin and why I've been such an advocate

of this. So our conversion rates dropped down to like 41, 42% face to face. And we were able to bump conversion rates to 51, 52%. And that increased our revenue, a couple hundred thousand dollars every single month. just by our team as an aggregate, you know, improving their face-to-face conversion. Dang. Amazing. Oh, man.

Okay. What is the best way for people to reach out to you? Again, people can go on theagentgoldmine.com for this resource. And then if they wanted to ask you any specific questions, what's the best way? Yeah, just tell them to hit me up on Instagram. Christopher Waters. Yeah. Hit me up on Instagram.

And that's Waters with two T's. We have the same brain. Elvina. So cute. Amazing. Chris, thank you so much for jumping on today's episode. Look forward to having you back on the podcast on another day. Thanks. Appreciate you guys. And for listeners, be a bro and share this show. Bye. If you're on a 50-50 split, it's time to rethink your brokerage. At EXP, the split is 8020. And once you cap, you keep 100%. We show you how to get there faster. I'm Ali Garcette or Ali the agent. My sponsor, Shelby Johnson and I each close over 40 deals a year.

We are full-time agents actively producing. And everyone in our upline is an icon agent. When you name us as a sponsor at EXP, you get full access to all of our systems and checklist and templates, our 200K GCI playbook to help you make 200K your first year, direct mentorship and direct access to us, no huge group calls. We also help agents add another stream of income, which is RevShare. We will help you with all the tools and trainings you need to build revenue share that will help you retire early. If you're interested in building an actual business, book a call at theagentgoldmine.com.