Latest / Agency Advantage / He Hated Sales Calls. So He Built a Bot to Do the Selling. | Bryce DeCora

Transcript

He Hated Sales Calls. So He Built a Bot to Do the Selling. | Bryce DeCora · Agency Advantage

0:00
SPEAKER_02: Yup Agency owners, you know how it goes.
0:04
SPEAKER_02: More clients, more questions, more problems to solve.
0:06
SPEAKER_02: You built the machines, now you're stuck in the grind.
0:09
SPEAKER_02: More revenue coming, but you're running out of time.
0:11
SPEAKER_02: Agency advantage.
0:13
SPEAKER_02: Rad starts breaking it down.
0:14
SPEAKER_02: Better people, better systems, better moves all around.
0:17
SPEAKER_02: Leadership, leverage, profit, and scale.
0:19
SPEAKER_02: Real world lessons from the winds that fails.
0:22
SPEAKER_02: Build it smarter, lead the team, take your freedom back.
0:24
SPEAKER_02: Agency advantage.
0:25
SPEAKER_02: Now you're on the right track.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: Hey, what's going on, everybody?
0:29
SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the episode of Agency Advantage.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: So on this show, we usually sit down with agency owners and get into what it actually took to build their agency.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: But today's a little bit different.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: Today's guest doesn't run an agency.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: He builds the software a lot of agencies are reselling right now.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: His name is Bryce DeCore and he's the co-founder and CEO of CloseBot.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're running on high level, you've probably ran into this already.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Closebot is one of the most installed sub account apps on the marketplace.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: And a big part of how that happened is Bryce was just sitting in the high-level Facebook group being useful before anybody knew who he was.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: The reason why I wanted to have him on is I keep getting the same questions from agency owners right now.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: It's like, should I be using AI?
1:10
SPEAKER_00: What's working?
1:11
SPEAKER_00: Is this going to replace somebody on my team?
1:13
SPEAKER_00: And let's face it, our company Talent Themes, we place humans for a living.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: So I've got a little bit of bias in this conversation.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: So I figured it'd be a great way for us to get both ends of this.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: So CloseBot has booked over 1.2 million appointments through their software.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: So when he tells you what is or isn't working through conversational AI, uh, my guess is that he's not guessing.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh a little bit background on him.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: He grew up in a farm in Nebraska, went and got his mechanical engineering degree, and ended up at Boeing.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: Uh some folks there pointed him towards software, and he wound up working on some AI projects on Boeing back before most of us even knew what AI was.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: Then he left, went into real estate, and the first version of CloseBot was something he built for a business that doesn't even exist anymore.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: Bryce, welcome on.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: That was a great intro.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: I know.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: AI, Claude, I mean, like What are we even going to talk about now?
2:04
SPEAKER_00: We are all out of jobs, right?
2:06
SPEAKER_00: We're all out of jobs.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: And so you and I can just let the intro do its thing and we can just sit here and look at each other for the next 45 minutes and AI will just do itself for us.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: But uh yeah, I mean, awesome intro.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh, obviously, Claude can get the credit for writing the intro, but you are the one that has the awesome history, kind of what you've done up until now.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: Uh, why don't you give us a little bit of a background?
2:28
SPEAKER_00: Like going from where you were at to what you do now with Clothespot is a long journey.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what got you into the industry of saying, like, hey, I'm gonna leave my my mechanical engineering background at Boeing and I'm gonna go all in on entrepreneurship.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: And what was that first like?
2:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was just a lot of pain of living the corporate life.
2:49
SPEAKER_01: Nine to five.
2:50
SPEAKER_01: For me, it was I started at six, I was off at three.
2:55
SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's pretty painful.
2:58
SPEAKER_01: Um, and then it was accelerated by one of my friends and mentors passing away at Boeing, and I think he was in his early 30s, um, and just kind of slapped me, like, what am I doing here?
3:11
SPEAKER_01: Like, this could end anytime and I'm miserable.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: So that's when I started looking for a way out.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: And that was real estate for me because I had no idea how to be an entrepreneur other than what I saw my wife doing as a real estate agent.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: So that was one thing that was in my notes, and I'm always like hesitant with like Claude.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, did you pull the right information?
3:30
SPEAKER_00: Did you not?
3:30
SPEAKER_00: You know, AI's not 100% accurate.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: So I'd seen in my notes, you know, your wife was in real estate uh prior to you going into real estate.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: Is it correct in the sense that like kind of what got you really you turning was like your wife was almost in a way like bringing home more or about to be bringing home more than what you were making working for this big company at that point?
3:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: Which wasn't fair because I had a mechanical engineering degree.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: I was working at Boeing, doing software, working on like prototype AI projects, all stuff that sounds really cool.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: But I was making like, I think I started out making$73,000 a year, got up to 85, but it was just constant, you know, 3% raises, which matches inflation.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: That's a lot though, right?
4:15
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it felt like it coming out of college, but then like I came out of college in South Dakota.
4:22
SPEAKER_01: $85,000 there is a lot different than Washington State Seattle metro area.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: It is.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh I always I always make that joke because people are like, yeah, I got this raise.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, did you get a raise?
4:34
SPEAKER_00: Or were you just going with like the way of living and way living's going out a lot higher than that?
4:39
SPEAKER_00: And so uh us as entrepreneurs oftentimes look at that.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: We're like, oh, inflation's going up, the cost of living's going up, cool.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: We'll just figure out how to go up, go and sell more things or cut more costs, and we'll be just fine in that sense.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: So uh, so you your wife's in real estate, you decide, hey, I'm gonna leave Boeing, I'm gonna go in and go all in on real estate with your wife, is is what is what happened here.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: How do you then get to what is now close by, right?
5:04
SPEAKER_00: So there's obviously a journey of pain points here.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: Was it you were having trouble following up with leads?
5:09
SPEAKER_00: Were you seeing other people having issues with it?
5:11
SPEAKER_00: How exactly was all this born?
5:13
SPEAKER_01: Well, I was distracted.
5:15
SPEAKER_01: I really, like most people, sales is pretty terrible.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: And so in eight hours a day, you're supposed to be calling people.
5:22
SPEAKER_01: Like that's what the people that make the big bucks do.
5:25
SPEAKER_01: I just didn't want to do that.
5:27
SPEAKER_01: So I spent most of my time doing what as an agency owner selling?
5:31
SPEAKER_01: No, I was tinkering in tech.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: So tinkering in tech automated a process that in my business didn't need to be automated yet, but closed bot is what fell out of that.
5:40
SPEAKER_01: And eventually when the real estate market turned for the worst, this was COVID, um, I had a different skill set and a different product that I could sell.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: It's it's crazy, you know.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: Like I talk to people all the time, I'm talking with age generators and they'll hop on sales callers and they're like, yeah, I gotta go build this new thing, or I need this, I need this AI person because I've been building in Claude for like the last like three months.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, well, what have you guys done like growth-wise last three months?
6:05
SPEAKER_00: Well, we've been stagnant at like 60k a month, a month of recurring revenue for the last three months.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like stagnant for the last three months.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: You've been building software that you shouldn't be been building for the last three months, whereas here's that connection, right?
6:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so oftentimes, you know, but it's I I'm a tech guy as well.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: My undergrad's in IT, so I love tinkering with things.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm messing with AI.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so it's one of those things, it's kind of this like catch 22 between, you know, what do you do, what do you don't?
6:31
SPEAKER_00: Um, so you hated being on the phones calling people.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I had a job that I was working in between companies calling Fortune 500 execs, same thing was supposed to be on the phone, uh, and I hated it, right?
6:43
SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, how can I automate this?
6:45
SPEAKER_00: How can I, you know, and Fortune 500 execs are the wrong market to automate uh outreach to.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so uh I made it like six months in that job, and I'm like, this is not for me.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: And I went all in and opened up my marketing agency uh at that point.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: But you get to this point where you're like, I can't, I not can't, I don't want to follow up with people, I don't want to do this work that's supposed to generate the revenue in the real estate business.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: You build this product, COVID hits, world shuts down, real estate in a way, the market for some people tanked for some people on the residential side was booming, right?
7:22
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so what did that look like where you were like, I have this thing and now I need to go sell it and ship this product into something that is now what has become uh what you guys have.
7:33
SPEAKER_01: Well, I remembered having conversations with another buddy of mine, Gerald, who had real issues with follow-up because he was doing like actual sales volume.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: So I just called up Jar Gerald and I was like, hey, I think I have this thing that could solve your problem and sold it to him.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: And we deployed it and it didn't work very well.
7:51
SPEAKER_01: And so I spent a long time like taking his feedback, iterating, fixing until it was working.
7:58
SPEAKER_01: And then he referred me to one other person.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: So that was two customers.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: Um and then I asked them, like, who else do you know?
8:05
SPEAKER_01: Let's keep selling this.
8:06
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Yeah, we don't know anyone else.
8:08
SPEAKER_01: I was like, okay, great.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: How do I find more people?
8:11
SPEAKER_01: And one of them was on high level.
8:13
SPEAKER_01: So I learned more about high level, found the high level group, and then just went on and tried to learn like what are the struggles these people have?
8:21
SPEAKER_01: Do they have this issue too?
8:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I just found myself helping people and learning from them until more people knew my name and trusted me and just learned as a byproduct what I did and what I sold.
8:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: And and that's a tough journey to go down, right?
8:36
SPEAKER_00: Because it's almost like uh this is like two episodes ago, we were talking about like the aspect of like commission breath in a way.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: Like you, you kind of want to sell this product, right?
8:43
SPEAKER_00: You sometimes need to sell this product because you got wife, family, kids, whatever that thing is in the background.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, you're like, I just need to be valuable and be a resource and get people to know who I am and what we do and that we can solve their problems.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: And eventually the product is good enough, we'll just sell itself.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: This is all happening during the pandemic.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: Where were you guys in a position?
9:02
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mentioned there's two different aspects of real estate.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: There's commercial, there's re r residential, there's multiple asset aspects of it.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: Was were you guys in a position where it was like, hey, I can afford time and money to be able to tinker and get this thing off the ground because my wife is booming in real estate, or did things take a tank for her?
9:19
SPEAKER_00: And it was like, things are tight, but we're gonna make this work either way.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: It was close, man.
9:24
SPEAKER_01: Um, we were residential.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:26
SPEAKER_01: But and it was booming for a little bit, but then interest rates went up.
9:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
9:31
SPEAKER_01: And that's when residential came to a halt.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: So our reserves were gone.
9:37
SPEAKER_01: We were, we had, I don't know,$3,000 a month in credit card payments because we just maxed out our credit cards to fix our downstairs for Airbnb.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: So we could rent those out so we could afford to live in our home.
9:50
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we we renovated all of our downstairs and didn't renovate the upstairs.
9:55
SPEAKER_01: We moved into a fixer upper um right when I quit Boeing.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: And the upstairs had fleas, had buckets all over the place, catching water, poured all the money to the downstairs.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: We found out we were pregnant with a baby.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, it was wild and it was close.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: And it's I mean, you guys are going through this, and I'm sure if it's like, hey, do I go, do I go back and work for Boeing or go do something like that, right?
10:20
SPEAKER_00: We got all this credit card debt, we got the Airbnb pregnant with another child coming through, or do we just go all in on this?
10:26
SPEAKER_00: And so, like, as you're going through this, you have your your buddy that you kind of sold V1 to and your MVP too, and then you're iterating, he starts introducing you people, everything like that, get high-level community.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: At what point was it like, okay, like there is no choice of going back to Boeing or going back into working a nine to five, even though we have, you know, these fleas, the uh uh the upper floor of our house not remodeled, uh, all these credit card payments.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: But we're gonna go ahead and just, you know, go all in on this one thing.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, I knew I wasn't going back to Boeing.
10:57
SPEAKER_01: I knew I couldn't do that.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: Um, so there was no and I burnt the bridge.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: So there was no alternative.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: I think we were either gonna make it or lose the house and move back to Nebraska, South Dakota.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: Bankruptcy.
11:14
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: It's like we really didn't think about that.
11:18
SPEAKER_01: We just pushed hard.
11:20
SPEAKER_01: Pushed as hard as possible.
11:22
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
11:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:23
SPEAKER_01: It was a time even where so we I it's so funny because like during the upswing of real estate, life was good.
11:31
SPEAKER_01: Man, it was it was nice.
11:33
SPEAKER_01: We were doing flips, it was one commission check where I made$75,000 and I had just been putting that into marketing.
11:39
SPEAKER_01: But we were also living life, and I got a Tesla.
11:43
SPEAKER_01: Well, there was one point where we couldn't even pay for the$7 a month internet for the Tesla to be able to navigate us.
11:52
SPEAKER_01: So luckily, my wife wrecked her Tesla and we got the insurance money back.
12:00
SPEAKER_01: So we didn't have to pay that payment anymore.
12:02
SPEAKER_01: But no, to your question, there was no plan B.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: There was no plan B, no plan B.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: And I and I won't even go down the path of the Tesla because I'm looking at Teslas right now.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: So I don't want you to talk me out of it.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: So we're just gonna fly right.
12:13
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: Especially now.
12:15
SPEAKER_01: I bought at the worst freaking time because I bought and then a couple years later they dropped rates or they dropped um the price of the Tesla by like like 35%.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: So not good for me.
12:27
unknown: Yeah.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: Really good for you.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: They're really reasonably priced.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, and it's crazy now.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: You can buy, I was doing the math, and it's like it'll cost me like an extra eight grand to after interest to buy a brand new Tesla than it would be just buy one used.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, why would I go buy one used when I can get the for an extra eight grand and get the warranty, you know, all that stuff.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: But uh so awesome to hear that it's a it's a great choice to great choice to make.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: We just booked a trip to Disney for Christmas, and I'm like, we're running at Tesla to get us from the airport and then get us from the Airbnb to Disney and back.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm not waiting in that and that's that traffic in those lines, uh, getting into the park myself.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh we're gonna have to uh Tesla drive us there.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: So so you know, you're at this point where it's like there's no plan B.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, okay, we're gonna go all in.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: So you guys go all in, you start working in the high-level community, start working with, you know, I imagine realtors.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: And then I imagine all of a sudden you look up and you're like, okay, closebot is like becoming this thing.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: And you're like, kind of like, where did time go?
13:27
SPEAKER_00: And I guess I'll pause.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: Let me pause there.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: For those who are listening and don't know what Closebot is, we should probably talk about that.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh, because we we've we've talked about a lot about how we got here, right?
13:37
SPEAKER_00: And that's what I love talking about on this podcast with agency advantage is like we all didn't just wake up and open up an agency, and uh I'm gonna give a shout out to Frankie Finn, who lives outside of the US.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: He lives the beach life and everything like that.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: But he went through a lot of hell to get there, right?
13:52
SPEAKER_00: And so uh oftentimes we see that beach life.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of what like Frankie promotes on on his uh his podcast and his group.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: But there's a lot of things that we had to get to to get there.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: And so we've talked through that now.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: Um, but what does Closebot even do?
14:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a good question.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: Closebot is is there to help businesses and agencies that need an assistant for sales that earns way more revenue than the alternative options, which are sometimes humans and sometimes the built-in conversational AI or other products?
14:22
SPEAKER_01: It's just built to be so much more reliable, consistent, and accurate.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: So when I'm an agency owner and I am looking at closed bot, most agencies, I'm assuming, you know, probably are using it for their own agency to an extent, but a lot of times it's their clients, right?
14:40
SPEAKER_00: And they're using it on their own client sites.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: How would one agency deploy this?
14:45
SPEAKER_00: Like if is it primarily you guys do a lot with like uh real estate industry, so is it primarily realtors that are using the closed bot software, or will can like a roofing company as an example use it as well?
14:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, any business where there's sales.
15:01
SPEAKER_01: Okay right now, um, close to 11% of our accounts are in real estate, 22% are healthcare, but personal coaches, we have a traveling circus, um, we have hypnotists, anything where you're qualifying leads, booking appointments.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: And so what does that what does that look like, right?
15:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, so for me, I'll give you guys I'll give you a little bit of a background for talent views.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: Like we've grown organically, kind of the the way you began with Close Bot, right?
15:30
SPEAKER_00: Being involved in Facebook groups, personal branding, content, just being a resource for people, name gets around.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh we currently don't run ads.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: Everything's purely through Brad's Facebook personal brand engine, right?
15:43
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, Facebook doesn't have an API for accessing your personal messenger and DMs and everything.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: So it sounds like this is more focused towards like accessing your business messenger, business DMs, your business high-level accounts and activating from there.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: So is Closebot purely from the fact of like I go to a website and to let's just use a roofing company, go to roofing company's website and I want to inquire about you know having a new roof done on my house.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: And so I can chat with this chatbot.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: Or does it go beyond that in the sense of like once somebody submits the lead, it's doing the follow-up text, it's going through and trying to have phone calls with the person.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: How far do you guys take it in this?
16:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, good questions.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: First on the channels.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: If you're using high level or HubSpot, we kind of hijack those existing conversation channels.
16:32
SPEAKER_01: So the conversations are still happening through high level.
16:35
SPEAKER_01: They still show up on your contact.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: They're using your phone number in high level, your Facebook Messenger integrations through your Facebook business or Instagram accounts, email.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: Um that's how the channels work.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: Now we're doing text only.
16:50
SPEAKER_01: When I say that, I mean all text channels like Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, no voice.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people still do voice with Closebot.
16:59
SPEAKER_01: And to do that, all you have to do is make sure you're loading your voice notes, uh, voice transcripts into a contact field.
17:06
SPEAKER_01: Closebot can pull that right in and pick up the conversation.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: Uh so it works with voice.
17:12
SPEAKER_01: We don't do voice.
17:13
SPEAKER_01: Uh there's all the channels that are built in.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: And people are using this to do basic things like just getting name and then phone and booking an appointment, all the way to use roofing as an example.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: It can get the name and address and make sure the address is within a certain distance, maybe of a max drive time between the business address to count as a qualified lead, um, getting property information, estimating the roof square footage, and generating a quote on the spot.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, even sending images of the property or GIFs if need be, or searching the internet if you tell it to.
17:52
SPEAKER_01: Um, you can get as really as basic or as advanced as you want on any of the text channels through high level or HubSpot.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: So, like as an example with like the the voice messages, uh, you know, I could pre-record pre-record a voice message, like if someone asked me at Talent Fuse of like what our pricing is, right?
18:09
SPEAKER_00: And so that's obviously, you know, everybody gets that question, what's your price?
18:12
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, well, it depends on if it's a roofing company, depends on the type of roof, where you're at, what material you want, everything like that.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: So like if somebody for a roofing company wanted to reply with a voice message to make it sound more human and not AI, you could have a pre-recorded voice message that, you know, talks about like, hey, yeah, you know, great question on our pricing.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: You know, it varies on the type of roof, the material, location, blah, blah, blah, and that voice message.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: And so then CloseBot would know based off that question to go grab that voice message and drop it back in the chat.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: It wouldn't because it's text only, but it can understand voice messages.
18:45
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
18:45
SPEAKER_01: So if a voice message comes through, which oftentimes it does, especially on WhatsApp for our international customers, it can understand voice messages, but always replying in text.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: Gotcha.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: Is there plans to roll out AI in the future or no?
19:00
SPEAKER_01: For voice messages, we would in the future.
19:02
SPEAKER_01: Um we haven't gotten a single feature request for that.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
19:06
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
19:07
SPEAKER_01: So we we operate on feature requests and a lot of our people that do focus on text, like that's that's not as important to them as the accuracy of being able to understand the voice notes.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay, yeah, that's uh it's interesting.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the things uh a lot of people, I'm sure you guys get this question.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: Like, does this work with the personal Facebook Messenger DM, right?
19:30
SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of coaches and uh entrepreneurs who operate on a personal brand, you know, is in their DMs.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: From what I can tell, my assumption is that no, it does not.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, are there plans?
19:40
SPEAKER_00: I know like Meta just rolled out their Muse app, which does connect with Messenger.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: That's the first time I've seen another app like uh connect through the Messenger platform.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it's Meta's own only platform, but do you guys see a feature of that where like maybe Meta may allow you to integrate Closebot with the personal messenger platform or no?
19:59
SPEAKER_01: If they allow us, can Meta's Muse integrate with the personal messenger?
20:04
SPEAKER_00: Well yeah, yeah.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: Like I just asked it the other day.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: I was like, hey, I want you to go through my inbox and find any conversation that looks like sales, leads, whatever.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: I guess I have seen that anything that I've dropped the ball on.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: I need you to tell me I dropped the ball on it and follow up with me to make sure I don't keep dropping the ball on it, right?
20:20
SPEAKER_00: Uh because I get messages all day long.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: Um can you ask it to send a response right now?
20:25
SPEAKER_00: I've not tried.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: I've not tried.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: So that's a great, great question.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: But I I think you can um in the sense of like, so it's like if they allow that for Muse, it'd be awesome to see if uh if eventually they would allow Closebot to then integrate it.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: Because like right now, I have what I've done up until now is obviously like Facebook can track bots.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: And do you have a bot integrated with your personal profile and everything like that?
20:48
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I have an iPhone sitting across my office at my desk connected to a different computer, and I have Grokbot that can, through the iPhone mirroring platform on my Mac, click around on a physical device to go through my messages and make sure that I don't miss things.
21:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so that's how the level that I've had to take it to to be able to make sure that uh I don't lose leads and everything like that on the uh on the personal side.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: So um awesome to see what you guys are are doing with Closebot and like the the way it's going.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: We talked a lot about Closebot in high level.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you get this question a lot.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: Uh high level has their own like conversational AI platform, their own chatbot.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: What makes you guys different in what you do um than what high level has natively built in?
21:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:35
SPEAKER_01: Um that's obviously one of the biggest questions we get since most of our users are high level users.
21:40
SPEAKER_01: First of all, I like to remind people that most of our users are users of high level.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: 100% of them have tried the built in conversational AI and then decided to try closed bot and use closed bot.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: The reason for that is the comparison isn't always apples to apples.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: You know, you have crab up crab apples, um, you have honey crisp apples, you have.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Whatever.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: You can't say this checks the box as an Apple, and so does this.
22:04
SPEAKER_01: Cars.
22:05
SPEAKER_01: Some are sports cars, some are, some get you here and there, but they're not luxurious.
22:11
SPEAKER_01: And that's that's how it is with us too.
22:14
SPEAKER_01: Um high level has the app marketplace because they go really wide on things, but because of that, their founders can't think deep in every feature set.
22:24
SPEAKER_01: Our full focus is on the conversational AI.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: And because of that, you'll see higher quality, reliability, consistency that end up ends up making you more revenue in the form of more qualified leads and booked appointments.
22:37
SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of features that go into that too.
22:39
SPEAKER_01: So I try to stay away from feature comparisons because we iterate so fast, so does high level, and that changes.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: But when it comes down to it, you'll earn more money with Closebot.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: So you you you you mentioned like a lot of your users on high level.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: What other platforms do you guys integrate with?
22:57
SPEAKER_00: Like, do you do just custom self-hosted integrations or do you have to use a third-party like high level, HubSpot, whoever we have an API you can connect with your own vibe-coded solution.
23:09
SPEAKER_01: There's a CRM that's gaining traction we were talking about a little bit ago called Seedly.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: Seedly, yep.
23:15
SPEAKER_01: Buy the code for.
23:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: Spin it up yourself, plug it into Closebot to automate the conversation side.
23:23
SPEAKER_01: If you're if your CRM goes down for a day, that sucks.
23:26
SPEAKER_01: You can't access your contacts.
23:27
SPEAKER_01: But if your conversations stop for a day, especially if you're doing high volume, you can't have that.
23:32
SPEAKER_01: So that's why even if you have your vibe coded CRM, it still probably makes sense to use something like Closebot to automate the conversations.
23:40
SPEAKER_01: But native high-level, native HubSpot, and then API for everything else, we will have more of standalone capabilities coming by the end of the year.
23:48
SPEAKER_01: We're not rushing into it because we want to make sure our stability's up, but it's coming.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: So what I'm hearing is you guys don't believe in AI slob and just releasing AI features and just vibe coding all your features to make them fit.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm joking around.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: I see a very strict team.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: Well, and I I would hope with someone coming from a place like like Boeing, right?
24:13
SPEAKER_00: Boeing has got to have very like these are our policies, right?
24:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure I'm so I'm sure a lot of that's also engraved in you as the founder of like, no, like we have quality that we live by, uh, and we're not gonna go go past that.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: So uh so you you you mentioned here like you're gonna make a lot more money using Closebot than some of these like native um solutions inside of CRMs.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: We'll say like high level.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't even know if HubSpot has their own native like AI chatbot aspect.
24:42
SPEAKER_01: They kind of do.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: They kind of do.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: So closebot, you will make more money, you will close more deals by using Closebot than these native solutions.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, what does that look like?
24:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, we're in this world right now where people are like, do we go all in on AI?
24:56
SPEAKER_00: Do we hire a human and a person to do this?
24:59
SPEAKER_00: Right.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: And so us with talent fees, like we help people hire, you know, executive admins, appointment setters, talent for their agencies, SEO talent, WordPress talent, everything like that.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: And so, like, you know, for me, oftentimes when I'm talking with somebody, I'm having a conversation and I'm like, you don't need an appointment setter yet.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: You don't need this yet.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: Like, you need to like just implement some AI, fine-tune some processes here, and then come back and talk to me.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: With what you guys are doing at Closebot, do you feel that the role of an appointment setter or an SDR is still necessary today inside of agencies and in the next, let's say next year is going to be necessary?
25:38
SPEAKER_01: Um yes, for sure.
25:40
SPEAKER_01: Usually what we see is people bring in Closebot when their human team is struggling to meet the need.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: And that can be a that can be several different reasons why.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: Uh, even if you have great humans that are priced appropriately, it's still really hard to work everyone out of a unified inbox.
25:58
SPEAKER_01: Or even if you don't have a unified inbox and you have like diff different people working in different inboxes, and it just gets really chaotic having an AI to even just do that and sift up the opportunities for then humans to pick off is what we're seeing.
26:13
SPEAKER_01: So these humans are getting elevated to a role of a better job instead of replying to a ton of people saying F off, not interested.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: They're actually speaking with people that want your service.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: Which I think from a sales aspect of things makes their jobs easier and they probably enjoy what they're doing a little bit more, right?
26:33
SPEAKER_00: Because it's like I'm only talking to qualified appointments and qualified leads.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking to a bunch of people, as you said, that are like F off.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to talk to you in that sense.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: So what you're seeing is like, hey, this whole aspect of like going 100% all in an AI for appointment setting, lead follow-up is not there, right?
26:52
SPEAKER_00: It's how can we get some of this like minute, like mind numbing things off of our team's plate, our sales team plates that way they can just focus on these high dollar, high uh more focusing more on the relationships rather than the transactional side of things uh of this sales conversation.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: Uh, do you see a point in which like somebody going and hiring a human would make more sense than beginning with closebot?
27:20
SPEAKER_00: Or you like is or do you think, hey, using something like Closebot is probably your your best first defense and then you go hire a human at that point?
27:28
SPEAKER_01: If it's your first hire, I think AI makes more sense.
27:32
SPEAKER_01: If you just look at the opportunities, we're seeing about 50% of all of our booked appointments have to happen after hours.
27:40
SPEAKER_01: So even if you were hitting the ground running as a solo founder, you took the daytime messages because you're going to convert better, especially if it's founder led.
27:50
SPEAKER_01: You're going to convert better, especially if you have low, lower volume of traffic.
27:55
SPEAKER_01: And then having AI in the evening, off hours, booking that other 50% for you the next day.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: That's a really good first step for you to capture as much in your net as possible.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: And then you're already practiced.
28:08
SPEAKER_01: So you can switch the AI to day and nighttime, and then you'll have the revenue to hopefully hire a closer that can close those set deals.
28:17
SPEAKER_01: And then you as the founder can step out of the closer role, which is the first goal as a founder, to step out of the sales.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, because then it's like if like I I go on a trip this weekend, we go to, I mentioned we're going to Disney between Christmas and New Year's.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: And it's like if you are the only sales engine, you are the founder that's doing the appointment setting, the lead follow-up, you're doing the sales calls.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: You're not available to take sales calls, there's no sales and no additional revenue generated in your agency.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: And so uh yeah, 100%, 100% see that.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: Um as you're kind of going through, you mentioned like all these more than half of your bookings happen outside of business hours.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I'm reading my notes here.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: A third come in at 5 p.m.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: or later is metrics we have, and then 11% land between midnight and six o'clock in the morning uh is what we're seeing on here.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: For an agency owner that's hearing that, like what do you feel like they should do differently because of how people are booking appointments after hours?
29:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, having AI is the first step.
29:24
SPEAKER_01: Like, believe it or not, even people that listen to these types of podcasts be surprised how few actually are using it.
29:30
SPEAKER_01: Even closed bot users that pay for the platform sometimes aren't using it.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: Like, what are you doing?
29:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:36
SPEAKER_01: Just turn it on today.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: We have we have office hours, we have a help community, we have templates to get you started.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: Just do it.
29:43
SPEAKER_01: Just do it.
29:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
29:46
SPEAKER_01: Um, we have a lot more data that we'll have ready for Q4 that's industry specific that I'm really excited about.
29:53
SPEAKER_01: Um, so we'll know like this the data you're citing is all industries worldwide.
29:58
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: But we'll know, like, for roofers, when are people booking appointments?
30:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
30:03
SPEAKER_01: Residential versus commercial, when are they booking appointments?
30:06
SPEAKER_01: We'll be able to go deep.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: Which I think for for those who are listening, like when we talk about the concept of the show, like agency advantage is also like what's your advantage as a person inside your agency, but also how can your agency build this moat and like this advantage in the marketplace, right?
30:19
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're able to be the expert, if you're a niche down agency just focused on roofing companies, and you're able to say, like, hey, our you know, partner or the software we use, or however hell you want to phrase it, that we know based off of the data from Bryce and his team at Closebot, that uh you are going to, by implementing our software here, you're gonna close X amount per, you know, percent more in business, or the you see these, this amount of deals come through or these leads come through after hours in the roofing industry.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: That the data here from Bryce and the team at Closebot like really just helps you like enable you in that sales process to close more deals of like, here's how we can actually help you help you do that.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh on some of these data points, Bryce.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'd see, you know, you guys say roughly about 132 messages per booking, is what I'm reading here.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it's like most agencies uh have most companies have like a five touch sequence and call it done.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, we we did five touch points.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: This person's not buying from us.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: And so we're just gonna move on to the next lead, uh, which is I've learned, I used to think that way, but I've learned it's the biggest load of crap in the world.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so like how far off is that from like what you guys are actually seeing?
31:33
SPEAKER_00: Like, is it it, you know, do people need to implement more than just five touch points?
31:39
SPEAKER_00: Did do they need to implement as much as 132?
31:42
SPEAKER_00: Or where's that like sweet spot that you guys see?
31:44
SPEAKER_01: No, that includes all disqualified people.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: So people that never ended up booking at all or were interested.
31:53
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of stuff in there.
31:54
SPEAKER_01: Also, some of our users like they aren't doing booking.
31:57
SPEAKER_01: They're just doing support messages.
31:58
SPEAKER_01: And it's all just gotcha kind of lumped into one because for that in our iteration of our reports didn't have that data segmented.
32:06
SPEAKER_01: We do now.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: So we'll know better in Q4.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: But what we were seeing is, yeah, at least three follow-ups would be needed, with the longest time from first contact to booking um on record that we have being almost a year, which is almost the full time that V2 had been alive at the time of running the report.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: So do you feel like that is just the natural buying cycle of a lot of people is like this year time frame?
32:35
SPEAKER_00: Or do you feel like Closebot has shortened that time frame down for people?
32:39
SPEAKER_01: It depends on what ticket it is.
32:41
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
32:41
SPEAKER_01: Like for some things like a roof, people are gonna buy when they're gonna buy, and you just have to be there right place, right time.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: Closebot allows you to hit that more often.
32:50
SPEAKER_01: If you had a bunch of tasks for a human to do follow-ups, that compounds over time, right?
32:56
SPEAKER_01: So manageable after the first week, where maybe you got 30 leads.
33:02
SPEAKER_01: Next week you have 30 follow-up messages to send.
33:05
SPEAKER_01: But after a year, you have what is it, 1,500 follow-up messages over a week you're supposed to be sending.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: That's when it gets hard.
33:12
SPEAKER_01: And that's when people start to say, you know what, even instead of doing a weekly follow-up, let's do one month, six month, and then call it good.
33:22
SPEAKER_01: This allows you to go much more aggressive and so you're there, right place, right time.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: So I got I got two questions here as we as we wrap up here.
33:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh, first one, Bryce, you know, as you're talking, I'm thinking about things.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: Like one of the things that we've done is I hop on sales calls, I have my fathom note taker on the call.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: And so then, you know, it records the call.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm talking to agency owners and I have their pain points.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, here's what I'm going through, here's why we're trying to hire for this role, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: And then I have an email newsletter that goes out and we use AI to generate an email newsletter that goes out to my mailing list based off the pain points on the sales calls that I'm actively having, right?
34:03
SPEAKER_00: And so it's this like real time, and people have closed extra touch points because the fact that it's like, hey, this newsletter that Brad just sent is talking to me.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: And it was just, it so happened that they were having the same point as another Asian center I was talking to, right?
34:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh, is there with inside CloseBot, is there an instance in which, like, if, you know, as an example, if like we wanted to implement CloseBot inside of Talent Fuse, when you see that type of information, be able to go then go reactivate conversations or send, you know, marketing type campaigns based off of sales calls conversations and know like exactly which contacts.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: So you mentioned like hijacking the conversations.
34:44
SPEAKER_00: So being able to look at historical conversations through closed bot to then be able to say, hey, you know, here's this person that we just solved this pain point for type thing, or is that not something you guys can do yet?
34:55
SPEAKER_01: And we see all the conversation history with that contact and high level.
34:58
SPEAKER_01: We also see all the contact fields.
34:59
SPEAKER_01: So if you if you're saving it there or if it's happening in conversation, we know about it.
35:04
SPEAKER_01: Something you have to do is get that message to come in for Closebot to reply.
35:10
SPEAKER_01: Just like chat GPT, you know, if I open it, it's not going to proactively reach out to me with some sort of question.
35:18
SPEAKER_01: Uh you would want to use maybe a like a GPT action at high level to send that first curated message and then that's it.
35:26
SPEAKER_01: Closebot handles it from there.
35:28
SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
35:28
SPEAKER_01: And it knows it can even know we have our sales pixel now too.
35:32
SPEAKER_01: So if you're using our chat widget, it knows what pages the person's on and it can even pull in some of that information, work it into conversation.
35:40
SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: So as long as high level has the context and has the data somewhere in there in terms of the contact fields, everything, message history, whatever, you guys can access it and work on it from there.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: So that's awesome to hear.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: So as we wrap up, Rice, you know, we talked a lot about, you know, your journey of getting from where you're at at Boeing to launching Closebot, you know, with the real estate industry and what you guys do now.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: Um, but as we're as we're wrapping up here, we're talking a lot about implementation of AI.
36:07
SPEAKER_00: And so what do you see?
36:09
SPEAKER_00: Like for those who are listening, they're like, I'm gonna implement whether it's closed bot or some AI appointment setting solution.
36:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what do you see as like the common mistake?
36:20
SPEAKER_00: Like what do they screw up the most that you're like, if you could just not do this one thing, this is what I would recommend against doing.
36:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they build it way too complex to start.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: Um with cloth within Closebot, that looks like instead of building a flow of agents, just build one agent with your stuff you want it to do.
36:39
SPEAKER_01: Don't break it out into a big complex flow, just a single one and get your minimum viable product out there.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: So maybe for you, that's name, email, phone number, book appointment, answer questions, done.
36:54
SPEAKER_01: And then from there, maybe you want to qualify more based on drive time um between business address and their address.
37:01
SPEAKER_01: And if it's over a certain distance route to some different rep and not locate, you know, but people build out and build and build and test and iterate and months go by and then they go out of business.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: That's because they're because they're too busy building and not going out selling.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's uh it's oftentimes oftentimes what you see.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, Bryce, thanks again for for hopping on here, giving us a little bit of a highlight of what Closebot do or what Closebot does and uh and how you guys got here.
37:29
SPEAKER_00: Not an an easy journey that you went through with the pandemic and the real estate industry, but uh there's always a silver lining and everything.
37:37
SPEAKER_00: And so glad we're finally seeing the other other end of that.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: And those of you are listening, thanks for watching or listening to the show.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: Go follow Bryce, check out Closebot, uh, and all the links to Bryce and his company are in the notes below.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: If this one helped you, share it with another agency owner who is still trying to do it all alone and subscribe so you don't miss next week's episode.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: But until next time, this is the agency advantage.