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Nate Joens on Proptech Espresso – Transforming Your Real Estate Sales Process With AI

This episode of Protech Espresso details how advanced forms of technology, such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), can contribute to productivity and growth in real estate. In this episode, host Mark Harris has invited Nate Joens, co-founder of Structurely, to share his insights on the topic. Having developed AI assistance to help thousands of businesses in North America flourish, Joens is a seasoned individual with extensive experience using Proptech as a helpful asset. Throughout the episode, he highlights the importance of GIS and Conversational AI in several areas of business, especially real estate, by relating it to his firsthand experiences as an expert in the industry.

In this episode, you will learn:

• What GIS is and how the real estate industry can use it to their advantage
• Nate Joens’ inspirations and goals behind developing his own AI
• How Conversation AI works and how the real estate industry can benefit from it

Good Question & Answer 1:

Mark Harris: What led you to build this sales process automation company?

Nate Joens: Yeah, so a lot of it started in college. When I was studying or planning GIS, I also wanted to dabble in real estate investing with my co-founder, but it didn’t make a lot of sense. We had no money, and you need money to invest in real estate of any kind. However, that led to a great learning experience where we talked to hundreds or thousands of real estate agents and people from the prop-tech space to pick their brains and learn from what they’re doing. It actually blossomed into them constantly talking about how lead follow-up was a struggle of theirs. Most salespeople in general, especially in real estate, love face-to-face interaction. They love being knee to knee with someone, closing the deal, and learning about them. However, the behind-the-scenes stuff like updating CRM, setting appointments, following up on qualifying leads, calling leads; that’s the part that’s tough for them. But it is an absolutely vital part of every salesperson’s life.

So, we really started Structurely to solve that problem. We wanted to solve that problem with conversational AI because we believed at the time that technology was advanced enough to actually solve this, rather than trying to solve this problem with a call center, because that’s been done before for probably 20 or 25 plus years. Our belief is that AI’s long-term goal is to basically reduce the mundane tasks that humans historically have done, like calling leads, getting told to get lost 100 times just to get to that one person who hears you out, and the qualification process that all salespeople, especially in real estate, go through that can be exhausting.

Good Question & Answer 2:

Mark Harris: Why is it important for real estate agents to adopt technology and use it to their advantage beyond the time savings that we talked about?

Nate Joens: I would say, to boil it down, consistency. Not only does it give you all sorts of leverage on time and resources, but humans are notoriously inconsistent. We’re all guilty of it. That’s one of the early things that we learned in building conversational AI. 

When you compare us to human call centers, the feedback that we would always get is “oh, I used this call center XYZ service, and sometimes I would have no idea what these people were going to say to my leads. They sometimes forgot to follow up, they said weird things, and I had no idea what they were going to say.” Even though they’ve been through extensive training, sometimes it doesn’t always stick. With a computer, however, it always sticks. There’s no getting around it; it will follow up with your lead at a pre-programmed time. It will say something that you’ve trained it to do, and it will deliver on everything that you give it, basically.

Unfortunately, I think that this is one of all traits that salespeople as a whole (but especially in real estate) are guilty of. Being entrepreneurs, self-disciplined, and self-starter types, myself included, we are not terribly consistent. Sometimes we’re very inconsistent and we say we will follow up, but we will only follow up once or twice and then give up. I think that CRM technology, such as sales and automation, are there to keep you really consistent. And that is absolutely vital. Because just by being consistent, you’re going to get ahead of the competition because there are so many people that are inconsistent in this sales game.

Additional Topics Discussed:

• Predictive Analysis: What is it, and how is it used today?
• The impact of COVID-19 on the real estate industry
• Generative AI and its potential benefits to other industries, such as sales and marketing

Host/Podcast Bio:

Proptech Espresso is a podcast wherein experts and entrepreneurs from several industries, mainly real estate, are given an open space to talk about their experiences, share their knowledge, and freely express their thoughts throughout the 20- to 30-minute episodes. The podcast invites the most experienced individuals to enlighten listeners about how they have succeeded in real estate and how Proptech has helped the industry advance in general. The episodes are hosted by Mark Harris, a real estate technologist and former investment banker.

Guest Bio:

Nate Joens is a co-founder of Structurely, a technology company that develops cutting-edge Conversational AI Assistant tools to help businesses in the real estate industry succeed. Structurely was designed to enhance real estate businesses’ CRM by generating personalized AI responses to real-life queries and conversations with potential clients and partners. Joens is a well-known name in the tech industry, but he also has significant experience in project management, graphic design, urban planning, financing, and more.

Resources and Links Mentioned in the Show:

• https://www.structurely.com/
• https://www.esri.com/en-us/home
• https://www.mapbox.com/
• https://www.zillow.com/how-much-is-my-home-worth/
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