How AI Tools Boost Title Sales & Marketing | Title Agents Podcast Ep49

In a world where change is the only constant, Mo Shumil stands at the forefront, guiding title professionals to not just grow their businesses, but to master the art of innovation. With every episode, you're handed the keys to unlock unparalleled growth and stay ahead of the curve. Get ready for a transformative journey. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Title Agents Podcast. I am your host, Mo Shumil, CEO of Alltech National Title.

If you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and share it with your network. It will really help us a lot to keep building and growing our podcast. Today we're joined by Sam Trimble, a powerhouse in title sales and marketing, to explore how AI is transforming how we connect, convert, and compete. Let's get into it. So how many episodes?

Well, Sam, welcome to the show. And I'm very excited to have you on the show and really think very highly of you and all the things you're doing with sales and marketing and specifically AI. As we always start with the show, let's start with your journey. How did you get into the title industry? What originally drew you towards the sales and marketing side of the business?

Yeah, Mo, it's funny. It's like everybody else. One day I just woke up and found myself in the title industry. Out of college, I had actually wanted to get in. I worked on some movies and TV shows in college, and I was like, man, that'd be fun.

I should do this. What could I do that I could leave for a few months, go work on a film, come back and still have a job and not be fired? And I was like, oh, I'll be a realtor. And then very quickly I realized that I had to actually be there doing things or else I was going to make zero money. So gave up the movie dreams, became a real estate agent, did that full time for about 12 years, was about to just totally shift and go into pharmaceutical and medical device sales actually.

And I met with a gentleman in El Paso that I closed all my deals with for the most part. And he was like, you're just going to leave the real estate industry completely and go do something totally unrelated? And I was like, yep. And he said, well, I think you're leaving a lot of relationships and opportunity on the table. Why don't you come work for me?

And so the next morning I woke up with a four page offer letter in my email to join his title company as VP of business development or something, whatever the title was. What company was this? And this was a company called Lone Star Title based in El Paso, offices all over Texas and New Mexico. And so I did it and that's what happened, you know, and it was kind of fun. And I started leaning into the sales and marketing and tech side because I feel like, you know, the title industry, we literally research the past.

That's literally what we do. And in some cases are until recently, I feel like our sales, our marketing, our tech strategy also lived in the past, you know? And so I saw a big blue ocean in front of me that if you could stand out from the crowd and step out in faith and try new things and add some fun spins to sales and marketing and actually adopt some forward thinking technology, you could do cool things. And that's exactly what we did, you know, and that was 2014 is when I got in the title business. So it's been 11 years and it's been awesome.

I can't imagine being anywhere else. And as you know, once you get sucked in, good luck getting out of here. So what are traditional sales or marketing methods still hold strong today for title agencies and title agents and why do you think they still work? Yeah, you know, I think we always say this is a relationship business, but honestly, like every business is a relationship business. That's kind of a cop out, you know, like, of course, you have to have great relationships with clients and customers and people directing business, people not directing business.

And so I think one of the things that holds true that will never change is if you don't have good, meaningful relationships, it's not going to work. And so, you know, one of the things that will never change in life is people want to be appreciated. People want to have a good experience. People want to be able to end their day feeling like somebody cares about what they're doing. And so, you know, some of the traditional stuff that doesn't seem so prevalent anymore is just gratitude.

You know, we're so busy and there's so much going on, but everyone's busy. Everybody's got a lot going on. You know, we all say that, oh, I'm so busy. I've stopped saying that because everyone you tell that is also busy. And now, you know, it seems that's one way we can connect.

But one of the things that I did a lot of is, you know, I sat down one time and I was looking at our retention rate and how many clients were kind of dropping off. And I realized that we were losing some clients that we thought we had great relationships with. And when we dove in to try and understand why, it wasn't because we'd messed something up. It wasn't because our process was broken. It wasn't because they didn't have a good experience.

It was often because someone happened to be there in the right moment at the right time and asked for that deal. And they said yes. And why did they say yes? Because our relationship was surface. We had not taken the time to sit down and say, you know what, Mo, like every time you send a transaction to us, we deeply appreciate it.

It means a lot to us. There's no way we could be successful without you. We weren't telling people that. We were providing great service and quick spectrum. But we were doing, you know, we were doing the bits, but we weren't getting into the atoms.

That's kind of how I think about it. Like the bits are the things that we always do. Yep. You got to have fast turn times. You got to be responsive.

You got to have a good product. You got to have a decent customer experience. But the atoms are the human connection. And so one thing that we did that I think we'll always, and I still talk about this to this day, is I started doing this thing where I would get all of our escrow officers and assistants in a room and every single one of them would have 10 pre-stamped envelopes and 10 pieces of our company letterhead in front of them. And we'd basically say we're not leaving this room until we send five notes thanking people, showing some gratitude for the people that work with us each and every day.

And then five notes to people that maybe we haven't seen in a while. Maybe we're wondering why we haven't gotten any deals from them lately. And just saying absolutely, you know, we were appreciative to work with you every time we can. We miss seeing you around. Is there anything we can do to be of service?

And the first time I did that, everyone was like, you know, Sam, you're supposed to be the tech guy and you're having us sit down and write notes like it's 1850. But after we did that, about a month later, I had people in the office come up and be like, hey, when are we going to do that again? And the reason was they saw deals come in the door that they would not have seen. They created conversations that they would not have created it. And it was as simple as saying thank you.

And I feel like we get so in the trenches on each and every deal and there's so many moving parts that we don't sit down and take a moment to actually put pen to paper and show people some appreciation with supporting us. And when you do, not only do you feel good because you're like, it's great to tell Mo thank you. Like, this is awesome. But when that person receives that note in the mail, first of all, when's the last time you received like a letter or a note, a handwritten note in the mail? Now it's like text and voicemail and a fake video, right?

So that feels good. But they also we just want to be appreciated. You know, we just want to want someone to be thankful for our little part in this world. And when you do that, it's amazing what happens. So I'd say something that will never go out of style is a simple handwritten note showing a little bit of gratitude.

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So I talked to a lot of marketers as well. And it's amazing like how they say like the is a higher return on direct mail and phone calls versus like that. Everybody's trying to get an automate and make it easier for all of you waiting for AI and technology will come to a promise you. But this is like Lily is that there's a huge impact or huge kind of you differentiate yourself when you get back to some of the always doing things like a phone calls or visits or a letter and read letters you said. Yeah.

Yeah. I saw a quote the other day from from Simon Sinek and I put it on LinkedIn and it said hosts get reactions, phone calls, start conversations like, you know, social media. It's scalable. It's it can be impactful. We're about to start an awesome exercise with our entire FNF team in the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic.

You differentiate yourself when you get back to some of the always doing things like a phone calls or visits or a letter I read letters you said yeah. Yeah, I saw a quote the other day from from Simon Sinek and I put it on LinkedIn and it said posts get reactions phone calls start conversations like You know social media. It's scalable. It's it can be impactful We're about to start an awesome exercise with our entire FNF team in the Northeast the Mid-Atlantic Really ramping up our engagement on social with our entire team So I believe in it, but at the same time like these things do deals still do make phone calls right like it does more than tax and post on social media and You know, if the the goal of all things marketing sales technology in my opinion is to create more conversations than your competitors You know, I always say that like whoever can create more conversations more frequently about more pertinent information Will have more business period and so if you're marketing and your sales and your customer experience Of course, it needs to provide value and and create a great process But if it's not geared towards creating more conversations than anybody else, then then we're not doing it, right? Yeah, it's the old adage is more the more at bats It's more chances, yeah, no doubt so over the past few years what have been the biggest shifts you've seen how to have a company's Approach sales and marketing.

Yeah, I mean I talked a lot of company title agents and yeah all over the country and I I think You know foundationally there's been a shift in internal process We had always done things the way we'd always done them and we were comfortable with it And the first time I walked into a title company as an employee and I looked at the title production software and it looked like MS-DOS from And I was like, we're running a business based on this and it was like, yep We've always done it this way and it works and if it ain't broke, right and then they started looking at the process How can we you know, the largest sailor purchase of anybody's life is traditionally the transaction that we're handling, right? And so if they get a great experience Buying a dog bone on Amazon and they get five notifications that it's been confirmed. It's been shipped. It's on its way It's on your front porch. How was the dog bone?

Would you like to buy another one? Please? Leave us a review We have constant communication and that Amazon if occasion I feel like the title industry has started to realize We're not a $10 dog bone. It's the largest sailor purchase. So if they can provide a great Informed customer experience for a $10 bone.

We should figure out a way Without having to do a bunch more work to create at least equally as good of a customer experience And so foundationally, I think we started looking at that and then it's been really exciting over the last, you know Five six seven years to see the tech space within the title industry really start to grow Not just postcards and farming and stuff like that Like absolutely leveraging technology not to hide behind it but to get in front of more clients more customers in a more effective way That's also scalable. And so to me, you know, the seismic shift that I've seen is a really customer centric process centric but customer experience Centric approach to to creating a transaction that feels good That's exciting that celebrates the milestones along the way and then really caps the end of the transaction With kind of a powerful Connectivity to your clients and customers. I mean, you know Realtors for example, you know, they have a fallout of 80% like they only a Realtor statistically only gets 20% repeat business And it's not because their clients and customers didn't like them didn't feel like they did a great job It's because we suck at follow-up and the title industry follows and I'm sure the lending to follows that trend pretty well You know, how often do you see another client or customer in your office for the next transaction? They probably end up going somewhere else why because we're putting them on a drip campaign and Thinking that that will mean that we have a great relationship with them rather than keeping them informed keeping them a part of A part of our sphere moving forward and so some of the technology is meant to improve the process I feel like I've also improved the way that we can connect with people in a meaningful way You know, I don't need another Bundt cake recipe. My mom's Bundt cake recipe is fantastic So you send me a Bundt cake recipe on a postcard?

It's probably going straight into the recycling bin. However, You know you use something like home bought or a platform like that to keep me updated on the status the value The appreciation of my number one asset in my life that dictates my financial future. That's meaningful to me That's information. I want to know my mom doesn't send me that she does send me the Bundt cake Then I don't need them and so I think there's a lot of things that we've done but being able to leverage technology to add value to provide insight on the largest Sailor purchase of our clients lives. I think has really changed things in a meaningful way This podcast is made possible by our sponsor.

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What was the last customer experience? Maybe it was at a hotel or a restaurant or a rental car agency or an airline or whatever That was great. And why was it great? You don't need a you know market study to figure out what works Think about what you like and then find a way to put that into your business and to me You know when it comes to the AI stuff and I know we'll get into that more like Technology and the automation and AI revolution is happening so fast and changing so quickly That I almost feel like no one's behind because we're all behind every day. There's something new So if you haven't dabbled in any of that yet rather than being like, oh my gosh I'm so far behind now realize that everyone else is behind too and it's a pretty level playing field But what I like to kind of if I start a conversation with with it with the title agent one of the first things I'll ask is What are your points of friction right now?

Not only for you But for your clients and customers when you can find those points of friction and kind of back into a solution It's gonna be more powerful than just sitting there brainstorming on some new totally different thing and so if something like social media or digital marketing and advertising or you know PR is is an issue for you right now. The amount of tools out there and resources is just absolutely unbelievable And so there's no excuse anymore You know I if you wanted to make a marketing plan for a title company specifically meant to re-engage past Clients the realtor and lender community and real estate attorney community You would have to sit down in a room But pen to paper and map out some type of marketing plan that would have taken you hours or days to come up with you Probably form a committee and we have committee meetings and all this stuff and six months later maybe we have something now I could go into you know, an LLM like chat or Gemini or Claude or whatever and just be like hey, I'm a title agent. My clients are realtors and attorneys and lenders I want to create a 52 week marketing plan meant to keep in front of those people and add value What do I do? It would start to ask you a few questions Map out a year-long plan and then you could throw that in a document start moving it around making it your own and all of A sudden I have a plan for that. So the overwhelming thing for me is always when you first start a marketing campaign You know, what are we gonna do with socials?

What are we gonna do with direct mail? What's the messaging gonna be? What's our content pillars I could sit there and write those questions down now Inform chat a little bit about who our clients and customers are Put those questions in there and it will help spark that creativity for me So instead of taking a committee ten people and six months to come up with an effective marketing plan I could probably do it in five minutes or so. And then if I actually do the activities You would watch the change happens I think it's it's one of those things you just got to start somewhere the difference between the people that crush it and the ones That never quite get there is the people that are out there just killing it. They just try new stuff So if you see something cool that you liked as an experience, how could you implement that in your business, right?

How could you stand out from your competitors and the stuff is all around us, you know, yeah so one one more question and adapting to change and it's it's one of the biggest kind of Resistance in our industry as a kind of as you said, it's how I've done it forever and ever my typewriter reports. It's fine Yeah, so how do you approach educating or empowering a sales team to embrace new tools and platforms without scaring them and yeah I think the reason woman them as yeah, that's what happens, right? I think the reason that and the stuff is all around us, you know? So one more question and adapting to change, and it's one of the biggest kind of resistance in our industry, as you said, it's how we've done it forever and ever. My typewriter reports just fine.

So how do you approach educating or empowering a sales team to embrace new tools and platforms without scaring them and overwhelming them? That's what happens, right? I think the reason that we don't do stuff or that we get overwhelmed or we're frightened by it is that we either, one, don't know why it matters, or two, don't know how to do it. Those are fundamentally the two reasons that we won't do something. So if you can show proof, like social proof of how something will work, and then explain from 101 level, like how something works, all of a sudden people will start to buy in.

And you know, you always need kind of a cheerleader or a thought leader to help with something like that. So who's the person on your team that's already doing a little bit of this that can say, hey, you know what? I've done this and it's worked and here's how I've done it. But really, you know, I'm a big fan of like gamification. So I mentioned that we're doing kind of a social challenge at FNF coming up soon with our entire team.

So there's gonna be like 150 of us going through this exercise for the next two months. And the reason I think that is powerful is it's hard to swim alone. It's a lot easier and less nerve wracking when you're with a big group of people, right? You're not worried about what's under your feet in the ocean anymore. You're surrounded by peers and you can go in the same direction together.

And so doing it as a group, I think is really important. And I mean, start it with a challenge. Like what is our goal? What are we looking to do? In our case, it's like we wanna create more conversations and be in front of clients more regularly without having to spend way more time because we just don't have it, right?

And so, you know, team exercises like that to me are always fun. I've done that with title companies all over the country where we did like a two month exercise, a little social media challenge. And we, you know, shared our successes, we shared our challenges, and we talked about content, you know, helped each other through that. And all of a sudden people are like, how could I have not been doing this before? So, you know, there's always a way to get people excited about something.

But to me, like gamifying it, making it fun, doing it as a group, leading by example. You know, nobody wants to go and do something that someone's like, hey, we should do this, and then the leader doesn't actually do it. So the leader has to be a part of it too. You know, like you can lead from the front, but you can also lead from the back, kind of herding those cattle, right? So it really depends, I guess, on what you're looking to accomplish.

But when it comes to marketing and sales stuff, as soon as people get that one deal in the door that they were not gonna get otherwise, as soon as they have that one meaningful conversation with a client that they were not gonna have otherwise, the buy-in starts to happen organically. I guess it's just getting that start. And, you know, I saw a quote recently, I use this for AI all the time, I use this for anything new, that fear is often a mile wide, but only an inch deep. Man, picture that, right? This picture of this ocean in front of me.

But you take that first step and you realize it's only an inch deep. And then you take that second step and you're like, no, I'm not gonna drown. I might get a little wet, I might get a little uncomfortable, right? But at the end of the day, I can actually do this. So when you kind of think of it like that, you can really do anything.

And I feel like that with AI, which I'm sure we'll talk about next probably. Yeah, it is, let's dig right into it. So AI is changing the game, as you know, everybody knows. I know you touched on this more high level, but how are you currently using AI in sales and marketing for title services and any tools or workflows you're loving right now? We could probably sit here for hours and talk.

Oh, yeah, yeah. So our team recently launched a series. We just started season two, episode one, last, earlier this week, actually. But we launched a series called the AI Empowered Title Agent. Because what I was seeing in our space specifically was a lot of 30,000 foot talk about what was possible and hypothetical theoretical uses, but none of it was necessarily a full-on resource for a title agent, period.

And so we broke that into a sales pillar, a marketing pillar, a talent dev and HR pillar, and an operations and customer experience pillar. And we went through and we beta tested the tools, played with the ones that we thought might work. Some of them didn't, but a lot of them did. And so I think throughout your process, for the marketing and sales piece, obviously, content curation is low-hanging fruit. It's really easy to create content.

Right now, we're seeing all these baby videos all over social media. I posted one the other day just to hop on that train before it left the station. So there's a lot of ways to start conversations. But I start thinking, so from an operational piece, there's tons of backend stuff that you can use. If you would have told me, Mo, 10 years ago, that a real estate agent could send me a single PDF with 80 pages out of order, I could throw it into an AI, it would recognize what everything was, open it in my transaction management software, my title production software, and rather than spending 40 minutes opening an order, I could spend three minutes just verifying accuracy, I would have thought you were nuts.

How's that possible? Not only does that exist now, but that's now existed for a few years. It's amazing, right? So transaction- What tool is that, out of curiosity? There's a bunch of tools out there that do data aggregation and segmentation.

One that I know is working really well right now is my friends at Alana. The reason I like Hoyt and Randall and the Alana team, not only are they just fantastic people, Hoyt's one of the nicest people I've ever met, just a good, good person. He's the guy that, if you have a sister, 20 years apart, he's going to be the queen of Gary Hoyt. He's off the market, very happy, has a great marriage, but man, he's that kind of guy. But the reason I like them is there's a lot of, there's so much happening so quickly in the AI space that there's a lot of companies out there that say they can do something, but it's not fully baked yet, right?

So when you say like, oh, who are you working with right now? Or, oh, can I see the process? It's like, well, you know, we're actually kind of, and so Hoyt and Alana, they've actually built it. So they have not only smart forms and all that kind of stuff, the conversational things that they do, but two things that they have that really excite me. One is their ability to automate order entry, right?

That's amazing, that exists. The other thing that they're in beta right now, but they're in the process of releasing is their insights product. You know, when I first got into the marketing and sales side of the title business, I was like, we have all this data in our title production software, right? Who are the buyers? Who are the sellers?

What neighborhoods are we in? What brokerages are we working with? What's our sweet spot of price point? Where are we losing business? Who hasn't come in the office for a while?

Like all these types of questions, we'd be like, okay, well, we got to build a report to do that, right? Which meant either paying the production software company to remote in and build a report, which took a few days and probably thousands of dollars, or having somebody on our team that was well-versed enough to do that, both of which were a pain, both of which costs time and money. And it was a point of friction. Well, now, you know, they've created a product called Insights where I can conversationally, with no experience in a title production software, ask it questions and get an answer. Like what a novel idea.

I can't believe this has just been created, but this is the first of its type in our industry. So traditionally, you know, sometimes owners and managers, but especially sales and marketing people, like I didn't even know how to get into our production software, let alone like ask it questions or get any meaningful data out of it. So to be able to have a way to go in and just be like, you know, of my top agents three years ago, which of them have dropped off by 50% or more in orders for us? Like it would have taken me days to get an answer like that before. Now I can ask it and just like chat in 30 seconds, get a response back.

Here's a list of the 30 agents that you guys don't work with much anymore that you used to work with a lot. There's my targets. And so I think there's tons of options there. And then when you get into the customer experience or the actual like transaction flow, there's a million more things that you can do to create incredible like standout CX. So what are some low hanging fruits where televisions can immediately apply AI to boost productivity or marketing reach?

So the first thing I think about is we talked about gamification and stuff, and we talked about like the Amazonification of a consumer experience. So, you know, again, I order a dog bone, I get five or six notifications, right? Confirming my order, it's been shipped, it's stuck in Dallas because of bad weather, it's on your porch, a porch pirate stole it, we'll replace it, here's the bone, here's the bone and Hamilton like it, so leave us a quick review and here's some other stuff that I'm sure you would love to buy, right? There's seven notifications for a $10 product. The number one complaint of home buyers and home sellers according to NAR consistently for the last like 30 years, didn't know what was going on, a lack of communication.

So when you start looking at communication, let's break that down. People that have met with me over the last couple of years, probably are tired of hearing me say this, but the retention rate for written word is 10%. We forget 90% of what we read, right? So I joke all the time, it's like, if you want your clients to fall victim to wire fraud, definitely send them a flyer about wire fraud. Communication.

Didn't know what was going on. A lack of communication. So when you start looking at communication, let's break that down. You know, people that have met with me over the last couple of years probably are tired of hearing me say this, but you know, the retention rate for written word is 10%. We forget 90% of what we read, right?

So I joke all the time. It's like if you want your victim, your clients to fall victim to wire fraud, definitely send them a flyer about wire fraud. They're probably going to read half of it. They're going to forget 90% of it. So therefore I'm going to remember 5% of this.

I'm probably not going to remember hardly any of it, right? Video on the other hand, things that we consume visually and audibly simultaneously at the same time. So video, right? We have a 95% retention rate. So if your process doesn't include some type of video, they're going to forget you.

They're going to forget what to do. There's a reason why they've asked what type of payment to bring to closing 30 times because they forgot it. There's a reason why they ask when it is. There's a reason why they ask what earnest money is 50 times, right? So if you're not using video along the process, you're missing the boat.

And a lot of people in the past, you know, to enable video in a real estate transaction as a title company in the past meant either having somebody in house that was great at shooting video or hiring a company to come in and shoot a bunch of videos, you know, maybe a congratulations confirming your order video. Maybe a title has been cleared. Here's what to expect next video. Maybe a closing is coming up. Here's what you need to bring and how you need to bring it video.

And then maybe a congratulations. Here's what to expect, you know, video for the, so there's four videos maybe in the past it would have meant a total pain creating that now you could literally go in and use something like Lumen five to create those videos in five minutes. You could jot down what you would want in that video, go into Lumen five, upload that document or that flyer or whatever it is. And in 30 seconds it will create a video tailored to your brand, exactly what you want it to look like. And now all of a sudden I have those four touch points that people will remember and it changes the customer experience.

We've started to get video, you know, I bought a new car recently. A lot of the process was video. When's the last time, you know, you had a great customer experience at like a car dealership or a car service bay. Normally the experience is frustrating and takes too long and you feel like they're overcharging and it's unclear and all that. They've started to use it.

So if they could use it, could we not be using it? You know? So I think there's, there's a ton of ways like that that you could absolutely improve This podcast is proudly sponsored by need extra hands without extra overhead. Meet Safi virtual your on demand team of virtual assistants trained specifically for the title industry. Our VAs come with foundational knowledge of title insurance, ready to handle admin tasks, client communication, data entry, and more.

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Like it's always been a struggle. We always wanted to do these things, but as I agree with you, video is very powerful. Like how can you embed this like in an automation with a workflow inside a software so it's done. So I know, I know what you don't have to say the name. I probably know what you're talking about and there's a lot of benefits to that TPS software.

It's fantastic. They're doing really cool stuff, you know, but at some point you kind of have to get creative. And so with the one you're talking about, it could be as simple as this. There's emails already going out, right? In many cases with some automation there, although you can't embed video in some of those, you can embed an image.

So with people that I've worked with in the past on that platform specifically, we created an image with a play button. We embedded the image within that email that was going out, replacing all the verbiage with a really nice looking kind of Amazon looking image. And then when they click that image, it took them to the video on our website, right? So there's always a way to do it. It just depends, you know, how, how easy is it going to be?

I mean, I used to use, I did bomb bomb automations at my former company like 10 years ago. And so as soon as we had a new order, we tied it into bomb bomb. We set the timeline and then the videos went out automatically. The cool thing about video is, is not only does it have that high retention, so our clients know what's happening, right? They know where we are.

But the great thing about that is, and the way I kind of started that process was I was talking to our closers and I was like, what are the things that keep you up that you're struggling? What are those points of friction for you? And they're like, we just don't have enough time. We're overwhelmed. There's, there's no time.

And I'm like, okay, well, what are the things you're spending most of your time on? And then we realized it was phone calls and emails asking the exact same. It was the exact same questions over and over from every buyer, every seller, every realtor, right? And so we're like, okay, well, what if we take those 10 questions, answer them in a few short videos and get those out during the transaction when that stuff is pertinent? And they were like, okay.

And so we made these videos. All of a sudden, those emails and those phone calls dropped dramatically. So for us, it was great because we had some time again to actually get done what we needed to. But, but the, the even better benefit was the consumer had access to those answers when they had the question. It might be nine o'clock at night.

So my better user experience, like it really enhanced that significantly better customer experience and the added benefit for us, you know, uh, kind of secondarily almost was that we had some time back. We weren't doing the same things over and over and over again. And I bet you that email dropped from 400 to maybe 200. Yeah. I mean, we, we, we tested that, you know, the, the, those simple frequently asked questions, the phone calls and the emails dropped by something like 60%.

And it wasn't because they didn't know it was because they already had the answer in a way that they could remember in a way that was digestible and we got to move on down the road. Right. So there's a lot of ways to do stuff like that. Um, and the AI video stuff is nuts. So what role do you see AI play in, in relationship building, which has always been so personal in title sales, can tech enhance authenticity?

Uh, I'm sure I would love, I'd love you to take on this and, uh, I'm always a bullish on AI and leverage it. Yeah, no doubt. I mean, so let's, let's speak foundationally. Like the beginning of a relationship, I have always felt like I was able to find ways to connect with people. You know, you and I were talking about golf right before we start recording this, you got your shirt on, right.

Like, so we can connect in that way. But every one of us, I don't care how much of a people person you are or how emotionally intelligent you think you are. There's always someone out there that you just can't seem to find a groove with. Right. You can't feel a connection.

And so foundationally, at the beginning of a relationship, there's so many tools out there now that can help you do that. There's one that we've been playing with a lot called crystal nose. It's an AI tool that's been around a long time, you know, crystal nose, nose. So it's, you know, CRY, STAL, uh, AI, if you look up crystal AI, it'll come up. So basically this is an AI tool.

We've all heard of like disc profiles, right? We filled one out at our office, right? But that's a lot of questions takes a lot of time. So crystal knows you're able to enter somebody's LinkedIn profile. It will find that profile and then scour the internet for anything about that person.

And we'll give you ways to communicate with that person. How do they like to be communicated with? How do you get them to make a decision? How do you build a deeper relationship with them? What are some of the blind spots that this person might have that you should know about ahead of time?

So you enable a tool like that with your sales team, then all of a sudden you're having more meaningful connections and conversations much more quickly. And you're serving them in the way they want to be served. You know, I read a book called Unreasonable Hospitality recently, Will Godara, you probably read it. It's, you know, he was a restaurateur, but he turned a, you know, just a normal restaurant into the number one restaurant in the world, not by food, although the food was fantastic, but by creating an experience. And the way he did that was tailoring an experience for every person.

His dad, one of my favorite quotes from the book is actually from his dad. And it said, serve what you want to receive, right? So treat people kind of the way you want to be treated. Sounds like the golden rule, but how do we know what they want? Right?

We don't know. You just, you, we just got a contract from you or I just guess we're just guessing. So by using something like crystal nose, I can go deeper, faster, uh, in a more meaningful way. And I can serve somebody the way they want to be served, even if I don't know everything about them yet. So, so that's a really cool tool like foundationally.

But like I said before, you know, all of these technologies are not meant to be hidden behind. My goal is not to hide behind a technology and, and put that barrier between us. My goal is to leverage those things to have a better relationship. And so, you know, from, from the beginning, getting to know them using something like crystal nose and then moving forward, you know, there's just a million different tools, to be able to help create deeper connection. And to me, I'm not hiding behind the tools.

I'm actually getting strategic with, with making sure that we have a great relationship that shows that I'm actually, I think this relationship is really the technology and put that barrier between us. My goal is to leverage those things to have a better relationship. And so from the beginning, getting to know them, using something like Crystal Nose, and then moving forward, there's just a million different tools to be able to help create deeper connection. And to me, I'm not hiding behind the tools. I'm actually getting strategic with making sure that we have a great relationship.

That shows that I'm actually, I think this relationship is really valuable. It matters to me. So rather than thinking that you're using something to become inauthentic, you're actually using something to become more authentic. Enhance, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

So there's, I mean, again, we could talk about the different tools for hours, but that's it. So where do you think the biggest end-taps opportunities lie in the tower industry's sales and marketing space right now? Man, I mean, there are many. Anytime there's friction in the market, I feel like there's incredible opportunity. There's always somebody out there crushing it.

And I think, you know, going back to that fear is only, is a mile wide, but an inch deep thing. Many of us in this industry are kind of afraid to start leveraging this stuff. Where's the information going? You know, how secure are these things? Like we've always done it this way.

But at the end of the day, you know, stepping out and trying something new. So what are we seeing? You know, there's a stat that I love that 86% of all Fortune 500 CEOs say that AI is a foundational piece of the future of their business, right? They're not saying, it's something we're gonna use a little bit. We're gonna experiment with.

They're saying, no, this is the foundation of the future of our business. So when nine out of 10 Fortune 500 CEOs say something, I tend to listen, right? Like there's a reason why that many people are saying it. Today's episode is sponsored by. Hey, you, title agents, stop wasting time digging for answers or waiting on an email or call back from your underwriter.

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Yeah, 100%. It's the only thing. So I think comparison can lead to stagnation and innovation, right? So if I'm sitting here just comparing myself to the other title agent across the street, I'm never gonna get better. I think we need to be looking outside of our industry a lot more regularly.

We touched on it before, this idea of finding what your best experience is, purchasing wise or consumer wise, we're outside of the industry and figuring out how to bring that into the industry. So people are already doing things that are improving customer experience, that are keeping them informed, that are making them feel more comfortable because they know what's going on. How do you bring that into our industry? And now there's so many opportunities for stuff like that. I mean, I look through all of my tools and it's like, I think about, this is kind of unrelated, I guess, but I remember at one point, I had somebody in our company that went out unexpectedly for like six weeks.

And it wasn't until this person went out, was out of the office, that we realized nobody else in the office knew how to do what she was doing. And we're like, uh-oh, this is a problem. We had not cross-trained, we didn't have a manual on how to do what she was doing. And so being able to provide consistent service means being able to have a consistent process internally. And there's some tools out there now, there's one that I use a lot called Scribe.

So Scribe AI is a tool that you can open up a window on your computer, you can do whatever it is that you're doing, any activity. It could be entering a new order, it could be producing a commitment, it could be balancing a CD, whatever it is, right? And it watches you? And it watches and it turns it into a quick manual on exactly how to do that. So if I were to go back to my agency now, I'd be taking everybody and being like, what are the 10 things that you do every day, all day?

Here's the 10 things. All right, do me a favor, let me open this up. I'd open it up, I'd have them do those 10 things. And in the time it took them to do those 10 things, we would now have a process and procedure manual, super simple with an explanation on what they were doing, how they were doing it and why they were doing it using AI in the amount of time it took them to do it. No more work, right?

And so there's things like that that are just, to me, very low-hanging fruit, like easy to do, fast, and most of them are relatively free and a lot of them are SOC 2 compliant and things. So what are some recent innovative campaigns or content formats you've seen work in a surprising way? Things that really move the needle. Yeah, I think the thing that I've always thought is, if I can teach a client or customer a way to help them grow their business, when I then ask for the business, the answer will always be yes, right? So we fall into this rut, I feel like, in our industry of offering what we call education, and it's like Title 101.

I feel the same thing. Right? And so to me, if you're doing things like education, is it something that's meant to help your clients and customers grow their business? If it's not, kind of probably stop doing it. There's nothing wrong with Title 101 for a brand new realtor, or maybe at an orientation at your local association or something.

But if we think that teaching someone the foundational basics of Title is gonna, one, help them grow their business, and two, help us grow our business, I think we're wrong. It's the illusional. It is, and so I really feel like we should stop doing that. That said, we've always done it. It's easy, we're comfortable with it, but when you look back and you think, what has that done for my clients?

What has that done for me? If the answer is, well, not really anything, then we should stop doing that. So when you're mapping out a marketing campaign, to me, we're really good at wham, bam, thank you, we're done. We post something, or we send something out, and then that's it. We're not good at iterating.

So everything that we do, say we're gonna host a class on how to use AI to grow your lead funnel as a realtor, as a lender, as a title company. Prior to doing that, we're actually gonna do the things so that we have social proof of how it has worked. We're gonna talk about that during that campaign. Then we're gonna offer to teach people how to do that campaign, and then we're gonna turn that teaching moment into pieces of micro-content that continue to go out. So we're doing one activity, but there's like four, five, six things that can come from that activity.

And so, the people that I see really crushing it, one, are doing the things. If you're not using AI for your business, don't go out and talk about AI, right? It just doesn't work. You're gonna get asked questions that you don't have the answer to, and frankly, you know, you're not- It's a lot of theory, no practice. It's a theory, not an actual tangible thing that you've done.

But iterative campaigns, to me, create evergreen content. It's never gonna go out of style. It's always gonna be pertinent, and it doesn't have to be five different activities to create five points of connection. It can be one activity. We did this thing.

Here's what it did. We're gonna show you how to do it, and then we're gonna continue to drip little nuggets and morsels of how to get really good at it moving forward. And so, you know, the people that I see crushing it are the ones that are actually doing the things. They're not faking it till they make it anymore. They're the ones actually out there doing it.

And then let people look under the hood. How did you do it? How did it become a success? What were the things that didn't work, by the way? What are those negative hooks?

Those work so much better than the positive hooks in today's world. But, I mean, again, there's a million different things that we could talk about. It's hard to talk about one. I don't know if you use custom GPTs or if you're big on them. That's one thing that really, really so helpful.

Like, I have the main one. It's my co-CEO GPT. I built it for myself. It's incredible. It's like a year ago with a lot of content, some of our future plans, some quarterly meetings, and kind of search our website.

A lot of content. I keep updating it. As Lily knows, the company knows me so well. If I have a question, I can try to make a decision. Like, hey, what do you think about this?

What should I do? And it'll bring up the values, bring up all this reminding you, like, hey, based on this, this, and this, and your goals as this, this, and this, you should do this kind of thing. This is incredible. You can do that for anything, for marketing, for. Yeah, and again, it's not, you know, I always say, like, I would never put anything into like an open language model that I wouldn't put on a billboard up the street from my house.

So we gotta be careful about that, obviously. But man, the spark of creativity for things like that, to have a co-CEO sitting there to bounce ideas off. Have you messed with Notebook LM? Of course. So, I'm just blown away by it.

It's incredible. I'm actually gonna do some episodes through Notebook LM. I do some deep, using chatGPT, deep research, like a certain topic, like crypto, or whatever that topic is. And I have like a 15, 20-minute segment through Notebook LM. It's just, it's incredible.

Yeah, so what you're talking about, for people that don't know about it, I mean, it's like, you feed this closed-loop language model whatever you want. Documents, parts of your website, articles, podcasts. That's incredible. I'm actually going to do some episodes through NotebookLM, do some deep research, like a certain topic like crypto or whatever that topic is, and I have like a 15, 20-minute segment through NotebookLM. It's incredible.

Yeah. So what you're talking about, for people that don't know about it, I mean, it's like you feed this closed-loop language model whatever you want, documents, parts of your website, articles, podcasts, Zoom meetings, whatever, you feed it into it, and then it just learns from what you taught it, and that thing that you're talking about, you can turn it into a podcast. So just last night, I was messing around taking a bunch of bulletins from our Pennsylvania team, all the bulletins that have gone out in the last 24 months, webinars they've done on those bulletins, any communication about those specific changes in regulatory and compliance things in the state of Pennsylvania. I click one button, it turned it into a 23-minute podcast that covered everything, and I don't know if you've done it yet, but you can literally call into the podcast and ask questions, and the hosts are like, oh, hey. No, I have not done that.

I mean, I'm not a master at it yet, but I would love to take it away. You can literally call in and ask a question. So this is like a simple use case, and again, it's about like things that you could do right now. I remember having meetings with our leadership team at my title company, and we would have some new either campaign, or there would be a change through the Texas Department of Insurance, or a rate change, or something big would be happening. Prior to that meeting, we would get sent a 15, 20-page PDF, hey, review this.

We're going to meet about this on Monday, right? What happened? We would walk in, and we were like first graders. We would get in a room together, reading it together, and so we'd have to meet again, right? Now, those are becoming very expensive meetings if your leadership team is having to sit there reading together.

So now what we've been doing is we'll take whatever that notice is that's coming our way. We will turn that into a podcast. I'll send the podcast to the leadership team prior to that meeting, say, hey, give this a quick listen before we meet. Now when we meet, everyone knows exactly what's going on. They're all on the same page, and we can actually have a meaningful time together rather than reading together like we're in a second grade class, right?

The tools like that, to me, are just absolutely game-changing. If you haven't called in, you've got to call in, man. I'm going to try that. It's going to be fun. To be able to ask AI avatars questions about something, and then the answers that you get are so scarily accurate, it's unbelievable.

It really is. I know you touched a little bit on this. If you're starting from scratch today with a new type of agency, how would you build a modern marketing and sales strategy from the ground up, and operations for that matter? The operations piece would be really important, and obviously, you've got to have some expertise there. Again, I love a fresh start is fun because you get to do everything the right way.

It doesn't mean you're not going to have to bob and weave and iterate and change or whatever, but you get to do things the right way. When it comes to the sales and marketing piece, what we don't do is ask the actual people what they like and what they don't like. One thing that I did years into it, but if I could have done it at the beginning, it would have changed the trajectory of our business very quickly, is I love the idea of advisory boards. It's like, who are the stakeholders? Who are the clients that we want to be working with?

Who are the clients that we already work with? We should be asking them what they want to see. We often put our clients in a box. We tell them how things are going to go. We don't- We assume also.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. We don't ask them how we would like things to go. That advisory board idea, it's something that I've used a lot.

We're using it now here at FNF, where it's like, get the stakeholders, our top clients, customers, our dream clients, customers to the table. As a title agent, what I did is, is quarterly I had a meeting. It was like a rotary meeting. The first 15 minutes we'd have the mayor or a city council person or a developer or somebody come in and talk about something cool that was happening and why we should know about it. Then we would bust out a whiteboard and I would ask the room three questions.

What are you seeing in the market that you like? What are you seeing in the market that you don't like? What do you wish you saw in the market? Every single time they would come up with things, sometimes I'd be like, well, that's illegal. We can't do that.

Every time they would come up with something that was a good point, a good idea, and then we would work as a company to enact that in our process. It could be something small. It could be something big, whatever. Every time we brought something into our process and they saw it, that whole advisory board felt a sense of ownership over our company. It didn't require creating a JV and doing some phantom stock and doing kick.

We didn't do any of that stuff. That was not the point, but they felt like they had some sense of pride in the future of our success. They became not only more connected with us in that way, but they became like a team of salespeople out in the market selling us for us. It was just because we asked them what they would like to see, what are the things that frustrate them. That advisory board would be something that I would have started at the very beginning.

The more people you have invested in your future success, the more successful you're going to be. I think there's a lot of that. Two, all of these ... I got tired of so many networking events locally, but man, this is a giving industry. If you were to approach someone in another market and say, hey, what are you doing that is absolutely working and what are the things you wish you had never done, they will tell you.

They will share that experience with you. Rather than siloing ourselves into a place where we think we can find all the answers by ourselves, when you reach out in faith and ask some people that you deeply respect a few simple questions like that, they'll give you answers and then listen. To me, that's changed everything. To be able to reach out to people that I respect in this industry and realize just how willing they are to give feedback, to give insight, to help me along the way. If I would have known that earlier in my career, I would be way further along now than I am, but I'm glad I figured that out.

We're coming to a wrap up of the show. We have a last couple of questions that are, what's your favorite quote? I know you mentioned, fear is a motion a mile wide. I love that one. But in today's world, I've been thinking about this a lot.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said that small minds talk about people, big minds talk about ideas. Wow, I love it. I just love that. If we could spend more time sharing ideas and being invigorated and excited about what we're doing, a rising tide truly does raise all ships. We would all be better off.

But if we sit around, I live in El Paso, so here they call it cheesemade instead of gossip. If we spend a lot less time talking about people and more time talking about how we can get better together, I think we would be better off. That's awesome. How about a favorite book or one you read recently and you talked about the overwhelming hospitality? What was that called?

Unreasonable hospitality. Unreasonable hospitality. I'm at McDavid's right now, but if I had to pick one, going back to what you're talking about, if I was starting from scratch or if I was looking to reinvigorate and re-energize my business, there's a book called Zero to One. Peter Thiel? Yeah.

Peter Thiel. I love it. It's how do you create a meaningful startup mentality, and then more importantly, how do you maintain that mentality even when you've been around a while? And that one to me is one that I read a couple of times a year. I've read that multiple times.

It's an incredible book. And Peter Thiel is a genius. Absolutely. It's a different level. It's about...

We'll close with this maybe. He has this idea in the book about creating a monopoly. And we think of monopoly and we think of something negative, right? The government's getting involved. What he means is, what can you do to create a product, a service, a process that is so good and so different that your client literally cannot go down the road and get it anywhere else?

If you can do that as a title company, create an internal process and culture to have an incredible team that's happy, pleased, and doing a wonderful job, create a consumer experience that feels different, looks different, and stands out from the crowd, and then do everything else that all of us do very well. You will create a monopoly. Your clients literally can't go down the street and get that same feeling. So if we can all do that, the sky's the limit. Awesome.

Well, thank you so much. This was incredible and tons of insights and nuggets. Any last words for our audience? No. I'm just...

I am honored and privileged to be a part of this industry. And I've said it before and I'll say it again. The title industry is the backbone of the American dream. And that's what makes America so different. And the American economy is reliant on the real estate world to be successful.

And the world economy is reliant on the American economy. And so what that means to me is the title industry is truly the backbone of the world economy. So we should be proud of what we do. We should be thankful and grateful for the opportunity to do it every day. And I truly believe that the best is yet to come.

That's awesome. Well, next time you're in D.C., we're going to play golf. Let's do it. I'm in. Thank you so much.

All right, Mo. Appreciate it, brother. Well, that's a wrap on today's conversation with Sam Trimble. If you're ready to rethink your sales strategy or start leveraging AI, hit us up on Instagram. And so what that means to me is the title industry is truly the backbone of the world economy.

So we should be proud of what we do. We should be thankful and grateful for the opportunity to do it every day. And I truly believe that the best is yet to come. That's awesome. Well, next time you're in D.C., we're going to play golf.

Let's do it. I'm in. Thank you so much. All right, Mo. Appreciate it, brother.

Well, that's a wrap on today's conversation with Sam Trimble. If you're ready to rethink your sales strategy or start leveraging A.I. in your marketing operations, we hope this gave you the spark. Don't forget to follow, share and leave a review. We truly appreciate it.

We'll catch you next time on the Title Agents podcast. Bye-bye. And that's a wrap on today's journey with Mo Shamil from the Title Agents podcast. Reminding you that mastering the art of innovation is key in the title industry's fast-paced world. If you're finding it tough to keep up with the changes and challenges, remember, you're not alone.

Our calendar is open for you. Find the link in the show notes and let's connect. Make sure to hit subscribe to not miss out on strategies that elevate and insights that empower. Together, we'll navigate the future of the industry. I look forward to our next meeting in the upcoming episode.