How Real Estate Agents Can Actually Use AI in Their CRM

Kristi Jencks (00:00)

And that’s just where they’re just using it to write better emails. They’re just using it to ask questions. But we really need to move past that because now you can get AI to do things for you. You can get it to do things like, for instance, the first thing I do when I open up my CRM in the morning, as I say to my cloud in Chrome, I say, who are my top five opportunities? And it goes and pulls my top five opportunities for me right then and there.

Dylan Silver (00:12)

Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Kristi Jencks, is a real estate coach, team leader, and speaker focused on helping agents turn AI from a buzzword into real word execution. Her work centers around integrating AI into the actual day-to-day of agents’ business, from conversations and client experience to follow-up systems and team operations. Instead of just teaching tools, she shows agents how to apply AI directly to buyer and seller representations, objection handling, and workflow optimization.

Her mission is simple, help agents build confidence, consistency, and leverage by actually using AI where it matters most. Kristi thanks for joining us today.

Kristi Jencks (02:37)

Yeah, I’m so excited to be here. Thank you. was fantastic intro.

Dylan Silver (02:41)

Hey, we’re trying. Kristi, I’d like to start off at the top by asking you about a gap that I think a lot of people are seeing where there’s interest and intrigue and people are learning about AI, but then not using it to the fullest of measures to increase their efficiency in business.

Kristi Jencks (03:01)

Yeah, know, it’s interesting. So if we think about where people are at with AI, real estate agents in particular, you know, I started using ChatGPT, I want to say, in 2023, right? And that was just really to chat, right? It was first to market in a way that was easy to adopt. And so in 2026, where I see a lot of real estate agencies, they’re still chatting, right? They’re jumping in, they’re chatting, and maybe they like grok, and maybe they like chat, or maybe they’re in perplexity, or…

And

that’s just where they’re just using it to write better emails. They’re just using it to ask questions. But we really need to move past that because now you can get AI to do things for you. You can get it to do things like, for instance, the first thing I do when I open up my CRM in the morning, as I say to my cloud in Chrome, I say, who are my top five opportunities? And it goes and pulls my top five opportunities for me right then and there.

Dylan Silver (03:45)

Yeah.

Kristi Jencks (03:58)

But then I can actually schedule it to do that and say, every, you know, every Monday at 5am, I’d like you to go a deep dive and audit my CRM, find 30 people that I should be talking more to and I haven’t been, and then deliver that to me in a briefing so that I can set myself up and, know, to have a successful week. So where I see the biggest gap is we’re finally getting agents to chat with AI, but they’re not actually using it to get more work done. They’re not using it to go out and do the things that.

doesn’t have to be done by them. I think that’s where we’ll see the next biggest evolution in 2026 is when they’re going to get comfortable assigning AI to go and do something for them and understanding what is an agentic browser and what is an AI agent and is it coming for my job? Because that’s the other big concern is they’re like, well, if I start using AI agents, then what am I going to do?

Dylan Silver (04:49)

You know, you mentioned people’s concern, but then also them being able to dive into their own CRM, right? And so effectively, this would be like the work of an assistant on some level. Hey, what are my hottest leads?

What’s the process for getting that set up where ⁓ Claude can dive into your CRM? Is that intensive? What’s that look like?

Kristi Jencks (06:02)

I’m really glad that you asked that question. So I always joke and tell people like, I’m just a mom of eight selling real estate here in Phoenix, Arizona. Right. Like I never took a computer programming class. you know, I, I don’t, I couldn’t even type very fast. Like I was the least, I would say, a technology literate person in my, in my household. So the barrier to entry is zero.

If you want Claude to help you identify opportunities in your CRM, all you have to do is install the Chrome browser. That’s it. So I mean, how many of us use Chrome extensions? You go to the Chrome store, you type in Anthropic, it’s going to show up Claude, you install it, and then from there, you open up your CRM, whatever CRM that is, you open it up and you click on your Chrome extension and you tell it what you want. You just have to be curious. There’s no barrier to entry.

The way that you, you just tell it what you want. Like help me find my next opportunity. Who’s someone I should be talking to that I, know, can you find anybody that’s fallen through the cracks? And while it goes and does that, you go make a call.

Dylan Silver (07:09)

Now, when you’re getting this, let’s say you install the Chrome extension, is there like a period where it has to dive into your CRM? I am having difficulty even myself wrapping my head around how it would know in your CRM who the hottest leads are.

Kristi Jencks (07:28)

Oh, it is so cool to watch. Like the first time you do it, you’re probably just going to watch it. And then I always tell people, don’t waste your time watching Claude work, go do something else. But in the beginning you will. So it’s going to follow a natural path. It recognizes that it’s in a follow-up boss, that it’s in a Sierra Interactive or go high level. It knows that environment already and it knows the best sales tools. So what’s it going to do? It’s going to look at who’s been active on the website, hasn’t been called, who’s been saving properties.

Who’s responded to an email? Who’s responded to a drip campaign? So it’s looking at the actions or the leading behaviors that your clients are taking in your CRM. But listen, if you don’t log your calls, right? If you don’t use your CRM, putting AI in your CRM is not going to help you because junk in, junk out. But for the agents who log their calls, have their transactional notes, like their text messages, their emails, it’s going to read through the entire lead profile.

A really interesting example I’ll give you is I was working with an agent this week and we said to it specifically, go find five missed opportunities, right? So she jumps into her CRM, she already knows her hot list. She’s got her hot client, she’s calling, she’s doing what she needs to do. Claude goes out and finds five missed opportunities. One of them happened to be a lead that she called, it was a bad phone number. So she put the tag, you know, bad phone number, that put them on a campaign.

of an email campaign to try to get the phone number. Well, the lead actually responded in the middle of March. She never saw that. So the lead gave her their phone number. Claude went and found that and said, hey, this person responded to your campaign 15 days ago. You should do something about that. And then it will actually, this is probably my favorite part. It’s like, well, people are like, well, why do you need Claude in your CRM? Why would you use AI in your CRM?

Dylan Silver (09:06)

Unbelievable.

Kristi Jencks (09:19)

because it can read the entire history of your lead in a second and then create a tailored custom response based on what it knows about them. So if you told me you were coming to Phoenix in the end of July, it knows that. And so now it responds and says, hey, are you still good for the end of July? I just want to make sure that I’m up to date on your timeframe. That saves the agent the 45 seconds to a minute to go through and read the whole lead history to make the call that they don’t pick up, right?

because everybody’s sending it to voicemail. So Claude actually expedites how much I can get done. While I’m working on my hot leads, I have it working in finding business or even my nurture. We’ve got 30,000 plus people in our CRM.

Dylan Silver (09:47)

Yeah.

Kristi Jencks (10:35)

I can’t touch all of them, but Claude can.

Dylan Silver (10:39)

You know, I think there’s a lot of people who…

to your point, we’ll say, well, what’s the reason for putting Claude into my CRM? I could look through my CRM. But there’s a level, which I’m realizing, of energy efficiency, you know, as a person, where I’m thinking, hey, this is a lot of mental focus that is going to be required for me to dig through this. This may take some time, but this is also hard thought. I’d like to offload that, right? And let me save some of my more, you know, focused thinking for some

Kristi Jencks (10:55)

Mm-hmm.

Decision fatigue.

Dylan Silver (11:13)

some

tasks which may be maybe more important, maybe a larger priority today. Maybe I have something that is an iron in the fire or a heat case that I’ve got to take ⁓ control over and I’ve really got to focus on that. I think AI is this tool that can allow us to select where our attention and our focus really go and offload the rest of it to it.

Kristi Jencks (11:37)

Yeah, it’s the first part to get rid of decision fatigue. Most real estate agents don’t love being in their CRM because it’s overwhelming, right? You got one day of, you you’re going out on appointments, you come back the next day, you’ve got 15 past due reminders, your CRM’s yelling at you because there’s people you haven’t called. And that’s where the efficiency comes into place because you can put out the fires that need to be put out while it goes and hunts for business, right? And that’s, again, go beyond chatting with AI.

Go get it to do things for you.

Dylan Silver (12:08)

Decision fatigue, I’m gonna co-opt that. I really like that term because I can understand on a personal level exactly that’s what I’m going through when I’m using AI in those situations.

For agents who are scaling and they’ve done, let’s say, somewhere between 10 to 20 deals and they’re trying to get beyond that, where can they implement AI in their process scaling, whether that’s themselves being more productive or potentially building a team underneath them?

Kristi Jencks (12:43)

Yeah, so one of the things that we’re doing right now, if you think of where we’re at of the time of shooting this podcast, it’s the beginning of April. So we’re just now into quarter two. This is a great time to go back and reflect on what were the last 12 weeks. So one of the things that I would do right now is I would do a full CRM audit. We work with Claude. So we do an export of our CRM and then we’ve put together a prompt inside of Claude where it goes and gives us the health of our database.

It shows us the weaknesses so then we can use that as a team leader. I’m going to use that with my agents one-on-one. So in the case of one that I did this morning, they have about 9,000 people in their CRM. 82 % of the people in their CRM hadn’t been touched in 90 days. That’s crazy, right? But most importantly, there were 630 leads that were in an active stage. So showing homes, appointment met, appointment set, right?

actively looking that hadn’t been touched in 30 days. So now imagine you can take agent A and you show them the health of their business and say, look, you know, this is your business inside the CRM. Where are those missed opportunities? And then we actually use Claude. So once, once we got the dirty report of, know, how bad the CRM was, don’t worry when you get your report, it’ll, it’ll probably be bad. said, okay, Claude, what should we do about it?

And Claude actually created a game plan in three different buckets, like leads to like right off the bat, don’t lose this revenue, fix this, leads that fell through the cracks, and then leads we should reactivate. It created all three of those campaigns. So when you talk about automations and action plans inside your CRM, Claude created all of those. And once we approved the messaging, it said, do you want me to install this into your CRM? ⁓ Yes, please.

Can I tell you how much money I have spent over my career hiring people to put action plans into my CRM? Because it’s the last thing that I want to do. It took Claude three hours, but it did it. Three customized campaigns based on the health of our database right now. We’ll use that over the next 12 weeks. And I know that we will find more business when they say there’s gold in them, their hills, right? Like your database has gold in it. You’re just not looking for it.

So that would be probably one of the first things I would do.

Dylan Silver (15:44)

So when you say installing,

what’s it installing? Is it installing emails, automations, follow-up tasks? What’s that look like?

Kristi Jencks (15:54)

All of that. So the campaign for this particular client had a series of phone calls, text messages, emails that were all set off in automations. So it actually, you asked a question, I don’t know if I fully explained this earlier, like, what do you mean Claude’s in the CRM and how do I get it in there? It’s just Chrome based. So you’re already logged into your CRM. And when you click on your Claude extension, you’re just saying, hey, I want you to go in here and do something for me.

It already has the knowledge to build automations and campaigns, regardless of the platform that you’re using. I have not come across a platform that it’s been like, I’m sorry, I don’t know how to do this inside this CRM. No, it just figures it out. So that means that, again, don’t sit there and watch it, go do something else, but it will go into the backend of your system, go to the action plan, and then it’ll…

put the email in, two days later, here’s the text message, right? It’ll set off the automation, like, do you wanna set this off when they respond? Do you wanna set this off with a tag? Do you wanna set this off as a specific type of lead flow? It’ll do all of that for you. You could watch it, but you should pick up the phone and make a call.

Dylan Silver (17:02)

Now, you mentioned it’s CRM agnostic. I think that right now there’s a lot of interest in like go high level and go high level white labeling and folks using AI within go high level. It almost seems that you could have go high level engineers for this type of thing. ⁓ How can someone who may be unfamiliar with all of this get started picking their CRM and then

Kristi Jencks (17:12)

Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (17:30)

getting some type of foundation going to where maybe they only had an Excel spreadsheet or, you know, numbers on a piece of paper. What are some foundational base layer things that they can do to get going healthy in a CRM?

Kristi Jencks (17:42)

So you bring up a really good point is that ⁓ I can’t help you if it’s just like this, right? Like you do have to have it, but if it’s in a spreadsheet, it can work with a spreadsheet and all you have to do. So if I didn’t know where to start, right? Your broker probably has a CRM for you, right? And so if you don’t have any money and you don’t have any deals, use what your broker gives you, right? Like that’s where I would start. So check with your brokerage. What CRM can they give you?

And then from there, all you have to do is have a conversation. You say, hey, I’m using KVCore, BoldTrail, Sierra, whatever it is. Like this is the CRM that I’m using. How could you help me? And then it’ll give you ideas. It’ll say, I could go find leads. I could clear tasks for you. I could create campaigns. I could. And then you say, you know what, let’s do number two. And then let it, you it’ll, you can ask it questions. That’s how I would absolutely start.

So you do need some form of a digital footprint for it to be able to help you impact. And then from there, be curious. That’s probably my number one message when it comes to AI is you just need to be curious. Say, I wonder if it could do this. Let me give you a really practical example that I think we’ve all as practicing real estate agents. So I mentioned I’m a mom of eight. I have five children still living at home. And so we cook dinner.

you know, four or five times a week we eat as a family. And all of a sudden it’s time for me to go make dinner for the kids. And I get an email from my client and he’s asking me all these questions about some properties. Now, I was like, I wonder if I could get Claude to go into my MLS, look up these properties and draft the response to his email. And I was like, I’m going to try it. What’s the worst thing that could happen? Right. I didn’t tell him to send the email. I said, just draft it.

Dylan Silver (19:16)

Right.

Kristi Jencks (19:34)

So I tell Claude, I was like, hey, I want you to read through this email, go into the MLS, find the answers to these questions, and then draft the response. Then I went and made dinner, had dinner with my kids when I came back. It was done 90 % accurate. The only reason it wasn’t 100 % is because those answers were not in the MLS. I had to call the agent to get it. But that’s just being curious. Just be curious and see what it can do.

Dylan Silver (19:56)

So

if you were starting over from scratch, you’re brand new, just got a real estate license, what’s the first 30 days look like for you if you had to start all over again from scratch today?

Kristi Jencks (20:11)

⁓ Well, I definitely would focus on the lead measures. Focus on the activities that are going to get you conversations. AI is super cool. I don’t do AI for the sake of AI. I do AI for the sake of getting more done in less time. So don’t go down a rabbit hole and feel like you got to master all of this stuff. The most important thing you could do is put yourself in a situation to have a conversation about real estate. So that’s what I would focus on. And if you don’t have a lot of money, then you’re going to go

do open houses, right? You’re gonna go work your database and do equity reviews. Those are the first two things. Like anybody who owns a home, I’m going to do a market update for them and tell them how much equity they have because that’s my closest way to get to a real estate conversation. ⁓ After that, get into a routine and get into, when I say get into a routine, like you have to figure out how am going to have real estate conversations? Most agents are not having enough conversations. They’re avoiding all the work. They’d rather do social media.

They’d rather learn AI. They’d rather make a video, dance on a countertop, anything but pick up the phone and have a real estate conversation with somebody because it can be uncomfortable because there’s a lot of rejection. So starting over, I would put together a routine. I would figure out four different ways that I could generate leads. One of them is going to be online. One of them is going to be through your center of influence, the people who know, and trust you. You’re probably going to pick some form of a geographic farm or a targeted area that you want to work and become a master at.

Right. And then you’re to pick a fourth one that could be expired. Right. That’s bottom of the funnel. It could be social media. It could be YouTube. It all works when you are consistently putting in the effort to do it. So brand new in real estate. Focus on having those conversations every single day.

Dylan Silver (22:00)

have some real estate conversations. That’s what the first month looks like. We are coming up on time here, Christie, any new projects that you’re working on and then also what’s the best way for folks to in contact with you or your team?

Kristi Jencks (22:13)

Yeah, so ⁓ I have a newsletter called Take It and Run. Every single week, I send an email out to anybody who wants to read it that has one actionable strategy or tactic that they could implement this week. So if you, you know, if that sounds like something you’d be interested in, I’m not selling anything. It’s just my way of helping agents take action. You can find me @KristiJencks on Instagram or Kristijencks.com where you can sign up for my newsletter called Take It and Run.

My whole goal is to help agents stop overthinking and get into action. Like no more excuses, just go take action. And I promise you’ll get closer to your goals than you ever imagined.