Every agent has access to AI at this point. What separates them is what they’re using it for.
Shilo CEO Justin Benson joined the Knowledge Brokers Podcast last week to review findings from a Fyxer report: 90% of agents use AI but only 35% call it helpful.
Some are chasing time savings, hoping for the shortcut that finally gives them their evenings back. Others are using the exact same tools to produce noticeably better work, and that second camp is the one actually pulling ahead in market share.
Benson says this difference in approach to AI, or in what agents expect to gain from it, is what’s about to explode the market share gap between the two camps.
Why This Divide Is Only Going to Grow
Benson made this point directly during a discussion about how agents and teams are actually using AI day to day, pushing back on the common framing of AI as a pure timesaver.
“We’re in a competitive landscape and the companies that are using AI as a timesaver, as you put it, aren’t going to do it to save time and then go lay on the beach…They’re going to use it… to increase productivity, and they’re going to keep working with those that time-saved. This is why the gap between market share is just going to grow exponentially over the next couple of years.”
The teams Benson is describing put the time AI frees up back into more selling activity, and reinvesting it consistently is what compounds into a market share advantage over time.
The Real Value of AI Is Better Work
Lisa Chinatti sees the same divide from inside her own team. She still writes a memo before every meeting, and using AI to help draft it still takes her about two hours, the same amount of time it would take to write it from scratch.
She spends the same two hours either way. What she produces changes depending on which version she uses.
“Now, I could write it all without going back and forth on edits with AI….The quality of me doing it 100% on my own is subpar versus using all of the features that I’m able to use and how I’m constructing it with AI.”
Byron Lazine made a similar point:
“No, AI is not going to save you time. It should be, though, 100% of people that are saying, ‘Yeah, AI is working for my business, it’s making my stuff better’… Are they saving time? No. They’re still working 50-60 hours a week. They’re more efficient and effective with their time.”
Benson is describing exactly that kind of difference, playing out over the length of a single two-hour task.
The Teams Already Ahead Are Proving It With Data
Tom Toole’s office ran the numbers on their own agents recently, looking for the line between agents closing deals efficiently and agents who aren’t.
Fifteen showings for every executed contract turned out to be the benchmark for a strong agent. Everyone above that ratio shared one thing in common: they weren’t showing up to roleplay or skill-building sessions.
Benson sees the flip side of that pattern inside Shilo’s own coaching data. Agents are practicing on their own time, at hours no manager would ever schedule for them.
“Those productivity gains again, they’re coming. We’re seeing it with the coaching one-on-one feature, scaling the part that is the unscalable part. And seeing these agents do one-on-ones with Shilo at freaking 1:00 a.m. in the morning. Like 43% of them have happened outside of business hours. So it’s not a lack of desire, and I’m excited to see where all of that goes.”
What that timing really shows is desire meeting access. When coaching is available any time, agents use it, whatever hour that turns out to be.
Getting In Early Is the Advantage
Benson has been through this cycle before. Early in his career, he watched agents like Gary Ashton build a business around search engine optimization (SEO) years before most of the industry took it seriously.
Ashton started using SEO long before it became mainstream, and that head start is a large part of why his name became synonymous with it.
Benson said he’s followed that same instinct with AI, going back to the earliest tools available.
“The benefit of starting now is that you get to evolve with the technology and you actually understand it more at a core level, right? I started using this stuff on the very first API model that OpenAI ever put out. And so I’ve grown and matured as the industry’s matured, and I just understand it at a deep level.”
The technology itself is still young, roughly two years old in its current form. Agents using it every day to improve the work they do are already seeing the upside.
Same number of hours in the day. The difference is how they spend them.
Benson will go deeper on this at BAM BBQ, our free virtual summer event, alongside Mickey Newberger, Realtor.com’s chief consumer marketing officer. The two will walk through what consumers are actually asking AI tools when they search for a home, and what that means for how agents should position themselves in front of buyers and sellers right now.
Check out the event page for the full speaker line-up and save your spot while you still can.
