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MoxiWorks Technology Startup Welcomes Industry Veterans
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE SEATTLE, March 14, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — MoxiWorks, real estate technology startup, has gone from the little engine that could, to a full-fledged open platform real estate technology solution. In the past five years alone, they’ve quadrupled their revenues, doubled their headcount, and doubled their square footage. To keep the momentum going, MoxiWorks has recently added two high caliber execs to their fold, welcoming Jim Tarte as CFO and Marc Chouaniere as the new VP of Marketing.
MoxiWorks adds to staff
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE The cloud-based Seattle brokerage startup MoxiWorks is expanding with two new hires: Jim Tarte as chief financial officer and Marc Chouaniere as vice president of marketing. CEO York Baur said in a statement, “We’re honored to have industry veterans that are qualified to work anywhere in tech choose us to practice their craft.”
MoxiWorks Technology Startup Welcomes Industry Veterans
March 14, 2018 – Seattle, WA – MoxiWorks, real estate technology startup, has gone from the little engine that could, to a full-fledged open platform real estate technology solution. In the past five years alone, they’ve quadrupled their revenues, doubled their headcount, and doubled their square footage. To keep the momentum going, MoxiWorks has recently added two high caliber execs to their fold, welcoming Jim Tarte as CFO and Marc Chouaniere as the new VP of Marketing.
Chouaniere comes with over 20 years of management experience and a diverse background that includes renowned companies such as Microsoft, Intellectual Ventures, Vertafore and Icertis. He is known for his corporate marketing expertise and brand growth. Tarte is a CPA and a dynamic finance professional with over 25 years of experience in public and private accounting with an emphasis on high tech, e-commerce and real estate companies experiencing high revenue growth. Previous companies include Scout Media, Prepared Response, X10 Wireless, CFO Selections and Moss Adams.
York Baur, CEO of MoxiWorks weighed in on his excitement for the additions to the Moxi family, saying, “We’re honored to have industry veterans that are qualified to work anywhere in tech choose us to practice their craft. Adding two executives of this caliber with the range and depth of experience that they have is not only exciting, but a necessary step for where we want to be tomorrow.”
Five years ago, MoxiWorks had one brokerage client with 6,500 agents. Today, they have 55 brokerage clients with well over than 100,000 agents on their open platform known as the Moxi Cloud. They aim to provide the best-in-class tools and services to make agents more productive, in turn making brokerages more profitable.
“When looking for my next challenge I focused on companies with the combination of strong executive leadership, dynamic culture, and the best of breed in their market. MoxiWorks is all that and more. The passion around doing great work, driving the best for the customer, and wonderful collaboration is infectious. I have never felt more welcomed,” said Marc Chouaniere, now VP of Marketing at MoxiWorks.
“I worked with MoxiWorks from 2013-2014 as a part time CFO contractor and when the opportunity for a full-time position came about at the beginning of 2018, it wasn’t a question of ‘if’, but rather ‘when can I start.’ What made the decision simple was the culture of the company and the team in place driving the success of the product. It is truly exciting to be given the opportunity to scale the organization and drive operational efficiencies.
MoxiWorks now has over 75 employees and is excited for the further growth and goal-hitting in the 2018 year. Baur added, “Doubling our headcount, quadrupling revenue, and getting our own floor in the building was necessary to get us to where we are now. We’ve been able to hit these goals while keeping the startup culture, which is a variable that shouldn’t be overlooked. I’m immensely proud of everyone at MoxiWorks and look forward to another year of growth.”
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For more information on this topic and other press inquiries, please contact Tiana Baur at tiana@moxiworks.com.
Which Data Solutions Best Fit Your Brokerage Business?
By Tiana Baur
Finding the right solution can be tough. Sometimes it feels utterly impossible when you’ve tried tool after tool for your brokerage, only to find that yet again it wasn’t the right fit. The issue is, one solution for one brokerage does not make for the perfect solution at another brokerage. Every business is so unique that a one size fits all approach is begging to crumble and leave your brokerage feeling more fatigue than increased productivity. Getting any flashbacks? There’s a way around it.
We don’t want to be your only brokerage solution. We want to help you build it.
We were founded by a brokerage after years of them feeling the same desperation for the right tools, so we understand where you’re coming from and how detrimental it can be to your business. It’s also why we want to help you find the perfect solution for your brokerage, not tell you what it needs to be. The Moxi Cloud, our open platform, has over 40 tools and services that you can pick and choose from to build the power strip your brokerage has always craved. Think of it as the foundation to build your dream scenario.
Plug-in, plug-out. With an open platform it’s as easy as plugging your new printer in and unplugging your old one.
What’s great about an open platform is you don’t have to toss out all of your tools. Chances are, you like at least one of your tools and you’ve invested precious time and money into it. When you use the Moxi Cloud as your foundation, you can bring over the existing tools you know and love to retain your investment. And if a tool your eyeballing isn’t in our list of 40+ tools and services, we’ll add it to the Moxi Cloud for you! We’ll plug it in.
We don’t force you to do anything that isn’t in the spirit of making your brokerage the best it can be.
A lot of real estate platforms might say that you HAVE to use their websites in order to get their other tools. Not with the Moxi Cloud. And shame on those that force you to do otherwise. We have a website tool too, (and we will probably try to sell you on it because what kind of business would we be if we didn’t?!) but if you have one that your agents love and already know how to use, then maybe you should keep it! In that case, you’re probably looking for a new CRM or interactive presentation tool and maybe you are also in need of a transaction management tool or gifting service – and we can totally help you with that.
The options are endless. But it starts with you.
Change can be scary and bad. It can also be really, really good. MoxiWorks hasn’t gotten to over 60 brokerage clients, over 110,000 agents, and powering the LeadingRE Cloud without doing something right. We genuinely want to help. We want to make your brokerage everything you envision it to be. All we need is a place to start.
Curious what your brokerage solution could look like? Check out the variety of tools and services we have on our open platform and instead of daydreaming about the possibilities, pick up the phone (contact below) and call us! We’re happy to help. Always.
Robot real estate agents, bitcoin, and VR in 2018
By Tiana Baur
The next time you purchase a car, it very well might be a self-driving one. It’s a headline our eyes now only glance at because we’ve seen it so many times and it’s only a matter of time before it comes to fruition. We’re not only okay with that technology, we’re jazzed about it. We’ll all be able to work, read, and relax during our commutes and trust that we’ll get to our destination timely and in one piece. There’s foreshadowing of another technology too. One that would not only upset our industry, but would tear it to pieces, and that’s the tease of robots as real estate agents. It’s a viable conjecture, especially given how technology is now paving the way for the future of our industry. The problem is, the home buying journey has a very different barrier to trust and breaking down that wall will be close to impossible.
People got their heads out of the sand (some didn’t) and we’ve seen rapid change in the past couple of years. VR (virtual reality) tours are a “thing” homebuyers now expect when they’re house hunting. You can even pay your rent with bitcoin (crazy, right?). The one constant that our industry has always had, though, is that homebuyers choose an agent. That agent happens to be in the form of a human. And that will never change. The CEO of Compass even agrees with that.
Sure, some will be interested in a robot agent. We imagine Elon Musk himself would be eager to try out a robot instead of a human agent for his next transaction. The problem is, most of us are not Elon Musk. We have a comfort zone and although we step out of it more often than before, we stick to it when it comes to the biggest financial transaction we do in our entire lifetime. Robots may charge two percent commission instead of the typical five or six, but guess what? Consumers don’t care. Or, they don’t care enough to risk it. If they cared enough about that five or six percent, they’d be listing their homes by themselves or using Instant Offers (which, I’ve never heard of an actual situation where someone did).
Here’s why people choose people:
It’s emotional.
Extremely. Real estate agents serve as a sounding board and a therapist just as much as they do a trusted advisor. People want someone who will answer phone calls at midnight when the home seller is crying and stressed because something unforeseen went wrong last minute during the transaction. They want someone to send a bottle of champagne to congratulate them on their great home sale with a heartfelt note because they got through it together as a team. Robots don’t promise to hold their hand from the very beginning, all the way until they’ve moved and settled into their new home.
Buyers and sellers want to sit across from someone in a coffee shop and talk face-to-face. They want something tangible. They want to shake someone’s hand and know that person actually cares about them and their family and that they have feelings and blood running in their veins like they do theirs. Because that is how emotional a home transaction is.
It’s complex.
First time buyers all the way through home buying veterans use agents. Why? Because there is always a new situation, a new question, a new issue that pops up that they haven’t seen or dealt with before. Maybe it’s an issue with the mortgage company or maybe there was an issue with escrow. Maybe you just want some advice on what color to paint your living room before the house is listed. Whatever it is, the agent is prepared to handle it.
Let’s back up. AI probably has a place in real estate when it comes to scheduling, answering simple questions, etc. But it will never, ever replace the human connection that is found between a trusted advisor and their beloved clients.
Trying Easier to Create Growth
By Matthew Ferrara, renowned Philosopher & Speaker
What will it take to grow your business this year? Will it be more mailings, longer hours or a social media campaign so outrageous, you finally go viral? Let’s hope not, because none of these ideas are desirable or sustainable, something that thousands of salespeople will realize as they beat their goals this year by doing the opposite of such strategies. They won’t try harder to be successful.
They will try easier.
Trying easier is an idea first introduced to me by Dr. Price Pritchett in his book, The Quantum Leap, and it has helped me create consistent and dramatic growth in my business year after year. It works by challenging ourselves to look away from the common-sense approaches to growth – like making uncomfortable prospecting calls or sending out thousands of generic emails – to the uncommon sense of discovering true paths to growth. For real estate professionals, this contrarian mindset puts our focus back on the most productive source of achievement and encouragement: Our sphere of influence.
Any top salesperson will tell you the same story: They tried the harder approach many times. They doubled down on lead generation schemes, bought more marketing and poured money into mailings. They learned snazzy new scripts and six ways to overcome objections to a free lunch. And for a while, they got busier and handled more emails and chased more leads. Some of these even turned into deals, because with huge volumes, some percentage is bound to pan out. But the effort, the costs and the impact on their overall performance eventually wore off.
Today those same top salespeople will tell you the rest of the story: That one day they just happened to call up a past client to talk. Or they caught up with a friend from college. Maybe they sent an email to a good neighbor or had a long chat with someone in their social club. Simple, easy, comfortable conversations with people they already knew and who already knew them. All of which led to the easiest deals they ever did, the simplest presentations they ever made, and the most profitable growth they ever generated.
When you discover that trying easier leads to better results, you should listen to your uncommon sense. Over the life of your career, or just the next few months, you don’t need to perform crazy, risky, uncomfortable techniques to generate growth. Just make a concerted effort to contact a few friends a day. Reach out to them on social media, or send them a text, or leave them a voicemail to meet for lunch. The technique doesn’t matter – do whatever is easier for you – because the key is that you’re reaching out to people who are most likely to engage in a conversation.
You don’t even have to remind them that you’re in real estate or you love referrals, or you’d like to help them again sometime. Just listen to them; talk casually about how your career is unfolding, and perhaps ask them for a little help or advice. As your friends, they’ll do the rest – easily. Decades of experience bear this out: Most career salespeople confirm than 80% of their growth comes from nurturing relationships they already had, as opposed to prospecting to people they didn’t know. More business will be generated by people who already like you, already trust you, and want to see you be successful. That’s what friends do.
Imagine if you started every day with a friendly conversation or an encouraging text message or an inspirational social media post to someone you already know. Imagine if you told your technology to keep your sphere of influence front and center – in your CRM and on your social media feeds – because you wouldn’t hesitate to engage with them. What would it be like not to have to use stale scripts and bland clichés to convince complete strangers to contact you? How much more fulfilling will it be to add so much value to your sphere of influence, they become bursting with enthusiasm to introduce you to even more people? That’s what happens when you get referred by a client you keep in touch with more than a few holidays a year; or your cadre of peers who share your latest positive message on Facebook with the rest of their social network. Even as simple as looking up the name of a for-sale-by-owner on LinkedIn, to see if you might already know somebody who knows them, so your offer to help can be introduced to them rather than hoping your email interrupts their attention.
There’s a lot of growth to be earned in your career. It’s up to you to decide to win it. You can try hard to get strangers to notice you, trust you, and pay you. Maybe you’ll take the challenge and try easier this year instead and strengthen your contacts with the hearts and minds that are happy to see you grow, too.
The number one reason why realtors need to advertise on Facebook
By Maddie Jostol
If you aren’t already, get on Facebook now. Agent ads are what is going to drive your business and doing so on the largest social media platform is key. We understand it seems like a time consuming and overwhelming undertaking, but it doesn’t have to be. Use the right tools that help you work smarter, not harder.
The number one reason you need to advertise on Facebook: exposure. This may seem obvious, but its importance is often overlooked. Growing your sphere is the number one way you’ll be able to sustain and grow your real estate business in such a competitive market. What role do Facebook ads play? To put it simply, you’re getting your personal brand in front of a massive, targeted audience, with the click of a button.
Facebook not only has a huge pool of people, with 1.15 billion daily users, but it’s also the perfect platform for real estate. Facebook is visual, but informative. What’s that mean? Content that is successful on Facebook is eye-catching, yet informative, meaning a beautiful picture of a home (with some information and details on the listing available) does really well on Facebook. Consumers don’t only appreciate it, but they now expect digital marketing to be a part of an agents’ offering. Agent ads on Facebook are a simple way to impress your clients with the ability to show them how many eyes you got on their listings.
We recently expanded our Moxi Marketing suite, adding Advertise Your Services, which allows agents to promote themselves and their business quickly and easily. You just log into your MoxiWorks account, follow three guided steps, and voila! You can have promotions up and running in five minutes.
One concern we commonly hear from agents is that they know they need digital marketing, but they don’t want social media ads linked to their personal account. Use a system like Advertise Your Services, which doesn’t require your personal Facebook account to be linked. In fact, you can run agent ads without having a Facebook account at all.
Promote both yourself and what you do. Agent ads promoting both the service the agent offers and their success (active listings, recently sold listings), demonstrate that agents’ expertise. Gain exposure by marketing yourself – get in front of potential clients and make your name known in your area. Then, each time you win a new listing, boost it on Facebook. Not only will this win over your clients as they’ll be able to see the effort you’re putting in to market their home, but it will also generate leads for you as an active and successful agent.
Here’s the key: don’t wait. Get your marketing ramped up now. Gaining exposure through agent ads is a vital piece of ramping up for the busy season. You want your name to be well-known in your area as those listings start rolling in.
8 Ways to Up Your Hyper-Local Marketing Game
By Maddie Jostol
It’s time to up your game. Competition is heating up and the busy season is right around the corner. What will you do to grow your business this year? We suggest embracing hyper-local marketing. Here’s why…
First of all, what does hyper-local mean? It means localizing your marketing efforts down to a specific neighborhood. Rather than blanketing your efforts over your state or metro area, it’s all about focusing in on those specific neighborhoods that you operate and specialize in.
A key reason for this tactic is to increase the quantity and quality of traffic to your agent website. This means showing up for real estate-related searches for the exact neighborhoods in which you work. This opens up massive lead generation opportunities, being one of the first agents homeowners come across. It also narrows your competition as you only appear alongside other agents that actually work in your area, rather than every other agent in the state. Take it one step further and add consumer data to your marketing strategy (via Moxi Insights, for example). When you have aggregated public data on all of your contacts, you’re now the local expert providing clients with an experience tailored to them. Then the referrals and repeat business follow.
Hyper-local marketing positions you as the local expert for all things real estate. Here are ten ways you can begin upping your marketing game right now.
1. Localize your content
All of your content, but especially your blog content. Your blog is the perfect place to weave in your expertise of the local neighborhood.
Here are a few ideas to get you started:
” Is there a new local restaurant or an old favorite that you go to every Sunday? Write about it.
” Hikes that you’ve done in the area – maybe you can wrap in good homes for families who love the outdoors?
” Review day trips or weekend getaway that you’ve done. What getaways are available for homeowners in the area?
” Talk about the community events you attend or are involved in and why they’re important for the neighborhood.
The list could go on, but the idea is to cover topics that will make you searchable and valuable for your target audience.
2. Get involved
Get involved with neighborhood events such as fundraisers, seasonal festivals, and local markets. Participating in community events exposes you to huge numbers of people, offers a networking opportunity, and positions you as an involved member of the community. Plus, they’re fun. It’s truly a win-win.
Go one step further and consider hosting an event. When you have access to consumer data, it makes it easy to segment your contacts so you can make sure you invite the golfers to the golf tournament, the art lovers to the art walk, and the families to the kickball fundraiser.
3. Localize your social media
Take your social media activity to the next level by adopting the hyper-local method. Share your adventures as an agent in that area, posting photos and videos from recognizable local places. When people see you active in your local area in your updates, you’ll be top of mind when they think about agents in their neighborhood. Be the local real estate expert. Share local homes that are currently on the market, and post updates on your successful sales, placing an emphasis on their location.
4. Bring your sponsorships home
If you like to put marketing dollars towards sponsorships, spend that money wisely. Be intentional about the people, events, or organizations you sponsor, ensuring they’re aligned with your personal brand and are hyper-local. When people see you supporting causes or businesses that are just around the corner, they’ll appreciate you as a contributing member of their community.
Pro tip: similarly to community events mentioned above, leverage consumer data to invite the right people to the right sponsored events.
5. Localize your website & profiles
This one’s a given. Do a quick scan of all your online profiles to ensure they’re up to date. Your website and online profiles are your digital first impression, so make sure you’re putting your best foot forward by communicating your current areas of expertise and showcasing your most recent successes.
6. Offer local real estate trends
Be the source for local real estate trends by offering insights to your sphere. One way to do this is to offer newsletters that include insights on the local real estate market. People love to know what’s happening in their neighborhood. For those of you who use Moxi Engage, try Neighborhood News. Just select the contacts in your sphere who you’d like to receive Neighborhood News and they’ll receive monthly automated newsletters with real estate metrics specific to their area. It puts your sphere marketing on autopilot.
In addition, make sure you include local real estate trends in your CMAs and interactive presentations (this is super easy for those of you who use Moxi Present). These presentations are the perfect opportunity for you to be the expert and showcase your knowledge of the local market.
7. Share success stories
Sharing client success stories will open the door for people to relate to your clients and connect with you. When you close a deal, ask your client about their experience. Don’t only talk about the house, but also talk about the family and why it’s the perfect home for them. Ask them to tell the story of their home buying process, then ask for their permission to share that story (on your blog, social media, etc.) Take photos (and/or videos!) and include a quote from the client. These are stories that people can relate to and share with their sphere, which, in turn, grows your sphere.
Based on the consumer data you have stored in your Moxi Engage account, when you’re working on winning a client over, send them a link to one of your client stories, but subtly make sure it’s one they’d likely relate to, based on your insights.
8. Be a resource for homeowners
You want to be top-of-mind for anything home-related. That might sound odd, but think about it… if you’re well known among homeowners in your area, they’re likely to refer you to their friends, colleagues, and neighbors who mention moving. Be a resource for homeowners by offering preferred vendors that homeowners might be looking for. The fact that you’re a real estate agent means that you also have a lot of connections in the area. Keep a list of the small businesses you support and your preferred contractors, so that when homeowners need to know who they should hire, they come to you.
Take it a step further and tour homes that are on the market in the area and talk (blog) about trends and thoughts. Be the voice of local homeowners and create a stockpile of content on your blog that you can share at any time.
Stay in tune with what’s happening in your area and arm yourself consumer data to bring a hyper-local, exceptional experience to prospects and clients. Bringing hyper-local marketing to your toolbox will take your business to the next level. Need data? Check out Moxi Insights, which instantly syncs public records data (including financial and family insights as well as personal interests, and more) to all of the contacts in your Moxi Engage account.
Questions about Zestimates? Pick up the phone.
By Tiana Baur
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, Zestimates are the bane of being in the real estate business. They’re the unfortunate misfire in a consumer lead industry and that bell can’t be un-wrung. When reports came out that a Zestimate for a home was 700 percent off, it wasn’t surprising; we have learned to expect it.
The thing is, data integrity will be an issue for the foreseeable future. You can get upset about that fact or you can see the data for what it is really is: a starting point. That’s what Zestimates are. No more, no less. The world of real estate might not be able to pretend they have ceased to exist, but as consumers, we can all be smarter about the information they provide to us.
Pick up the phone and call your agent.
Some fun facts for you: The median error rate of Zestimates is five percent. That may sound menial as a percentage, but when computed with the median home sales prices, it can be tens of thousands of dollars lost to the bottom line, and that’s if you’re lucky. According to the Washington Post, “Zestimates are within 5 percent of the sale price 53.9 percent of the time, within 10 percent 75.6 percent of the time and within 20 percent 89.7 percent of the time, Zillow claims.” And people wonder why agents bristle when this topic is brought up.
Agents, of course, have access to information that no algorithm can. Zestimates can’t know what makes a home and neighborhood awesome. So, wouldn’t it be nice to find out what your home is really worth? A thoughtful, agent expertise-driven valuation is the only way to truly understand what your home is worth.
Pick up the phone and call your agent.
It’s not a revolutionary idea, just one that is way undervalued and underutilized. As you can imagine, MoxiWorks CEO, York Baur, had some words on the topic this morning, saying, “We have more than 100,000 agents that can provide you with a thoughtful hand-built evaluation for your home. If you don’t have access to one of those 100,000 agents, find someone that does.” He went on to say that, “As a man of tech, I don’t say this lightly: there is no replacement for hyper-local knowledge that your agent, your trusted advisor can give you. No algorithm will ever replace that vital, human piece of the puzzle.”
That home evaluation tool is called Moxi Present and you’ve likely seen a presentation built on it before. There were over 300,000 Moxi Present interactive presentations that went out in 2017. They showcase what the Zestimate was on all selected comparable properties to your current listing versus what they actually sold for. Want more info?
Pick up the phone and call your agent.
Get Sh*t Done with Moxi Marketing
The Moxi Marketing suite has evolved just in time for the ramp-up to busy season. With Advertise Your Listing, Moxi Insights, and Moxi Publish, now comes a new update so agents can advertise themselves 24/7. With over two billion active people on Facebook, we felt it was important, no, vital for agents to showcase themselves and their business on the channel in every way possible. If you do the math, that two billion is over a third of the entire population of the world. Not only that, but 95.8% of social media marketers say the ever-growing channel delivers the best ROI of them all. So, it’s easy for you to see where our zeal for this update comes from.
Now you can advertise more than just your listings. You can advertise yourself.
Advertise Your Services is the latest installment of the Moxi Marketing suite and it has all the juicy goodness that is Advertise Your Listings, only this time it’s for agents’ personal brand and business. Like previously done on our Facebook Ads, you can link to your personal Facebook Business Page, and if you don’t have one you can still use it! Even if you have no personal profile, even if you never ever want to have to type facebook.com into your navigation bar, you can use Advertise Your Services (and Advertise Your Listing). There is literally no barrier to entry on this.
Win more listings, promote your brand, and most importantly: spend less time doing it.
Business is slow right now. There’s not a ton of inventory and everyone is gearing up for new listings come Spring. What if you could press a button and get more listings than ever before? Now you can. Advertise Your Services puts yourself and your brand out there to the world in less than five minutes, in only a few short steps. That’s it. We handle every ounce of the heavy lifting.
Show your competition who’s boss.
Your resolutions are calling and it’s the season to get that shit done. Your goals this year are higher than last (and if they’re not, they should be). The only ways to reach these new goals are to try things you never have and be more productive while you do it. Advertise Your Listings checks both these boxes, and is one more thing you’re doing that your competition likely isn’t.
Get the lead with Facebook Ads, win the listing with public data.
When these new leads come in from Advertise Your Services, you can add some super-charged magic fairy dust onto them with Moxi Insights – another key aspect to Moxi Marketing. Insights is an easy way to impress your prospects and clients, making you stand out far above the rest. With unique public data pulled into your CRM, you’ll know everything you need to in order to win the listing. In fact, here’s 100 ways to impress everyone with Moxi Insights.
The newest tool in Moxi Marketing is now at your footsteps.
No matter which products you use from MoxiWorks, your brokerage has access to all of Moxi Marketing, which means you have access to Advertise Your Services! If it’s not turned on for your company, contact your Account Manager and if you’re an agent, you can go here.
Find out more about Advertise Your Services and the rest of the Moxi Marketing suite here.
