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Defend Your Brokerage Fortress: The Solution to Margin Compression
By York Baur, CEO of MoxiWorks
As we all know too well, there’s a feeling of impending doom when it comes to the future of dollars retained by the brokerage. Brokerage margin compression has been accelerating in the past few years especially, but no one seems to be discussing legit ways to battle it. And last I checked, hope is not a strategy.
A few Moxians attended the Gathering of Eagles event that REAL Trends puts on every year, and here’s what the retained company dollar average for brokerages across the nation looks like over the past several years:
The brokerage dollar is ever-shrinking. Some may argue it isn’t a big deal since home prices have gone up, compensating on a raw dollar basis. That only works in a market with rising prices, and we all know that merry-go-round will stop at some point. We need a real plan for dealing with margin compression – it’s a core problem our industry faces. Don’t forgot that 25% of the RealTrends 500 didn’t make it through the last recession. Do you want to be part of that 25% when the next one hits?
In the face of all of this the “disrupters,” as they like to call themselves, are putting massive pressure on the need for the brokerage to have a technology offering to their agents and technology isn’t cheap. Even as a technology guy myself, I am not shy to admit it. So, how do you thread that needle? How do you buy the best technology, so you can have the best offering to agents in a world where you, the brokerage, don’t have margin to work with?
To preface this, I absolutely stand by my original viewpoint that the traditional brokerage, the impenetrable fortress that it is, has the most valuable asset that exists in the entire industry: relationships with agents, and the agents with the consumers in their sphere of influence.
With that said, here are what I believe to be viable elements of a plan for traditional brokerages to combat margin compression.
Open Platform – Not a shocker
You all knew this was coming. I won’t dive deep, but future-proofing can easily be done by getting your brokerage on a proper open platform that allows you to plug in new tools and unplug old tools just like power strip. Having an open platform means retaining your current technology investments and maintaining a foundation for all the technology changes to come in the future. And don’t be scared by claims that the disruptors will build better technology themselves internally. Over $1B has been invested in real estate tech each of the last two years, so no one company has a lock on building the best technology in every category. Having an open platform that allows you to take advantage of the best of real estate tech today and in the future trumps a “we can build it all” approach every time.
Say it with me: Recruiting, retention, AND productivity
Pick great tools that actually drive agent productivity as well as recruiting as retention. Industry wide, if you ask any broker, “what’s the most important thing in your business?” they’ll say to recruit and retain. But that’s wrong. It should be recruiting, retention, and productivity. If you focus on productivity as a major pillar of your business, it amplifies your recruiting and retention, and it’s where you actually make money. Having non-productive agents at your brokerage doesn’t make you money, it costs you money.
Many brokerages chase the shiny object, so it enhances their recruiting and retention efforts, but it doesn’t move the needle. To that point, it’s imperative to eliminate the shiny objects and steer clear of the temptation of them. They will end up costing you more than you ever thought.
Technology is NOT a single expense line item
Don’t think of technology as a single expense. Think of technology and marketing expenses together, because the two worlds have fundamentally blended. Digital marketing is inherently fused with technology and the other way around. As proof of this, an ongoing trend across all industries is the blending of the CTO and CMO roles.
Technology is not a necessary evil expense item, but as something to be used along with other marketing activities as a combined marketing and technology spend. What form of marketing these days doesn’t involve technology? Almost none.
And while I’m on my soapbox, can we please stop talking about expenses and start talking about investments? Every decision you make to spend money on something should be thought of as an investment. That means that you should expect to have a return on your investment, have a plan for making your investment work, and measuring your return over time. For example, in our case we check agent performance with our tools – agents in brokerages that are our customers do 40% more transactions when they use our stuff. That’s real productivity, and real top-line growth. Make investments and grow your business versus “managing expenses” like an accountant.
Trying to save your way to prosperity almost never works, so get on with a proactive plan to invest in a technology platform and tools to boost agent productivity. Not only will your top line grow, but you’ll be able to better stand your ground in negotiations with agents over their split, because they’ll understand that you’re helping them grow their business vs. just offering them a desk and the ability to rent your brand.
My call to action: have a plan. Focus on agent productivity. Have goals and measure yourself to them. Use technology and digital marketing to support your plan. The great news is that the traditional brokerage fortress is very hard to penetrate. But even the most impenetrable fortress can get sacked if the King doesn’t have a plan for defending it.
10 Must-Read Ideas for Your Next Open House
By Tiana Baur, Content Marketing Manager
It’s open house season! It’s exciting and traumatizing all at once. So much to do, so many shoe covers to put on. It also means it’s time to think outside the box when drawing people in and forcing them to stay. And by forcing we don’t mean tying them to the chairs, that would be illegal. We mean enticing them to stay so well they’ll want to buy the home and stay forever.
Here are 10 wacky, awesome ideas for your next open house:
One. Speaking of shoe covers… I think we’re all tired of bending over to pick them up. Think about not keeping them in a little basket on the floor and instead putting them in a nice display on a table. Sore backs everywhere will thank you.
You know what would be even better? Custom shoe covers. We did a quick search and yes, it’s possible to get some booties with your logo and everything. It’s not groundbreaking, but hey, everything makes a difference.
Two. While we’re on the topic, get some cookies with your logo and maybe even your phone number on it! It’ll look so good, open house guests will never want to eat ‘em. Get them individually wrapped so everyone can easily take one with them and have your number on hand. We recommend this place. We’ve used them before and they’re delicious. In fact, we’re kind of obsessed! Your open house guests will be too.
Three. Fill the bath (if there is one) with bubble bath, some rose petals, and champagne flutes filled on the side. I don’t care who you are or what kind of house you’re looking at, everyone loves to kick back and relax. Help them imagine themselves in the home by staging some relaxing spots.
Four. If it has a beautiful garden, pick a few flowers and put them in the entryway and kitchen. Put a cute little sign showing that they’re from their future garden. It’s all about the vibes, people!
Five. Buy some poo-pourri. Yes, you read that right. It’s not very expensive and it could save your open house from a nightmare situation. An open house is a great time, especially when it’s packed with people constantly coming and going. It turns into a bad time when someone decides to go, and the paint starts peeling off the walls. Avoid at all costs. Invest in this.
Six. Buy a cake. Buy a huge, delicious cake, with the listing photo as the top. It’s possible, pretty much every bakery can put an image on one. It’ll make your guests feel like they’re already celebrating (even though you’re about to get them into a bidding war and get over the asking price for your clients – ayoo!)
Seven. I’m going to make this one short and sweet. If it’s a family home with a backyard, buy a bubble maker and stick it back there. Kids love that stuff. Adults do too, but we’re not allowed to admit it.
Eight. Pay an ice cream truck to stop by during the open house’s hours. It will draw major attention and have people running from all directions. Alternatively, a food truck works great too! There will be more options if you go that route, but it just depends who your target audience is.
Nine. Have everyone enter their names into a raffle that is drawn the following week. Don’t make the raffle lame, though. We’re talking a very, very nice bottle of wine, a $100 Amazon gift card, maybe even an iWatch! It’ll keep you top of mind for the following days, which means the house you’re selling will be too.
Ten. Last but not least, if you’re looking to really show your guests who the real estate boss it, get a valet. Obviously if there’s plentiful parking, it’s not an issue, but there are lots of neighborhoods and situations where parking can be rough. Simply hire a valet to wow them, but also make it easier to get to the house itself.
There you have it. We hope you try at least one of these at your next open house! And that this selling season is bountiful for your real estate business. Just don’t forget the poo-pourri.
News: MoxiWorks Launches Recruiting Game Changer Called Moxi Talent
MoxiWorks Launches Recruiting Game Changer Called Moxi Talent
June 5, 2018 – Seattle, WA – MoxiWorks, the Seattle-based real estate technology startup, has recently launched a data-driven recruiting system for brokerages. Named Moxi Talent, it uniquely combines agent performance data, highly automated and intelligent CRM capability, and a proven recruiting process co-developed with some of the industry’s most successful brokerages. The combination allows any manager or recruiter to increase their effectiveness in recruiting and retaining agents.
Having done a soft launch at the beginning of 2018, they already had clients pining for Moxi Talent before the product was finished. With a total of eight brokerages on their beta version – representing the top regional brokerages in the nation – they now have released the full version of Moxi Talent, available to all brokerages.
When asked what inspired the company to create such a comprehensive system, York Baur, CEO of MoxiWorks said, “Brokers wake up every day thinking about how to attract and retain the most talented agents, and the competition out there is fierce, particularly with all the disruptors throwing cash around. Brokers told us that they need a better tool to help their managers find the agents that best fit their needs, the culture of the brokerage, and then give the manager a system for successfully recruiting them.” Moxi Talent differs from other recruiting tools because it not only focuses on attracting new agents, but agents already at the brokerage as well. “The brokers we talked to also said that they needed to help their managers re-recruit their existing agents every day, since turnover is one of the most expensive things in a brokerage,” said Baur.
Moxi Talent shows powerful data of an agent’s ability to perform. Once a candidate has been identified, they are then added to the recruiter or office manager’s pipeline as recommendations. From there, recruiters and managers can see the agent’s performance, and even compare them to the successful agents in their organization. Moxi Talent provides detailed action plans, making sense of complex performance data, helping the recruiting team take the right steps to connect and win in the recruiting game.
Georgia Perez, VP of Business Development and Product Evangelism at MoxiWorks said, “In my more than 10 years as a Real Estate Agent and Manager, I haven’t seen a system that takes the guesswork out of massive amounts of data on performance and productivity, and provides an easy-to-follow plan to recruit and retain the top talent.” Perez still holds her real estate license and played an active role in the development of the Moxi Talent system. “Before Moxi Talent, I would have been staring at a spreadsheet full of data and trying to figure out what to take actions on. Now, I simply tell Moxi Talent how I want to increase sides, sales volume, and geographic market coverage, and it does the heavy lifting to point me in the right direction.”
Moxi Talent provides daily to-do’s, allowing recruiters and managers to efficiently and effectively reach the agents they need to and quickly narrows search criteria for highly-valued recruits. All of this saves time and energy, keeping them on task, and guiding them through the pipeline, resulting in more hires. Which, in turn maintains focus on business goals for the brokerage and provides better productivity, resulting in better ROI.
Baur added, “When it comes to profitability, three things matter to brokerages: agent recruiting, retention and productivity. We’ve always had great product for retention and productivity, and now we have a great answer for brokers’ recruiting needs too.”
About MoxiWorks
MoxiWorks is a comprehensive open platform system for large residential real estate brokerages that serves over 110,00 agents and 55 brokerages nationwide. MoxiWorks’ integrated tools are centered on sphere methodology that drastically increases agents’ repeat and referral business by 40%, while lowering overall technology, training, and support costs for the brokerage. Named one of the 10 Best Cloud Solution Providers of 2018 by Industry Era, the open platform known as the Moxi Cloud has tools from more than 40 partners that plug and play to create unique brokerage solutions. More information at moxiworks.com.
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For more information on this topic and other press inquiries, please contact Tiana Baur at tiana@moxiworks.com.
3 Things You Should Never Do When Recruiting New Agents
By Tiana Baur, Content Marketing Manager
Recruiting new agents is the main thing every broker and real estate manager thinks of every hour of the day. It’s the constant, never ending job that is only getting more challenging. I like to think of it as a treadmill that gets progressively faster and faster, forcing some people to step off and others to find the will to keep going within. It’s intense. It’s why we created an entire recruiting system to make it easier on managers and recruiters alike. But while the technology drastically helps, there’s still the interviews and the interactions that are human-based and can still be butchered if one forgets to be on their best behavior.
So, with that in mind, we put together a short list of things you should never, EVER do when recruiting new agents. If you do, it’ll surely come back to bite you.
1. Never bad mouth your existing or past agents.
You’re recruiting new agents for a reason. You have numbers to hit and you’re trying to grow your office. It goes without saying that you need to pump some steroids in to get things done because what is currently going on at your brokerage isn’t cutting it. It’s implied. You don’t need to trash talk your current agents or even past agents.
Putting down your existing and/or past agents not only makes you look bad as the hiring manager, chances are, the top talent you’re trying to recruit will sense an unhealthy work culture and the possibility of being one of those agents you’re currently belittling.
Your agents and the relationships with them are your most valuable source not only for your existing business, but for recruiting new talent as well. Whether it’s talent from their personal connections or them having represented your brand in a great light in the community, they are your golden ticket to finding solid agents. Don’t make enemies out of them.
2. Never promise what you don’t have.
Every agent is looking for the brokerage that will provide them with the tools and technology they need to succeed. With companies like Compass and new initiatives like the Keller Cloud floating around, everyone else needs a solid technology offering, not just some shiny objects to throw about. However, don’t let the pressure of technology offerings cause you to lie and over-promise what you have to give them.
Doing this might get them signed and through the door, but you can bet they won’t last long and your retention stats will take a nosedive. Getting agents to join your brokerage is one thing, keeping them there is another. Help them help you by giving them reasons to trust your business. No one likes having a revolving door.
3. Never bring up politics, controversial topics, flirt, or otherwise cross the PC boundary.
The eighties might as well be a century ago because the times we’re living in are drastically different. For better or worse, we all have to be on our best behavior. People get offended. Others cross the line by a mile. What was once flattering, is now uncomfortable and sometimes even a CLM (a career limiting move). Some topics are also very much illegal, but that’s another issue.
When you’ve only just met someone, you have no way to know their background, things that have happened in their life, how they feel about certain issues, etc. Typically, all you know is who they are on paper. What their sales volume is, when they got their license, their real estate accomplishments and history, and what they put publicly on their websites and social media. Stick to the task at hand and focus on the real estate subjects.
Real estate is a weird industry that sometimes feels like it’s stuck in a time capsule and everything else going on in other industries barely touches it. Behaving yourself is not one of those things. Don’t say something you think is witty about the way someone looks or call someone “sweetie” that you’ve only just met. For the love of everything sacred about real estate, just don’t do it!
Facebook Best Practices 2018
By Andrew Eberting, Senior Marketing Manager
As seen in Mile 62 eMagazine.
Keeping pace with social media can feel exciting and overwhelming at the same time. Why does it seem like some posts get a lot of responses from people, and others not so much?
Trying to figure out the levers that generate these higher levels of engagement from your followers doesn’t need to feel like learning a foreign language; especially if you know how the in ands outs of how Facebook ranks your posts.
Show Don’t Tell
Facebook favors certain types of posts over others. Specifically, Facebook wants you to show it content vs. talking at it.
When you post something on Facebook it typically falls into one of three buckets:
- Photos and videos
- Status Updates
- Links/URLs
Facebook wants you to post more videos and pictures over everything else. Why? Videos and photos are more captivating which leads to encouraging your friends/family/followers to actively engage with your posts vs. passively engage (more on this later.)
Think of posting on Facebook like telling a story; in order to tell a great story, you need to capture the imagination of those in the audience. The quickest way to accomplishing this goal is with pictures and videos.
Interactions 101: Active Engagement vs. Passive Engagement
Facebook has two categories for the types of engagement any post can fall into: Active or Passive Engagement. Active engagement is where a person takes an action with a given post and can be potentially seen by the people in their network. Passive engagement is where a person takes an action with a post, but their followers won’t be knowledgeable of or be able to see it.
Finding the Sweet Spot
One of the things we’re all guilty of is checking ‘how many likes’ or ‘shares’ something received. Fun fact: Facebook is also waiting to see how many times people actively engage with your content. When one of your content-rich (photos/videos) posts receives a lot of active engagement, Facebook interprets that post as being important and possibly interesting for your follower’s followers.
The more your direct followers engage, the more Facebook prioritizes or ‘rewards’ your post as being important, thus exposing it to the networks of your followers, and their followers, etc.
Be Genuine: Tell Stories and Share Insights, Not Engagement Bait
Now that you know how to stack-rank your content in Facebook for your posts, don’t set yourself backwards by creating engagement bait.
What is engagement bait? These types of posts are where you, a Facebook page, or someone else, in an attempt to get posts viewed by more people, either askes to have people tagged in or comment with a specific keyword (yes, being the most commonly used one) to said post.
Facebook strongly dislikes these types of posts. Why? Because the type of engagement it generates is viewed as being artificial, or disingenuous. When Facebook identifies these types of posts in newsfeeds, the person or page posting can see a demotion in all of their future posts.
Recruiting 101: What Agents Really Want
By Maddie Jostol, Marketing Manager
With new brokerages entering the market with aggressive recruiting strategies, brokerages are universally placing a lot more weight on the importance of recruiting.
It’s easy to spend a lot of cash winning over agents, but we believe the key is to focus on what really matters. What do agents actually want? As you review this list, you’ll notice we don’t talk about commission splits. You already know commission splits are important to agents and we’re sure you’re doing what you can to offer competitive compensation. Here are some other things that agents are looking for when comparing brokerages.
Tech Stack
Agents want to join an organization that values technology. A robust, established tech stack shows agents that your brokerage is forward-thinking and supportive of its team. We think you’ll find that tech-savvy agents who embrace the systems you’ve hand-selected for them will likely be some of your most successful. It also fosters a culture of efficiency – technology-focused agents will push each other to streamline their businesses
Coming into a brokerage with a leading tech stack means they don’t need to research and train themselves on their own set of tools. You already have a stack up and running, ready for them to utilize.
Training
Training, support, and resources will prove to your agents that you care about their success and professional development. On top of that, helping them to improve themselves as real estate professionals makes a difference on your bottom line, which is always a win. Agents are looking to work for an organization that offers meaningful training and useful, manageable resources.
Before you get overwhelmed, remember that you don’t have to do all of this yourself. Look at your tech tools and vendors – many of them already offer free training regularly. Just promote those to your agents. Make training resources known and easily available to them so they can get themselves training on exactly what they need, when they need it.
Analytics
Access to meaningful data can make all the difference. Agents want data that shows how their business is performing. Look through your existing tech tools to see if your agents have a snapshot of their business anywhere. What tools are encouraging their annual goal-setting? Which ones are giving them necessary visibility into their business’ performance to ensure they hold themselves accountable and meet these goals?
The agents looking for this is typically focused on optimization, always looking to improve their business. These are the agents you want on your team.
Community
Even as independent contractors, agents see the value in having a team, which means building a strong community holds a good deal of weight. Focus on building a community that is unique to the people in your office. Valuing diversity and inclusion is vital in ensuring agents feel safe and respected in your community.
When agents feel like they’re a part of a community, they have people who they can trust, rely on, get encouragement from, and learn from. This leads to higher collaboration in closing more sales, as well as higher adoption of technology tools, and more recruiting referrals for new agents.
Tip: When a new agent starts, pair them with someone in the office who has a similar sales history or sales style as them. Send them out to coffee or lunch together so they can begin to build rapport and trust. Having a go-to team member could make all the difference as they settle into your community.
Common Values
Make core values part of your recruiting process. Outline what values your brokerage and office have. Look for those values in new agents and be transparent about them. Agents who resonate with them will be attracted, and even better, they’ll stick around.
A Warm Welcome
Don’t underestimate the importance of an agent’s first two weeks with your brokerage. It’s all about the little things. If an agent feels welcome when they first join your team, they’ll start off on the right foot. You just recruited them, now start the retention process right away. Make them feel like they’re part of the team and they’ll settle in for the long run.
Everything on this list is about the agent and their success. If your brokerage brand is well-recognized and well-regarded, that box will be checked and agents will start looking at what their day-to-day life will be like at your brokerage. According to NAR, the average agent stays at their current brokerage for just four years. This means you have relatively little time to win an agent over and keep them on your team. Make sure you’re taking actions that truly matter.
Effective recruiting practices and impactful retention strategies are important for the culture of your brokerage, its reputation, and of course, your bottom line.
Need to improve and automate the recruiting process at your brokerage? Learn more about Moxi Talent here.
Give Your Agents the Gift of Easier Marketing
By Maddie Jostol, Marketing Manager
Agents are looking for support from their brokerage to help them grow their business. Brokerages have to weigh where their support is most needed and best utilized. The competition to recruit agents is heating up, which puts pressure on your brokerage to deliver on agent’s needs. You strive to offer your agents best-in-class tools and services but want to ensure your investments will be impactful. We recommend giving your agents the gift of easy marketing.
Marketing can be daunting for agents. After all, marketing has the unfortunate reputation of being time-consuming and expensive, both of which agents rightfully try to avoid. Meanwhile, consumer expectations are rising, and home sellers want to know that their agent is a competent and motivated marketer. Agents are pressured to market listings in a way that meets client expectations, without necessarily having the expertise or bandwidth.
This is where your brokerage comes in. When vetting marketing tools for your agents, focus on these three things:
Ease of use – As with any technology, it’s all about convenience. If it isn’t easy to use, it won’t get used at all. In addition, you don’t want to have to require extensive training with the onboarding of a new system. Choose marketing tools that simplify complicated marketing efforts for your clients.
Time-savings – As independent contractors, real estate agents are running their own business, in a way. This means they’re juggling a lot on a day-to-day basis, so any tool that is going to save them time is going to be a winning solution.
Integration – The fewer login credentials they have to remember and the less data they have to manually enter, the better. If you choose marketing tools that are integrated with systems your agents already use, adoption will be much higher. With adoption comes home sales and happy clients.
We’re operating in a market where recruiting and retaining agents is increasingly difficult. Brokerages are offering everything from over-the-top perks to six-figure signing bonuses. How do you compete with that?
What it comes down to is the support you offer an agent in running their business. Agents are busy – generally, they feel overwhelmed by their to-do list and discover it’s difficult to find a good work/life balance. If you can find more time for your agents, you’ve hit a goldmine. When this happens, their able to grow their business, contributing to their own success as well as your bottom line.
Interested in learning more about the Moxi Marketing suite? Check it out here.
Moxi Products: Why We Thrive on Agent Feedback
By Connor Baldwin, Technical Product Manager
As seen in Mile 62 eMagazine.
Our goal as an organization is to make agents’ lives easier, and brokerages more profitable with our technology solutions. How could we possibly do that? There is such a wide variety of agents and brokerages in this industry, we could easily spend our entire year’s budget on user research and we still might not even get it right. So, you know what we do? We listen.
How do we listen?
We do it actively. We take cues from the people who give us feedback and dig deeper into that topic they are discussing with us. Examples of this are in abundance at MoxiWorks. Our Customer Support team, a vital part of our company, do this with our end-user’s every single day. They receive feedback through a variety of mediums and immerse themselves into what our biggest user group is saying.
Then we have our Account Management team – they have calls with all of our clients every single week and are always ready when something urgent comes up. They talk to some of the most important people at our client brokerages; the people who know and care about their agents as if they were family. We also have our Sales team talking to prospective clients to understand their potential needs, along with our Executives talking to partners and industry experts, and it all ends up back with us.
Our team (Product), then receives this expertly mined information and we analyze it. Once it has been analyzed, then we decide to spend some money and do user research on the things that this feedback has helped us deem as meaningful. This usually involves interviewing users and running usability tests. These are both time consuming, but they help validate our assumptions, give us new insight into the lives of our users, contribute to building out of extensive user personas, and help us address our user’s true pain points. These two exercises are essential to getting it right the first time, which saves everyone time and money.
Why do we listen?
This is an even longer list, so I will just talk about my three favorites.
One – we listen because we want to build brand loyalty. We want to strengthen our relationships with our client’s operators all the way down to their agents. It is important to us that they feel like they have a say in the evolution of our products. This shows them we truly value their opinions and it helps us grow with our clients. Hey, and maybe they will recommend us to a friend.
Two – we listen because we flat out want to build better products. These are our users, they know the products really well and they are associated with real world use cases. The information we get from them allows us to make valuable changes to our existing products and build badass new ones. This will help retain those who are near and dear to us, as well as add more folks to the Moxi family.
Three – we listen because we want to learn market trends. I know what you’re thinking, the third one is a little more specific than the first two. Cut me some slack though, I’m on the product team. The feedback we get from our various sources all has a ring to it. It signifies change in the industry. A basic example of this could be, “We want you to add/change this feature because there was a shift in the industry. Its original use is no longer helping our agents increase their productivity and our brokerages bottom line.” Ok, that was a poor example, but you get what I’m saying. All this feedback we receive paints a huge picture of the real estate industry and its volatility, and that is awesome, because that picture helps us not only plan for the future but drives us to innovate.
There is a phrase that is thrown around quite a bit in our company. It goes, “What got us here, won’t get us there.” This is especially relevant to gathering feedback from our users. Where simply letting feedback roll in from agents and higher-ups may have done the job two years ago, that is not the case now. In order for us to continuously improve our products we must find new ways to gather feedback. We must educate ourselves on interviewing users and finding the root of their problem. It is critical to set our users up to give constructive, contextual feedback. We would only be doing a disservice to our users and ourselves if we just stuck with the “Have Feedback?” prompt in product and called it a day.
The Top 3 Mistakes Agents Are Making and How to Avoid Them
By Melissa Anderson, Tech Support Team Leader
As seen in Mile 62 eMagazine.
We want you to be successful in your business. That’s why we design world class tools that will help you be productive and do what you do best. Having the tools is one thing but using them effectively to help your business is another. We’ve seen these three mistakes creep up on agents, and we want to let you know how you can avoid them.
1. Mistake: Not marketing to the people you already know
“80% of your company’s future revenue will come from just 20% of your existing customers.” (Forbes). Agents are always looking for new leads. While some leads may turn into a sale, it’s important to focus on the people already in your sphere. Forgetting to foster the relationships you already have is a huge mistake. Let me set the scene. You meet a friend for coffee and they tell you they recently bought a house. You didn’t even know they were looking and they are surprised to learn you are still in the business! Does this sound familiar? Don’t let this be your story. You want to be top of mind when your friends, family and acquaintances need someone to help them buy or sell their home.
SOLUTION: In a matter of a few clicks, you can set up your whole sphere to receive a monthly market snapshot with Neighborhood News. Tailor it to their specific zip code and once you set it, it will be a regular monthly touch point, with very little effort on your part. Make sure you don’t get overlooked because your friend didn’t know you were in the business anymore, subscribe your database today.
2. Mistake: Not using your expertise
Don’t go with the default! Buying or selling a house is a big deal. It’s important to give your clients all of the information they need to make an informed decision. Do you think your client will trust someone that leaves out important details? The listing agent wants to sell their client’s home. They therefore might leave out some important information in the comments they input at the MLS. They may fail to mention that there’s a toxic waste dump across the street. Extreme example, I know, but you get the idea. You know your client’s needs and what they are looking for. You also know your area, so make sure you don’t just show them the information that was input at the MLS.
SOLUTION: Customize and add your personal touch. Moxi Present allows you to customize the comments for each comparable that you have hand selected for your client. You can also add adjustments to your comps to give them an apples-to-apples comparison. Let your expertise shine through by adding a personal touch to every CMA or Buyer Tour that you put together. Any agent can pull together information from the MLS, but adding your own comments and adjustments goes the extra mile to show your client you know your stuff and you’ve got their back.
3. Mistake: Not paying attention to or updating your website
You have your website set up and you chose the perfect domain. You are good to go, and you can forget about your website now, right? Wrong! It is a mistake to neglect your website. Forgetting about your site could mean leaving dated information and links to sites that no longer exist. Nobody wants to see a 404 error when they are expecting to see valuable and interesting information. This represents you and your business, make sure it is giving visitors the right impression.
SOLUTION: Check your site regularly. Set aside some time once a week to create a blog post, add a new article, or check that any links you added previously still work. Taking this step will help avoid broken links and dated information. Your website is your brand. Make sure to provide visitors valuable and current information. It could be an interesting article on how the market is doing, or some tips for sellers on how best to stage their home. Whatever content you choose, make sure you don’t forget about your site. Taking this step will mean you are putting your best foot forward when it comes to your web presence, and more importantly your brand and reputation. Remember, your site might be the first thing a potential new client sees.
