Here’s what can happen when organizations fall out of touch: decisions seem difficult or controversial, causing delays for the organization and leaving it to fall behind or lose their competitive advantage.
The bulk of our work is helping MLSs drive member satisfaction and adoption of existing services to brokers and agents. And, each year we help some number of MLSs with conversions to different vendors. Often, these conversions are related to consolidation and data sharing.
Our industry needs to find meaningful ways to support new thinking and innovation. I recently put myself in the shoes of a start-up and found out just how difficult it REALLY is to leverage MLS information. We have made it REALLY hard for the smart 16 year old in her garage to build the next big thing for a brokerage. Frankly, even well-established tech companies have major challenges working with more than 600 organizations. Refer to my commonapp article for more on that topic. Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a tech start-up. They have built something interesting. [...]
The real estate industry is going strong. It is healthy and vibrant, full of bloom and experiencing exciting change. As agents, brokers, MLSs, franchises and tech firms explore a deeper understanding of the industry’s best practices, they look to conferences to gain insights and meet the people that are powering new ideas. Conferences are good, and we attend a lot of them. Our annual conference tour includes two NAR conventions, two Inman Connects, CMLS, two RESO conferences,T3, RIS Media, and a variety of franchise, state AOR, Leading RE, The Realty Alliance, 1000Watt, Clareity, and large AOR or MLS events. Yup [...]
With conferences and meetings in full swing, many associations and MLSs are sending staff and board members, however it is impractical to have everybody attend, every conference. The answer is simple, join us for the WAVes of Change. Don’t miss out on this rapidly growing webinar series in 2017! Did you miss AEI? Where you and members of your Board of Managers stuck in the office rather than being out at AEI in Denver a couple of weeks ago … ? …Not a problem! We attend the events and conferences so you don’t have to! The WAVes of Change webinars will educate everyone on [...]
Many technology companies fail to understand the value of push reporting. WAV Group works with many technology firms to appreciate push vs. pull, but so many fail to grasp the importance. Every broker should pay attention to this example to evaluate how the software licensed in his or her company should leverage push reporting to improve the value. For example, I would love to see data and analytic companies like Terradatum, TrendGraphix, and ShowingTime incorporate this type of push reporting to show market trends, office productivity, and productivity by agent (solds, pending, active). In another example, I would love to [...]
Our Follow The Leader Series is an effort to write about the best ideas and best practices of great leaders in our industry who are raising the bar. In this episode, I am grateful to share the inspirational story of Merle Whitehead, a gentleman who grew America’s 9th largest real estate firm, Realty USA. The intention is to share some background on centers of excellence in real estate that others can be inspired by. Early Career Start Merle Whitehead calls the Buffalo, NY area of Western New York his home. He started his career selling clothing on commission and came [...]
Every Valentine’s Day, you can smell the roses, taste the chocolates and almost feel that love is in the air. It made me think of how so many companies attempt to “love” their customers, but often few customers actually love them back. In fact, from my own experience, it’s rare when a company consistently gets love letters – and rarely hate mail – from its customers. Over the last couple of decades, I’ve worked in the real estate and technology sectors, with dozens and dozens of companies that include several of the most well known brands, from hot startups to Fortune 500 [...]
For the past three years, the most impactful development in real estate technology has been driven by the Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO). This nonprofit entity defines how MLS information is formatted for use by agents and brokerage. For years, this board of directors was mostly led by a combination of MLS executives and technology vendors. However, with today’s announcement you can see that brokerage involvement has reached its highest level. But that’s not all, other new executives from many of America’s largest and finest MLSs have also volunteered to step up and participate in guiding RESO into 2017. Executive [...]
Real estate brokers often talk about their culture. The odd part about the conversation is that the culture a brokerage has is often developed by happenstance, without intention or effort. Often, when WAV Group measures the attributes of a brokerage culture, we learn that it is people based. Simply stated, they like their manager or the broker without much understanding as to why. Ergo, culture is typically a popularity score. However, there are certain behaviors that will directly develop culture in your business if you make them an intentional behavior of your leadership. How ya doin’? The most common greeting [...]
Let’s face it. We operate in a very social industry. We’re all a bunch of sales people. We love to go to parties, catch that final drink at the bar after dinner and attend swanky events sponsored by technology companies. In general, we just love to schmooze! Its part of our real estate DNA! I definitely count myself on the list of schmoozers. We host at least three parties a year and countless dinners and events beyond that. They are a great way to get to know people and start new relationships. All of this networking is great, but we [...]
MLSs and Brokerages struggle constantly with how to build communications that break-through to their agents. Sometimes, it’s hard to know how your marketing efforts stack up against others, so I thought I would share this study to give all of us some perspective. As all online marketers know, open rate and click through rate are two key metrics that need to be closely monitored to ensure that you getting the bang for your marketing buck! According to a recent study called the 2016 Email Marketing Benchmarks Study th published by IBM, the average click through of emails sent in the [...]
