“When Greg Robertson talks, people listen. If you’ve heard the co-founder of W+R Studios speak at a real estate conference, you know he can be blunt. His frank and pragmatic nature has made him a successful, respected, and much-loved industry leader. Robertson’s company’s latest bold announcement is lighting the path for others to follow. In June, W+R Studios, creator of Cloud Agent Suite, announced that it would no longer accept RETS (Real Estate Transaction Standard) feeds for new MLS integrations. Cloud CMA and all other products in the Cloud Agent Suite are now only accepting new feeds via the industry’s modernized data sharing standard: the RESO Web API.”
Somewhat older news, but what a great first sentence. ????
“The introduction of the booj platform is arguably the single greatest increase to our value proposition in our history,” Contos added.
While I respect Adam, I’ll argue that when remax.com first launched a “network of broker IDX websites” back in 2006 that was truly a game changer. I was there. See below:
“Liniger and Kristi Graning, RE/MAX vice president, information technology, explained that RE/MAX is increasing staff by 50 people, and that all the regions will have more sophisticated websites. REMAX.com will be the portal, and then consumers will be directed to the region city to have access to all the listings.
“The national network of IDX websites will be seamless to the consumer and we will be compliant with IDX in each MLS,” says Graning. RE/MAX will license technology from Florida-based Siegent, Inc. (eNeighborhoods, Wyldfyre and ReChannel) to aggregate the IDX listings.”
Kristi Graning VP of RE/MAX, Stu Siegel CEO of eNeighborhoods, and Bruce Benham SVP of RE/MAX. Photo Credit: Greg Robertson (circa 2005)
eNeighborhoods was subsequently acquired by Dominion Enterprises, which operates Homes.com. So, effectively remax.com has been “Powered by Homes.com” for about 14 years. All that time, ably lead by Andy Woolley.
In those 14 years, Remax.com is now the top national broker website and the platform, by my calculations, has generated close to 50 million referral free leads to RE/MAX agents.
Dave Liniger showing Stu and Andy his car collection. Photo Credit: Greg Robertson (circa 2005)
Execution is everything. RE/MAX’s booj team has some big shoes to fill. It will be interesting to check out how things are going in the next few years.
“VESTAPLUS™ Coffee Talks is a weekly series that provides agents an opportunity to meet the VESTAPLUS™ team in a fun comfortable environment to share their experiences and express what they need from an MLS software. Envisioned by VESTAPLUS™ CEO Annie Ives, Coffee Talks gives the company the chance to connect with agents in a personal way, enabling VESTAPLUS™ to deliver highly user-focused products in a short time”
VESTAPLUS is the MLS system for The MLS, covering about 6 associations in Southern California, including Beverly Hills. A big advantage that MLS organizations that have invested and built their own “home grown” MLS systems is the ability to iterate faster. In the old days we used to call these “user groups”. Adding a casual flare to this is super smart.
Just two weeks ago, I was sitting in the audience at a real estate conference and the moderator asked the panelists, “What’s next in real estate?” Brian Boreo, co-founder of 1000watt, is one of the smartest people I know in real estate and said, “I’ve always thought that whoever figures out loyalty in real estate will win.” This brought a smile to my face, because there’s something Brian and the rest of the audience didn’t know that I’m excited to share that with you now.
About 5 years ago we made a fundamental shift with Cloud CMA. We knew that not all agents have listing presentations scheduled every week so we added features designed to help them get business – not just serve current clients. Pivotal to this was adding a “What’s my home worth?” landing page to every Cloud CMA account. This landing page could be easily shared on social media – which agents did – and the results were astounding. The number of Cloud CMA reports skyrocketed. To give you an idea, we launched Cloud CMA in 2010. In 2018 we hit a milestone of 10 million Cloud CMA reports generated. One year later in 2019, we are sitting at 14 million Cloud CMA reports generated. We can also account for 548,517 leads generated from automatic Cloud CMA reports. That’s moving the needle. Today we want to move that needle even further.
The National Association of REALTORS® has stats that show agent satisfaction over 80%, making it a well known industry fact that a majority of consumers were happy with their agent. Yet only 11% of those consumers use that same agent again. Why? Because agents are not doing a good job of keeping in touch with their past clients. That’s why we are introducing Homebeat, a new way to pump up your business from past clients. With Homebeat, agents can schedule automated CMAs to be delivered monthly, quarterly or yearly. And while traditional Cloud CMA reports are generated as PDFs, Homebeat will be completely digital, allowing your clients to view homes comparable to their home from any device.
Just like Cloud CMA reports, Hombeat is branded to the agent and also includes a call to action to request a “Full CMA” when they are closer to selling their home.
With Cloud CMA you can generate seller leads, convert those leads to clients and now with Homebeat, keep those clients coming back for more.
At W+R Studios we’ve been working with Tom Ferry for many years now. He and his team members have been great partners. Next week Tom is hosting his Success Summit in Anaheim, CA. It’s a crazy event. He’ll get close to 5,000 agents in a ballroom in rapt attention. I’ve been a few times now and Tom is amazing, the content is great and I can attest that I’ve never seen anything like it.
This year Chris Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator, is a speaker. I’ve listened to him being interviewed a few podcasts and he has a lot of insight in to negotiating with people.
The folks at Tom Ferry are giving Cloud CMA subscribers a special discount to either attend the Success Summit live or via LiveCast. If you’re an MLS organization that provides Cloud CMA to your membership, please share this link.
