A few weeks ago MetroList Services put on a series of events they called “The Great CMA Shoot Out!“.

Their board of directors had decided not to renew their site license with Mercado, from eNeighborhoods, and were also introducing a new option, Cloud CMA.

The events covered over 2 and half weeks up and down the Central Valley of California. MetroList Services covers this area, which includes Sacramento. They are the largest MLS provider in California in terms of geography and despite this MetroList Services is the best MLS providers I’ve worked with when it comes to communication with their membership.

They got the word out via a banner on their MLS login screen, flyers, email communications and going out to their member associations promoting it.

I attended only one of the events, the largest, at the Sacramento Association of Realtors. At the start of we flipped a coin to determine who would present last at the first event and then traded off after that. At the end of both demos each participant (Mercado and Cloud CMA) would come up for a short summation.

It was great. It reminded me of the days when I used to do this going head to head with my product “Lightning” against Moore Data‘s “Viewpoint” and later “Landmark“. It was an interesting dynamic since the guys from eNeighborhoods at the event, Rick Sherwood and Paul Dixon, were guys I had hired back while working at eN.

Shane McCarthy from W&R Studios demoed Cloud CMA (I was smart enough not to take this task). At the Sacramento event we won (based on number of sign ups after) handily. At other events we traded wins, most going to the product who demoed last. I’m not sure who ended up with the most signups at the end but I think it was about even. This was a huge win for Cloud CMA, since Mercado had been available to MetroList members for about 3 years.

Many thanks to Tom Beede, Bill Miller and Dave Howe for putting this together.

I’d like to see other MLS providers do this type of thing. The format is fun, and gives the chance for vendors to show their best and let their members decide which solution would be better for them.