Engaging Customers
Ray Picard, EVP of Sales
MP: Ray, you came to Move from the enterprise software industry about a year ago. How would you describe your first year?
Ray Picard: It’s been a great year for me and for Move. Revenues for our most recently closed quarter are up 7 percent over the same period last year. More importantly, we delivered approximately 19 percent more connections between consumers and our customers during the 12 months ended March 31, 2014, as compared to the 12-month period ended March 31, 2013. This illustrates the success of our continued commitment to not only deliver valuable information to consumers, but more importantly, to connect them with real estate professionals who can provide the local expertise consumers want when making home-related decisions.
MP: How has your previous career experience impacted how Move engages with brokers and agents?
RP: My enterprise software industry experience definitely shapes the way we interact with brokers and agents. Let me give you three ways it has impacted our customer engagement:
First, we seek to understand the business strategy and operating models unique to each brokerage firm. There are significant differences across the industry and we want to take a complimentary not competing approach to each unique business with our Brand & Exposure, Lead Conversion and Agent Productivity solutions.
Second, we partner with brokers to assess their digital strategy and to identify what’s performing well, what are the areas for highest potential improvement and how we can put a plan together to drive results. We do this by leveraging over a decade of accumulated experience, enhancing the digital strategies of thousands of brokers.
Third, we tailor the right solutions and best practices to each broker’s needs. Since we have an end-to-end solution suite, we can help them across Audience Engagement; Lead Generation; Lead Response; Cultivation; and Referral/Repeat Business or by filling in the gaps that they have, thereby complementing what’s already in place.
MP: Please describe for us the Move Broker Value Chain and why this is a critical part of your game plan.
RP: Working with brokers large and small, national franchises to single offices, we have recognized a common set of value drivers critical to brokerages scaling their business and attracting and retaining top agents.
This Broker Value Chain spans six key areas of a broker’s business—and they are the areas in which they can drive business growth and create value. We have also started partnering with brokers to do Digital Strategy Studies—a free service we now offer to qualifying brokers. In these extensive studies, we come alongside brokers and their leadership teams and using both qualitative and quantitative analysis, we determine how they can generate the most value from these six areas—and we create a plan for moving their businesses forward. Only Move has this strategic offering and the breadth of products and services spanning this value chain, and it’s extremely gratifying to be able to partner with our customers in this way.
For more information, please visit www.marketing.REALTOR.com.
