Back in 2006, BoomTown’s Grier Allen and Cooper Bane—president and co-founder and VP Product/co-founder, respectively—began looking at the real estate industry, searching for what the big problems were and how they could solve them with technology and digital marketing.
Back then, the real estate industry was very different. Agents used to talk about Internet buyers and Internet sellers like they were a separate entity from the business. In fact, they were a percentage of the business. But now, you just have buyers and sellers…and they’re using the Internet.
Grier sat down with us to discuss this shift in business. “Over the last few years, the real estate consumer has changed. Homebuyers are more educated in real estate. Sellers have access to more data. So real estate agents and businesses have to become more nimble and stay ahead of the curve. They need insights into their leads, and need to know who to contact and when,” he says.
In a lot of ways, Grier explains, the consumer has gained more power than the seller (i.e. the real estate agent). “Buyer Beware” has turned into “Seller Beware.” And it’s because consumers have more information at their fingertips than before. They already know what they want, and they’re not looking to be hard-sold or cold-sold. They’re looking for their problems to be solved, even the ones they haven’t identified yet.
Enter the real estate technology. To close more deals, Grier and his team realized agents needed to better attune themselves with homebuyers and sellers. They needed to know what buyers and sellers were thinking. They needed a glimpse as to what they were feeling. That’s why BoomTown decided to invest in features like the Hot Sheet, lead segmenting and the NOW panel.
With these tools, agents can see the client’s digital behavior. They don’t have to sift through emails or back-and-forth phone calls to decipher what the buyer (or seller) wants. The non-specialty work is handled by the technology. In return, agents using the BoomTown system can spend more time focusing on the things that matter to the consumer.
For business owners and team leaders, the benefit comes in the form of increased productivity and performance. Agents no longer have to spend hours cold-calling or following up with leads. The BoomTown technology helps simplify the process with marketing automation tools, integrations with the Mojo phone dialer and email drip campaigns. More deals can be closed in less time.
To make sure their agents are performing, BoomTown offers accountability tools for brokers and team leaders. With live reporting and digestible snapshots, it becomes really easy to see which agents on their team are taking the time to answer emails and make phone calls. It becomes clear how many leads certain agents need to close a deal—helping identify potential return on investment (ROI).
“Brokers and team leaders spend a lot of money to help drive leads to agents, but they weren’t able to see the ROI because there was no system of transparency in place,” Allen says. “A lot of time leads were dropped. From their perspective, it’s all about being able to get their advertising spend to go as far as it possibly can and hold agents accountable.”
As an example, BoomTown’s Chief Technology Officer Chris McClellen notes that a broker once called the support desk thinking something was wrong because the platform showed that one of his top agents wasn’t making phone calls. BoomTown was able to show data that supported that this agent wasn’t working his leads and making his calls.
“You can tell who is working their leads and who isn’t,” McClellen says. “Previously, you’d have to take someone’s word for it, but we can use the data for accountability. It helps them run a team efficiently and have some objective measures to hold the team accountable. You can have conversations with agents if you need to, and you can reward agents if you want using the data.”
McClellen notes that technology is so important to the success of today’s real estate agents for a number of reasons. Not only does it allow them to find real opportunities in today’s competitive market, it enables them to close deals with buyers and sellers in a timely manner, with ease. For team leaders and brokers, technology is just as critical, providing a first-hand glimpse into the performance of agents, allowing them to see what is and isn’t working. As a result, real estate businesses can ensure profitability while simplifying the grunt work.
For more information, please visit www.boomtownroi.com/ris.
