Many of the best lessons we learn in life come from our earliest business experiences. During the 20 years I spent with IBM, we were taught the importance of “needs satisfaction selling.”
We listened to our customers by asking open-ended questions to get them talking, most critically: “What do you need?” Listening to what our customers wanted was crucial.
The same philosophy rings true with Broker Public Portal (BPP) with Homesnap, of which I was an early supporter. The BPP asked the right questions about what the industry needed, not just MLSs and brokers, but agents and, ultimately, the consumer.
My only worry early on was that the BPP got a late start. But the partnership with Homesnap was brilliant. We have the premier mobile app in the marketplace today. Homesnap has delivered the highest adoption of any mobile app we’ve ever had.
That’s because the BPP with Homesnap continues to ask open-ended questions and is listening to the answers. Funded by reinvestment of every BPP dollar back into Homesnap product and business development, brokers and their agents are provided with the tools they need, the kind of exposure they want for their listings and millions of free leads.
And we refuse to place competitors on listing pages, which almost everyone else does. We are also the only major portal adhering to the pro-consumer Fair Display Guidelines.
Responding to Needs
Brokers today are telling us that they want more. They want more consumer outreach and engagement.
Homesnap is listening and delivering more innovation, from offering a new Facebook Marketplace program for rentals to AI-powered digital and social media marketing.
Homesnap is pioneering partnerships that benefit brokers and agents with the biggest players in tech, including Google and Facebook.
Our listening and action are proof to the broker community and multiple listing services that Homesnap has the right concept. This is the real deal, and it’s married with incredibly powerful mobile applications that consumers keep falling in love with.
Why BPP Deserves 100-Percent Support
BPP serves the people who toil to land the property listings that deliver tens of millions of eyeballs online every month. How many companies would not exist today if they didn’t have listing content?
From where I stand, the brokers who have been most successful and struggled least during the COVID-19 pandemic are the ones who understand the value of the Broker Public Portal, run by the people who provide the listing content. And they know that this movement is controlled by the industry—by brokers like themselves.
We will strive to get 100-percent buy-in by the very people that the Broker Public Portal serves: the brokerage community and their agents. We have to keep at it. The Broker Public Portal with Homesnap will continue to do the kind of things they’re doing. Every broker should be using it, and every MLS should be adopting it, right?
Under the leadership of CEO Bill Miller and his management team, Northern California MLS and technology provider MetroList have built a winning organization with more than 21,000 members today. MetroList is the second-largest MLS in California.
