A Boutique Brokerage's High-Tech Secrets for Beating the Competition

"Small, but mighty," is how broker/owner Erica Ramus describes her firm, Ramus Realty Group. The numbers back up her claim: with just seven agents, this rural Pennsylvania brokerage closes over 200 transactions each year. Though their team is small, Ramus Realty Group's productivity dwarfs that of their larger competitors.

So how do they do it? That's what we wanted to find out when we sat down with Erica during a recent webinar. Here's an in-depth look at what we learned:

High Productivity Means High Expectations

One key to Ramus Realty Group's success lies in their hiring philosophy: "I don't want people who don't want to work," says Erica.

And work Erica's agents will. Ramus Realty Group only hires full-time agents and has a minimum production level of 24 sides per year that each agent must meet. The bottom third of her agents meet the goal of 24 sides, while the top third complete a whopping 60-70 transaction sides per year.

When hiring new agents, Erica screens for a willingness to try new technologies and to follow their system. "We believe in slow to hire, quick to fire," she says. Even if someone says the right things, if they do not start using their processes and technology immediately, Erica is quick to let them go. "I want someone to fit with how we roll, and we're high tech," she says.

Erica also considers the cost of someone who doesn't fit their culture. "She's costing you not just the systems and the tools that you're paying for, but she's costing morale. When people see that other people are not pulling their own weight in the company, or are not buying into what everyone else is doing, it hurts everybody."

Smart Tech for a Small, Mighty Firm

For agents that are willing to work hard, Erica offers plenty of support to help them meet their production goals.

As an early adopter of technology and "a geek at heart," Erica began blogging and using ActiveRain shortly after her office opened in 2007. As a result of over a decade of blogging and promoting her firm's website, the site has excellent SEO, or "Google juice," as Erica puts it. Because the site brings in tons of organic leads by itself, Erica doesn't have to pay for leads. Her agents can cherry-pick the hottest leads and incubate the rest.

Erica was also an early adopter of online forms. When zipForm debuted, Erica worked as an agent for another brokerage that, she says, "was still doing paper and carbon." She paid to use zipForm herself because "I knew that was the technology of the future." Technology like that, she says, makes her brokerage faster, better and stronger.

Erica offers zipForm and DocuSign Transaction Rooms to create an online transaction that's not only more efficient, but also more transparent to the consumer. Her company prides itself on combining this technology with live guidance to clients about key elements of the documents they've been sent. For Ramus Realty Group, DocuSign makes it easier to close deals faster and give consumers full transparency on the steps needed to complete a transaction.

"Paper and carbon and meeting someone in a coffee is great, but it's also great if my buyer is two towns away and they want to put an offer in immediately. If we can not only send it over through zipForm, but then have them DocuSign it, that's win-win."

So what's on Ramus Realty Group's tech shortlist? According to Erica, it's:

• zipForm and DocuSign
• Access to the MLS
• Marketing tools for creating collateral like flyers and ads
• Trello for checklists; each listing has a Trello board
• RE Technology.com
• Two virtual assistants

"[Agents] want to know that they bring the listing in, they bring the buyer in, and we're going to do the rest so that they can get in the car and go do the next deal," Erica says.

Ensuring Agent Adoption

Because she invests in so much technology, how does Erica ensure that her agents actually use it?

"I think it depends on how important the program is to the broker. So, for example, zipForm and DocuSign -- to me, that's a drop-dead. They have to use it. If they're not using it, they're not going to be in the office."

Erica is more lenient on other things, like their online lead generation program. She can see when agents are logging in to the system and collecting leads. When they don't, the system cuts them off from receiving more leads. If that behavior doesn’t change after training and coaching, the agent is let go.

The key to agent adoption for Ramus Realty Group begins with agent recruiting. Erica doesn't recruit agents who show a reticence to using technology systems and processes. That's not just about efficiency, she says. It's about how today's consumer wants to do things.

Selecting New Technology

Erica has some advice for brokers who struggle with evaluating the myriad new technologies that debut every year--think about comfort.

Are your agents comfortable enough with the technology to use it daily? The program they will actually use is the best. Also, consider if the technology solves all of your pain points. If not, look at others.

As for Erica, she limits her experimentation to the types of technologies that will help her agents the most and that they are willing to use: CRM, marketing tools, lead gen and online transaction processing. The Pennsylvania Association of REALTORS® provides zipForm as part of her membership, so it doesn't cost extra to provide it to her agents.

Looking Ahead to Tomorrow's Tech

When it comes to the technology of the future, Erica is intrigued by the promise of the blockchain. But "not necessarily for real estate sales," she says. Rather, it's the title and mortgage side of blockchain that she thinks could speed up transactions dramatically. "It could make our closings much faster if we don't have to worry about all these title issues and verifications because blockchain has enabled every step of the process."

Want to hear more of Erica's thoughts on leading a tech-driven brokerage? Watch our webinar for the full-length interview.

To learn more about building a technology platform for your brokerage, download this FREE guide from DocuSign.