Moxi Works

Tips and Tricks for Getting Your Agents to Adopt Your Real Estate CRM
Brokers, you know how crucial it is to invest in a rock-solid, reliable, and scalable real estate CRM for your business. But getting your agents to learn, use, and rely on the tool can be tricky. How can you balance driving agent adoption and proving the value of your tech investment? By highlighting the importance of a good CRM and lowering the barriers to entry. The Importance of Technology Adoption by Agents Most brokers know getting their real estate agents to adopt the technology they invest in is an uphill battle — to say the least. While commonly considered an inconvenience and gap in ongoing agent training, lack of tech adoption by agents is actually a threat to the brokerage and its success. Brokers typically purchase CRMs not solely for having a centralized database, but also having a singular view into their agents' activities. This includes key milestones like: Lead generation, follow-up, and conversion rates Client outreach efforts Retention efforts Nurture campaigns and reminders Email drip campaigns Performance reports By straying off-course and not using the CRM provided by their broker, agents pursuing the beaten path can struggle to track their follow-up, conversion rates, and other key metrics. Or, if they have these key performance indicators dialed into a systematic approach of their own, the lack of their broker's visibility and alignment to aligned processes means customer experiences can be inconsistent. This can jeopardize your bottom line, brand, and your brokerage's reputation. So, why would agents risk not using the tech their broker provides them? Skip the Learning Curve and Get Early Tech Adopters in Your Brokerage It's not uncommon and is usually a result of plain old-fashioned human behavior. New technology always comes with a learning curve, and even a broker with the best intentions won't always beat out a determined agent spending their time chasing deals. Brokers need to invest in educating their agents on the new tech they've invested in and carve out dedicated time for ongoing training and maintenance. They also need to pitch the benefits of a CRM and its centralized view to their agents. However finding the time, resources, and capacity to dedicate to agents getting boots off the ground and behind their desks can also threaten ROI. What's a broker to do? Agents are chasing their next success story and making time appear out of thin air to serve their clients and nurture new ones. It's well-known agents wear a lot of hats and have countless conflicting priorities to juggle. Because of this, it's crucial brokers get agents to adopt — and actively use — the CRM they've invested in. If the learning curve is one of the biggest risk factors for agent tech adoption failing, brokers can actually eliminate that hurdle. How? By investing in a CRM that's extremely easy to use and designed with an agent on the go in mind. To a seasoned, determined broker, finding an easy, seamless real estate CRM to invest in can sound a lot like finding a unicorn or stumbling upon a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. But by investing in a proven tool CRM needs, brokers can give their agents' tech adoption rates a significant boost. To view the original article, visit the Inside Real Estate

Keller Williams Deploys AI-Powered Ad Campaign Platform
Keller Williams (KW) announced additional generative AI integrations and a host of powerful feature enhancements to Command, a smart CRM-plus platform and its associated mobile app. "Our new campaign platform paired with AI capabilities will save our agents more time and money, allowing them to focus on what matters most," said Heather Pollard, head of digital and design, KW. Launched in Q3 '23, KW's new Paid Ads experience offers agents better quality leads, more available channels, easy-to-use ad creation, and new AI-powered features for listing ad types, generating more leads at a lower cost. The new Generative AI Ad Copy feature uses AI and machine learning to generate high-performing headlines and body copy primarily for single-listing, single-image ads, single-listing multi-image ads, multi-listing carousel ads, and single-listing multi-channel ads. "We're revolutionizing the approach to ad creation with this groundbreaking feature, setting a new standard for engaging, results-driven content," said Pollard. "Welcome to the future of CRM, where automation meets personalization, and the agents' brand messaging is fully maximized." Through Labs, the innovation hub of KW, the franchise continues to partner with real estate agents and teams to release software integrations and CRM features to increase productivity and eliminate pain points with lead generation, marketing, and real estate team workflow capabilities. "We continue to roll out vast updates that give our agents an unfair competitive advantage in the market," said Chris Cox, chief technology and digital officer, KW. "In partnership with our agents, we're automating more and more functional tasks, saving them time and money." The latest updates to Command include: New Contact Advanced Filtering Capability allows agents to finely dissect their database, supercharging productivity and simplifying the discovery of precise client groupings. With Automated Market Snapshots for social media, agents gain instant access to hyper-local market metrics, eliminating the need for manual data entry or design template manipulation. Transaction Summary Sheets empower all stakeholders to seamlessly access and share comprehensive deal terms in a user-friendly PDF format. Expanded Date and Data Fields within the Opportunity App empower agents to meticulously record and track more transaction-relevant dates and data points, including the loan commitment data, home inspection date, escrow due date, and more. Vendor Tracking in the Opportunity App of Command enables agents to effortlessly monitor all real estate deal-associated vendors and seamlessly export the comprehensive list as part of the transaction summary sheet. Through the Opportunities APIs, third-party vendors on a deal gain access to real-time deal tracking spanning the entire lifecycle, facilitating optimal support for all stakeholders. The newly introduced Onboarding Portal provides new KW agents with an all-in-one, streamlined onboarding experience. It efficiently gathers essential information, introduces KW models, systems, and culture, and seamlessly transitions users into Command, ensuring a smooth and comprehensive onboarding journey. "We are the home of the tech-enabled agent," said Cox. "Our agents highly influence our roadmap through Labs. And our latest innovative and forward-leaning features and benefits of Command reflect our 'By Agents, for Agents' approach to technology R&D." Command mobile app's latest updates include: The Bulk Selection and Action for Contacts empowers agents to efficiently perform multiple actions across numerous contacts simultaneously. From seamlessly transferring contacts between personal and team accounts to adding tags, assigning SmartPlans, and documenting notes and next-step activities—streamlining contact management has never been easier. The new Swipe gestures enable agents to take actions more efficiently and faster than before, such as notification reading and deletion, task editing and archiving, contacts editing, and Opportunities CGI numbers display. With the introduction of Real Estate Team Lead Features, team leaders, or rainmakers, can effortlessly manage lead routing on their teams, whether individual assignments or bulk distribution to a designated agent or the lead pool. "We remain laser-focused on building safe, reliable, and scalable solutions enabling our agents to serve their clients better," said Cox. In February 2019, KW originally released Command, hosted on the Keller Cloud platform, for general agent availability. In December 2021, KW released the first version of the Command app. Command has more than 170,000 quarterly active users as of September

Greater Tech Adoption: The Not-So-Secret Strategy of Successful Brokerages
In these uncertain times, it has never been more important for brokers to leverage technology. But do you ever feel sometimes like you're damned if you do, but damned if you don't? One thing is clear: when your brokerage has smart tools in place that streamline your team's work, you're in a better position to thrive—no matter what the market is doing. According to NAR's 2022 Technology Survey, only 61% of agents agree that their brokerage provides all the technology tools they need to be successful. That's a significant number of potentially dissatisfied agents. With the market the way it is, agents who don't feel like they're getting the support they need will go elsewhere. And a pool of strong sales professionals is the foundation for a successful brokerage business model. At the same time, a lot of brokerages provide tools that agents don't use. For broker owners, it can feel like you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. But we know that the most successful agents are the ones that leverage technology to their advantage, and the most successful brokerages are the ones that make it easy for agents to do so. We recently read an article that talked about one of the most successful agents in the US in terms of transaction sides closed (more than 800 in just four years!) and his secrets to success. According to him, it boiled down to two things: Making the relationship as important as the transaction Taking advantage of all available resources As a broker, it's your job to provide and help your sales professionals use resources that keep the client relationship front and center. Let's look at why that's harder than it seems, and how you can fix it. Barriers to technology adoption among real estate agents Real estate is an industry with notoriously poor tech adoption, particularly among agents. Why? Lack of comfort and familiarity with technology among agents According to NAR, in 2022, the median age for real estate agents was 60. As the Pew Research Center has observed, "Many [older adults] are simply not confident in their own ability to learn about and properly use electronic devices." Less than half of 50- to 64-year-olds feel very confident using technology. In stark contrast, younger generations are adopting new technology constantly, creating a lag that's hard to overcome. Busy agents have other priorities Broker owners and their best agents know that sometimes they are the victims of their own success. Their work streams and lifestyles can be very hectic. Every deal includes bumps in the road that agents must react to. Fires pop up they need to put out. There often isn't much downtime for them to get familiar with new tools, even if those tools would help them work a lot smarter. Poor or incomplete training Many well-meaning broker owners invest in tools that they know will help their agents, but then forget a crucial element: proper training and onboarding. Because agents may already feel insecure about their ability to use technology and they don't have time to teach themselves, the tool goes unused. Agent mistrust This might be the most damaging reason of all: some agents actively mistrust their broker owner's motives behind providing valuable technological resources, especially extremely useful tools like CRMs. They frequently worry their broker may take the leads they've worked so hard to generate and nurture. Therefore, they deliberately avoid using them, very often shooting themselves in the foot. Winning strategies for boosting technology adoption at real estate brokerages Despite the challenges broker owners face encouraging tech adoption at their brokerages, all is not lost. Many brokerages use technology to get incredible results, and this success is based on several fundamental pillars and winning strategies. Let's look at them now: Obtaining complete stakeholder buy-in Even small changes can be exceptionally hard. Implementing new technology is no different, and in fact, it's even harder because it often involves a certain level of disruption. This is why it's so important to engage all the stakeholders at your brokerage and get buy-in, so that everyone is on the same page about what is needed to successfully transition and how you will measure success. Demonstrating the value of technology Customer relationship management (CRM) is a perfect example for this point, because it's both a resource that many broker owners make available to their teams (but one that is frequently under-leveraged for the reasons mentioned above) and a tool for building and nurturing relationships over the long term, which has always been the real secret to success as a real estate professional. According to a CRM study from Deloitte, which looked at a random sample of more than 10,500 customers of the largest CRM in the world over two years, CRMs are such valuable tools because they work. CRMs increase: Lead conversion by up to 30% Sales by up to 30% Customer satisfaction by up to 35% Revenue by up to 25% And according to the same NAR Technology Survey, the top three tech tools that gave respondents (or their agents) the highest number of quality leads in the last 12 months were: Social media (46%) Local MLS (30%) CRM platform (26%) The results should speak for themselves: providing your agents with the right tools, then helping them adopt them, will boost conversion, free up precious time by automating lead generation and nurturing, and ultimately increase agents' bottom lines—and yours. These benefits, in turn, will help brokerage owners earn more trust from their agents and remove that barrier from the tech adoption equation. Evangelizing the benefits of technology It's one thing to demonstrate technology's benefits, and when properly implemented, everyone will see them for themselves. But technology also needs a cheerleader, especially when there is a difficult transition on the horizon. As the captain of your ship, being an enthusiastic promoter of real estate technology is important, as is demonstrating an interest in learning more and staying on top of developments in the industry. It also means making an effort to learn the same tools you're providing to your team, if only to better understand the challenges they're facing so you can help overcome them. Providing proper training and resources It goes without saying: if your team knows how to use a technology tool and how using it will benefit them, they will be likelier to use it. This isn't just important during the onboarding period: if your agents have good experiences with training and adoption for one tool, there will be goodwill established for the next change or transition period, whether it's months or years down the road. This is an area where picking the right tech provider is so important. You'll want to make sure your vendor partner has the resources, content, and dedicated support staff to make sure your team can get answers to its questions quickly and painlessly. Picking solutions that are built for real estate Let's use the CRM example again: the biggest CRM vendors in the world are Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, and HubSpot. They're popular for a reason: traditional sales teams use them to great effect. But real estate is a unique industry. To ensure maximum adoption (and maximum ROI), you need to opt for solutions that are built around the nuances of buying and selling homes, not try to force a square peg into a round hole. Working with established partners with a proven track record in the real estate industry is a sure way to get tools your team can actually use. To view the original article, visit the Constellation1