MoxiWorks CEO Has Some Words About Compass Buying Contactually

By York Baur, CEO of MoxiWorks

Remember when Booj was acquired and you lost your CRM?

Déjà vu.

If you haven’t heard the news pouring out today, Compass has announced that they’re acquiring Contactually, a major player in the real estate CRM space. You might recall my Open Letter from last summer, in which I challenged and questioned Compass’ assertions about their technology. I’m not surprised by today’s news – it’s proof that Compass struggles to build technology, specifically a CRM, in spite of having 175 engineers on staff. However, it’s important to discuss the implications many brokerages are now being forced to face.

1. Your technology is now controlled by the competition aka Compass. You will not continue to get everything you need from them as your tech provider. And maybe nothing. More on this below.
2. Compass can and probably will cancel your contract. Compass doesn’t want their competition using their technology either. In fact, today Compass revealed they “are evaluating long-term support services beyond 2019.”
3. You’re probably thinking of changing your technology that you have from Contactually. After all, you still need to compete.

Compass is a closed platform, not an open platform.

Inman reported that, “The main difference between the two CRMs going forward will be on the integration end… Compass’ CRM will be the only one allowed to integrate with Compass’ current tech stack, including its Collections and Marketing Center programs.”

Aka, they have a closed platform. When you choose to switch tools, or those tools fall into enemy hands, that means you can’t connect the technology your agents love, you lose your current investments, your hands are tied for any tech you’re interested in down the road, and most important of all: you lose all of your data.

With an open platform you get all this flexibility and more, and crucially, your data is retained regardless of the tool changes you make. Finally, an open platform helps you compete in the real estate technology war, including against Compass.

You won’t be getting the attention you deserve.

Their plan is to have a “small team of engineers continue to work on Contactually’s current offering for brokerages outside Compass, while the bulk of work will be on powering and enhancing Compass’ CRM.”

Chances are when something in your CRM or connected tech stack breaks, it’ll be bottom of the priority list – and that’s even if it makes the list. You are now automatically less important (whether they admit it or not). You deserve more, your agents deserve more, and at the end of the day, your clients deserve more since this will have a trickle-down effect as well. If you don’t believe us, remember that Compass did this exact thing last summer.

So, here’s our not-so-shy pitch to you:

No brokerage would ever sell their technology to Compass.

There’s no scenario in which MoxiWorks would ever be sold to Compass, because we are owned by brokerages that compete with them.

Rock, meet paper.

Inman says that, “Contactually’s client base includes eight of the country’s top 20 brokerages, according to the company.” While that stat is noteworthy, I can’t help wondering what that actually means – how do they make brokerages better? After all, it’s about making agents more productive, which super charges your recruiting and retention.

MoxiWorks clientele consists of over 70 brokerages with 120,000 agents that represent 9% of all agents in the U.S. that account for 13% of transactions in the U.S. We mean it when we say we make agents more productive: 40% more productive in fact. If you look specifically at our CRM, MoxiEngage, agents do 54% more business on average.

50 Partner Companies + Over 100 Live Integrations

Over the past several years we’ve developed our MoxiCloud partner program to 50 best-in-class solutions that our brokerages clients can add to their tech stack. These partners include:

• RealScout
• Imprev
• Buyside
• MoveEasy
• DocuSign
• QuantumDigital
•  + many more

RealScout, for instance, is a great example of the power of an open platform and the MoxiWorks partner program in general. RealScout has made great investments in integrating with us and continues to deliver for tens of thousands of agents using the MoxiCloud. Here’s what RealScout Co-Founder Andrew Flachner, had to say:

“I know first-hand how well the MoxiCloud has been working for our shared brokerage partners. A broker and an agent’s responsibility extend to guiding and managing their clients’ digital workflow. MoxiCloud makes this easy and reliable, and their excellent 3rd party integrations, including a robust one with RealScout, makes it simple to construct a true best-in-class offering.”

Take a glance at what this integration looks like here.

We don’t lose customers. And our clients don’t lose their agents.

We give every client of ours the same priority and voice at the table – we don’t leave them to fend for themselves. Every brokerage and agent using MoxiWorks tools gets the most updated version of our technology, and we add the majority of our new features for free, so a brokerage’s tech investment goes further, and they provide more value to their agents, for no extra cost. And our 98% satisfaction score proves it.

If you need further proof of the kind of brokerages our clients are vs. Compass, here’s a quick stat on their retention:

So, here’s my final question to you: If this isn’t enough to convince you why you need to be on an open platform, then what is it going to take?

Looking for a new CRM? MoxiEngage was built specifically for your agents. Here’s what it can do for your agents: