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News: MoxiWorks Adds VoicePad to Cloud Open Platform
Does Your Compass Point True North?
By Nick Van Valkenberg, Director of Business Development, MoxiWorks
When lost, a compass is used to help you find your way, but what is a compass used for when you are already on the path to success? Could a compass force you to look in the wrong direction? Is there a need for a compass when you already know the terrain and have the map? While in the field I have been having a number of conversations about the “lion coming over the hill” that is Compass. Massively funded, technology forward, and making waves. It is hard not to look in their direction and wonder if the moat you have built around your brokerage will last.
Circle of Concern vs. Circle of Influence
To summarize Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, habit one says to be proactive. A great way to becoming self-aware is to separate your Circle of Concern and your Circle of Influence.
You do not have control over your Circle of Concern – it’s filled with topics like: what Compass is doing in regard to raising capital, building technology, or whether they move to your market or not. You can worry about these until your face turns blue, but you cannot control the outcomes.
Your Circle of Influence you can control, and this is where you should be spending your time and energy. Topics include: educating your agents on not only the negatives, but also the positives of Compass (you would be naive to portray all as negative), finding technology to compete with what they are building, recruiting new agents, and actively recruiting your current team members to raise retention within your brokerage.
Now that we have cleared the air, know where to focus and what can be controlled, let me tell you our (MoxiWorks) take on the situation. Technology is a big topic and a key point to Compass’ recruiting efforts. To compete with the technology that Compass is building you may need an upgrade. Now I’m not suggesting that you go and build your own, I’m suggesting that you look at a platform that is already being used by some of the nation’s top brokerages.
Compass says that their technology will: have a CRM that combines listing information, client information, and transaction information. Compass’ technology is said to be in “one place,” combining all tools, giving power of integration, offering insights, and easy to launch digital social marketing. At MoxiWorks we would recommend researching our open platform that encompasses (pun intended) these aspects and more.
Recruiting
Recruiting is another part of your Circle of Influence that you can control. The discussion of recruiting generally invokes the thought of trying to increase your agent count or better yet, maintain your agent count as attrition is part of the business. In the fourth quarter of 2017, MoxiWorks built an agent recruiting tool called Moxi Talent. Moxi Talent uses a two-pronged approach: recruiting new agents to your brokerage and recruiting your current agents. Trust me when I say if you are not congratulating your current agents, someone else is and that style of interaction will win them over.
In summary, the only thing that stays the same is change and those that do not adapt to the times will be left behind. The best option is to partner with a technology company known for innovating to future-proof brokerages. If any of this has resonated with you I suggest that you reach out to our team and at least do yourself the service to learn how we are paving the way. I, or one of my colleagues, would be more than happy to look at your current technology stack to show you how we can connect your current systems and upgrade others. Do yourself a favor and be proactive; now is not the time to take a reactive approach.
Introducing Knack, the newest gifting solution in the Moxi Cloud
Curate, customize, and delight your clients with the help of Knack.
And the Moxi Cloud just keeps growing. Now with gifting services from KNACKSHOPS.COM available! We’re stoked to announce Knack as a preferred brokerage solution, giving agents more ability to customize their client gifts.
One of the reasons the Moxi Cloud is growing at such a fast rate (40+ tools and services!) is because we encourage our brokerage clients to integrate the existing tools and services they already know and love. Part owner and client of MoxiWorks, Windermere Real Estate, is the brokerage that brought Knack to our attention, and we’re very thankful they did!
Knack is a modern gift-giving solution for agents who wants to give thoughtful gifts but can’t take time out of their already busy-as-can-be schedule to find them. Knack carefully curates artisan products that tell a story, then allows agents to combine items in a way that is meaningful to them. Gifts are hand-packed, and each gift includes a custom booklet that tells the story of each item in the gift, making the experience enjoyable and unique. Shoppers may choose from already made gift sets, customize those to their liking, or choose from over 1,000 products on the site to curate their own unique gift set.
“We’re excited to add Knack to the cloud. Giving gifts and in doing so, staying in touch with your sphere is crucial for agents. Knack is special in that it allows the agent to customize a gift set or build one from scratch, and have it delivered in beautiful packaging to their clients. We want brokerages and agents to have choice, and this helps to accomplish that,” said Kylah Searing, Director of Moxi Cloud Partnerships and Integrations at MoxiWorks. “It was great having the introduction to Knack come from Windermere. Since they already use and love this service, it made the decision to add them to the cloud an easy one.”
This integration to the Moxi Cloud includes SSO (single-sign-on), meaning agents have one less login to remember. The gifts are easily curated and if agents need help with inspiration, they can speak to an expert concierge.
We also love Knack for their giving back mentality. Knack partners with merchants who support a wide range of causes and donates a percentage of their sales to philanthropic causes as well. For instance, with Windermere, agents can give and give back: Knack donates five percent of each purchase made by a Windermere agent to the much-admired Windermere Foundation. Our Moxi Fund was actually born from the Windermere Foundation, so we love working with like-minded companies.
You can find more information on our new partnership in our press release here and have a look at the marvelous KNACKSHOPS.COM while you’re at it!
If your brokerage is interested in adding Knack as a brokerage solution, please contact your dedicated Account Manager and they’ll get the ball rolling.
Which Data Solutions Best Fit Your Brokerage Business?
By Tiana Baur
Finding the right solution can be tough. Sometimes it feels utterly impossible when you’ve tried tool after tool for your brokerage, only to find that yet again it wasn’t the right fit. The issue is, one solution for one brokerage does not make for the perfect solution at another brokerage. Every business is so unique that a one size fits all approach is begging to crumble and leave your brokerage feeling more fatigue than increased productivity. Getting any flashbacks? There’s a way around it.
We don’t want to be your only brokerage solution. We want to help you build it.
We were founded by a brokerage after years of them feeling the same desperation for the right tools, so we understand where you’re coming from and how detrimental it can be to your business. It’s also why we want to help you find the perfect solution for your brokerage, not tell you what it needs to be. The Moxi Cloud, our open platform, has over 40 tools and services that you can pick and choose from to build the power strip your brokerage has always craved. Think of it as the foundation to build your dream scenario.
Plug-in, plug-out. With an open platform it’s as easy as plugging your new printer in and unplugging your old one.
What’s great about an open platform is you don’t have to toss out all of your tools. Chances are, you like at least one of your tools and you’ve invested precious time and money into it. When you use the Moxi Cloud as your foundation, you can bring over the existing tools you know and love to retain your investment. And if a tool your eyeballing isn’t in our list of 40+ tools and services, we’ll add it to the Moxi Cloud for you! We’ll plug it in.
We don’t force you to do anything that isn’t in the spirit of making your brokerage the best it can be.
A lot of real estate platforms might say that you HAVE to use their websites in order to get their other tools. Not with the Moxi Cloud. And shame on those that force you to do otherwise. We have a website tool too, (and we will probably try to sell you on it because what kind of business would we be if we didn’t?!) but if you have one that your agents love and already know how to use, then maybe you should keep it! In that case, you’re probably looking for a new CRM or interactive presentation tool and maybe you are also in need of a transaction management tool or gifting service – and we can totally help you with that.
The options are endless. But it starts with you.
Change can be scary and bad. It can also be really, really good. MoxiWorks hasn’t gotten to over 60 brokerage clients, over 110,000 agents, and powering the LeadingRE Cloud without doing something right. We genuinely want to help. We want to make your brokerage everything you envision it to be. All we need is a place to start.
Curious what your brokerage solution could look like? Check out the variety of tools and services we have on our open platform and instead of daydreaming about the possibilities, pick up the phone (contact below) and call us! We’re happy to help. Always.
Robot real estate agents, bitcoin, and VR in 2018
By Tiana Baur
The next time you purchase a car, it very well might be a self-driving one. It’s a headline our eyes now only glance at because we’ve seen it so many times and it’s only a matter of time before it comes to fruition. We’re not only okay with that technology, we’re jazzed about it. We’ll all be able to work, read, and relax during our commutes and trust that we’ll get to our destination timely and in one piece. There’s foreshadowing of another technology too. One that would not only upset our industry, but would tear it to pieces, and that’s the tease of robots as real estate agents. It’s a viable conjecture, especially given how technology is now paving the way for the future of our industry. The problem is, the home buying journey has a very different barrier to trust and breaking down that wall will be close to impossible.
People got their heads out of the sand (some didn’t) and we’ve seen rapid change in the past couple of years. VR (virtual reality) tours are a “thing” homebuyers now expect when they’re house hunting. You can even pay your rent with bitcoin (crazy, right?). The one constant that our industry has always had, though, is that homebuyers choose an agent. That agent happens to be in the form of a human. And that will never change. The CEO of Compass even agrees with that.
Sure, some will be interested in a robot agent. We imagine Elon Musk himself would be eager to try out a robot instead of a human agent for his next transaction. The problem is, most of us are not Elon Musk. We have a comfort zone and although we step out of it more often than before, we stick to it when it comes to the biggest financial transaction we do in our entire lifetime. Robots may charge two percent commission instead of the typical five or six, but guess what? Consumers don’t care. Or, they don’t care enough to risk it. If they cared enough about that five or six percent, they’d be listing their homes by themselves or using Instant Offers (which, I’ve never heard of an actual situation where someone did).
Here’s why people choose people:
It’s emotional.
Extremely. Real estate agents serve as a sounding board and a therapist just as much as they do a trusted advisor. People want someone who will answer phone calls at midnight when the home seller is crying and stressed because something unforeseen went wrong last minute during the transaction. They want someone to send a bottle of champagne to congratulate them on their great home sale with a heartfelt note because they got through it together as a team. Robots don’t promise to hold their hand from the very beginning, all the way until they’ve moved and settled into their new home.
Buyers and sellers want to sit across from someone in a coffee shop and talk face-to-face. They want something tangible. They want to shake someone’s hand and know that person actually cares about them and their family and that they have feelings and blood running in their veins like they do theirs. Because that is how emotional a home transaction is.
It’s complex.
First time buyers all the way through home buying veterans use agents. Why? Because there is always a new situation, a new question, a new issue that pops up that they haven’t seen or dealt with before. Maybe it’s an issue with the mortgage company or maybe there was an issue with escrow. Maybe you just want some advice on what color to paint your living room before the house is listed. Whatever it is, the agent is prepared to handle it.
Let’s back up. AI probably has a place in real estate when it comes to scheduling, answering simple questions, etc. But it will never, ever replace the human connection that is found between a trusted advisor and their beloved clients.
RE/MAX just bought booj. Are you prepared for what’s next?
By York Baur, MoxiWorks CEO
2018 is looking to be the year of the mic drop. With the LeadingRE’s Cloud announcement recently behind us, subsequently comes another. RE/MAX acquired technology company, booj, in order to future-proof their stake in the industry. First of all, congrats to booj for this epic announcement and sale, it’s what every entrepreneur dreams about. I’d also like to congratulate the other end of the deal, RE/MAX, for embracing a great technology solution for their vast number of agents.
Now, for all the existing booj customers out there that are independent brokerages…
Chances are, you might not like that your technology is now controlled by someone perceived as your competition. There’s no way to sugar coat it. You may, as a result of this, want to change out all or part of the technology you have from booj, because you don’t know that you’ll continue to get everything you need from them. However, you still need to compete.
The truth is, an open platform is the only way to future-proof your brokerage against the rapidly-evolving technology space, especially when not everyone out there can afford to make investments into technology like SoftBank, Keller Williams, and RE/MAX can. The MoxiCloud not only future-proofs your brokerage, but it also gives you the next most important thing: Choice. It allows you to plug in the tools you already love and unplug the tools you no longer want – like a power strip. MoxiCloud can help you more so than any single-source product from a franchisor.
The MoxiCloud open platform, for example, now has over 40 integrated tools and services – DocuSign, Imprev, Intuit, Buyside, Offrs, Flipt – to name a few. Our brokerage clients get to pick any and all they wish to, and all their data, tools and services live in one place, working seamlessly with their roster, brokerage assets, CRM contacts, MLS data, and more. Our cloud grows every single day, since our existing and new brokerage clients are wanting to plug in more of the great tools that already work for them, allowing them to retain their current investments. A true win-win.
In the end, our goal is very specific: Make brokerages more profitable, by making their agents more productive.
We have and always will have the backs of the brokerage. Plain and simple. And we understand the need for their existence in the future, no matter how advanced technology becomes. There will never be a greater replacement than that of the human connection and the safety one feels when working with their trusted advisor: their real estate agent.
I hope all you independent brokerages out there reading this will take it to heart and not only consider what I’m saying, but pick up the phone and call us (the number is at the bottom of our site). Maybe you want some questions answered that you feel you won’t get candid answers for elsewhere. Maybe you want some more info on the MoxiCloud. Maybe you just want to know the lay of the land in all this tech mumbo jumbo. Whichever it is, we’re happy to take your call, no strings attached.
Introducing: Sisu, Accountability Software for Real Estate Agents
On the heels of our latest exciting announcement that MoxiWorks is powering LeadingRE’s new initiative, the LeadingRE Cloud, we’re now thrilled to welcome a new best-in-class tool the Moxi Cloud: Sisu – an accountability software solution for real estate agents.
Like MoxiWorks, Sisu isn’t just another tech company, its real estate roots run deep. Sisu began a few years ago when a team of real estate agents in Salt Lake City leveraged a system of disciplined tracking and analysis of agent activities to more than double their sales numbers. Recognizing the power of the system they had created, Sisu Founder and CEO, Brian Charlesworth, developed the system of accountability into full-fledged software that gamifies and visualizes the data to increase the top line revenue of agents.
Sisu is built to track sales performance and coach agents to success through powerful data. This data needs to be connected to contacts within a CRM, so agents can use it to grow their relationships. Enter Moxi Engage. The partnership between Sisu and Moxi creates a single point of entry and collaboration between the services. This way the data will be more clean, accurate, and easy to maintain.
Here’s how it works:
Visualize what is achievable
Sisu’s accountability software solution “doubles production with intuitive performance tracking, monitoring, leaderboards, and dashboards, and eliminates duplicate entry with real-time, real estate CRM data sharing.” According to Sisu, real estate agents that consistently track and know their daily sales activities and KPI’s increase sales by at LEAST 100%. As we like to say, the numbers will set you free.
See more, sell more
Sisu also has a mobile app that provides a competitive edge with contact, and appointment tracking and viewing, conversion ratio calculation, pipeline overview, and real-time GCI reporting. This means agents are constantly in the know and reminded of there they stand the steps they need to take to increase their bottom line.
Accountability through visibility
With a simple to use interface, and robust and dynamic sales performance dashboards, Sisu enforces accountability, which we all know is a key aspect when it comes to adoption. It displays real-time scoreboards and leaderboards throughout your brokerage and on your real estate agent’s phones, accelerating competition, creating a fun sales environment, and producing outstanding results.
Motivate, play, win
Inspire increased levels of team performance with a seamlessly linked, online community of peers while empowering them to track, analyze, compare, and filter their leaderboards to measure results. Sisu makes selling competitive, visual, fun and more importantly, highly productive.
With the sales competition in place, agents will be motivated to go out and drive results. With the data stored in the Moxi Cloud and across other brokerage plug and play tools and services solutions, they’ll have all the data they need to be effective. They’ll be able to track down expired listings and previous clients, and the software will automagically log all of their efforts and update the scoreboard.
We’ve said over and over again how powerful data is to your brokerage and your agents. Data is now the most sought-after and powerful commodity in the world. If you’re not using your brokerage data to the fullest, you’re missing out on higher productivity and of course, more profit.
We’re ecstatic to add another like-minded partner to our Moxi Cloud open platform that knows the importance of data. If you’re interested in adding Sisu to your brokerage power strip of tools and services, please contact your dedicated Moxi Account Manager and they’ll get you set up. Want to meet the brains behind Sisu? You can set that up here.
Find (and Keep) Your Talent
By Jillian Igarashi
It’s that time of year again – time for us to renew our gym memberships, swear off holiday desserts forever (or at least until next December), and set lofty, life-changing goals for ourselves. You may love or hate New Year’s resolutions, but no one can deny the importance of setting goals. Ask any brokerage owner what their goals are and sitting comfortably in the top five, year after year, is recruiting and retention. Setting the goal is half the battle. The rest is execution.
According to NAR, 84% of brokerages with four or more offices are actively recruiting. Large brokerages are under pressure to continue their growth, and everyone else must keep up. Therein lies the greatest challenge: execution under that pressure. How can an office manager recruit new agents while they’re juggling everything from helping close a million-dollar sale or unjamming a printer or negotiating to keep top talent? At the end of the day, an office manager may only have the time and energy to hit the button on a blast of traditional mass mailers to an Excel spreadsheet of candidates and pray something hits.
Introducing Moxi Talent
With that, MoxiWorks is excited to present the newest member to the platform: Moxi Talent. Moxi Talent is designed to help office managers and recruiters execute on this year’s resolutions through goal-setting, automation, and a consistent methodology to attract and hire agents. It is built on the core of Moxi Engage, the CRM and productivity tool that increases agent production by an average of 38%. Using Moxi Engage’s focus on goals and its integration with email contacts and calendar events, Moxi Talent is in a unique position to bring the same change in productivity to office managers’ recruiting pipeline and, eventually, retention efforts.
Moxi Talent requires managers and recruiters to set their goals before taking any other action. The goals are used by the system to keep managers focused on a disciplined methodology, despite the noise of daily office life. Best practices in the form of tasks help managers take the right action at the right time, such as posting to the agent’s LinkedIn profile, swinging by the agent’s broker open, or using Moxi Present as a vehicle for marketing materials, a strategy many of our clients are already using today.
Let Technology be Your Wingman
It doesn’t stop there. We’ll continue to expand the feature throughout this year, enabling managers to tell Moxi Talent the profile of their ideal recruit based on volume and the geography of the agent’s listings, which the tool will use to suggest the best candidate for the manager. Say goodbye to mind-numbing spreadsheets of data and hello to intelligent, automated recruiting leads.
Nothing makes us at Moxi happier than to grow with our brokerage clients, and we’re thrilled to take the next step in that continual growth with Moxi Talent, so brokerage owners and managers can make good on this year’s resolutions, unlike my unused gym membership.
Moxi Talent is currently in Beta. Find out more by clicking here.
Is eXp Realty Taking Your Agents?
eXp Realty is an agent-owned cloud brokerage. It is quoted as one of the “most innovative real estate companies in the world” by Inman News. At eXp, there are no desk fees, no royalty fees, and agents get to keep somewhere around 80-100% of their commissions. What’s more is they offer every single agent the opportunity to buy into the business and become a shareholder. A “we’re in it together” mentality, surely leaning towards trying to make traditional brokerages look bad. Never heard of them? They’re kind of a big deal. They’re listing agents for properties like these, so you can bet their agents know what they’re doing.
And they’re probably plucking some of your agents (or trying to).
eXp Realty is growing – and fast. Currently in 46 states across the country, they are further proof that clouds are winning. The company increased the number of agents and brokers on the eXp Realty platform by 171 percent to 6,511 agents in 2017, compared to their 2,401 agents in 2016. A 171 percent increase year over year is impressive and it’s alarming. How are traditional brokerages meant to combat this?
Time to get a cloud.
A cloud, or an “open platform” is what it takes to get on the same level as eXp and other cloud brokerages alike. An open platform uses the cloud to connect all of your brokerage systems. This means saying goodbye to tool fatigue and no freedom to change. With an open platform, you get to choose whichever tools you want and they work together – seamlessly, with one sign-in. What’s more is you can change the tools whenever you please, no pain involved. Think of it like a power strip where you can plug-and-play the tools and services you want, and unplug tools and services you aren’t happy with anymore. It’s simple, it’s the future, it’s what you need for your brokerage technology so you don’t end up with a bunch of tangled cords.
“Stop talking to me about clouds.”
You’re tired of hearing the term “cloud” and “brokerage platform,” we get it. While you’re annoyed with the technology industry and having to change and “disrupt” your brokerage, the rest of the world is wondering why the real estate industry is so incredibly far behind. Technology adoption in the industry has historically been depressingly slow, and there is no “tortoise and the hare” analogy that works here because the slow-to-adopt brokerages certainly have not won the race. In fact, many of them have shriveled up and died or are currently clinging on for dear life, losing their agents to cloud brokerages like Compass, eXp, and Keller Williams with the Keller Cloud.
“My brokerage is fine. It’s been fine the last 30 years and it will be fine the next 30.” Answer: We’ll look you up someday in the archaeology archives.
Compass is Coming to Your Town
By Tiana Baur
To recap quite possibly the most significant announcement of 2017 for our industry, Softbank invested a whopping $450 million into the new, shiny tech brokerage: Compass. Emphasis on the brokerage, emphasis on that dollar amount since it’s the largest investment into real estate technology ever, from the world’s largest technology investment fund. They basically did a mic drop to cap off an already crazy real estate tech announcement year. Needless to say, our CEO had some words.
What now?
So, Compass is now valued at $2.2 billion. Casual pocket change, am I right? On a serious note though, they aren’t just planning and raising money, they are doing and achieving. That alone makes this all the scarier.
A few months ago, CEO Robert Reffkin announced a 2020 by 2020 plan. Which meant they are going to expand into 10 new markets in the U.S. by 2020, and grab 20 percent of the market share in the 20 largest U.S. cities. The cities they’re expanding to being Seattle, San Diego, Phoenix, Dallas, Austin, Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
Only a couple exasperated brokerage breaths later, they announced they had ALREADY expanded to Chicago, rapidly growing from a team of 20 top tier agents they plucked from the competition. If that doesn’t make you want to vomit in your own shoes then I don’t know what will. This is real, and it’s terrifying for most brokerages out there.
How on earth do you compete with that?!
Chances are, you’re not going to get Softbank to invest millions upon millions into your brokerage. But that’s okay, because there is another way to survive and even become a stronger, more productive brokerage than you ever thought was possible.
The not-so-secret ingredient: an open platform. In fact, it’s not just an ingredient, it’s THE ingredient for brokerage success. Ever tried baking a cake without some type of flour? Pretty. Freaking. Awful. Think of an open platform as your brokerage’s flour. It provides the structure and strength, holding everything together, in one tasty package. You can add in nuts, chocolate chips, even peanut butter. The options are endless and it’s up to you to decide what is going to taste the best.
Take the Moxi Cloud open platform for example. We have over 40 tools and services – DocuSign, Imprev, Intuit, Buyside, Offrs, Flipt – to name a few. Our brokerage clients get to pick any and all they wish to, and all their data and tools and services are put together, working seamlessly with their roster, brokerage assets, CRM contacts, MLS data, and more.
Compass might be trying to make all their own software, but you don’t have to in order to provide your agents with the tools and services they’re craving. An open platform delivers higher flexibility, efficiency, and profitability to your brokerage and agents.
An open platform is the only way to future-proof your brokerage against the rapidly-evolving technology space. It’s the Compass killer. What are you waiting for? A Compass announcement in your neck of the woods?
