“Liniger said, “We owe Margaret our deepest gratitude for the contributions she has made over the last three decades. Her leadership during her tenure as CEO allowed us to emerge from the recent financial crisis as a stronger company and led us through an initial public offering. Due to Margaret’s management, our business is performing exceptionally well and we’re positioned to take advantage of the opportunities that lie ahead.”
Whoa! This is interesting a lot of levels. As many of you know Dave Linger went through some major health issues is the past few years. I remember being at the T3 Summit in Las Vegas earlier this year. In an interview with Swanepoel, Dave recounted part of his recent health scare, along with some other great stories. He got a standing ovation at the end. Dave is the real deal and a true bad ass. So I gotta believe this means his health is back. Good news for him, not so much for his competitors.
Nice scoop for RIS Media on this story. Although it seems like the nice bow they put on Margaret’s departure is a bit too perfect.
“The Spark Platform is the only way that (approved) real estate technology Developers can plug into 100+ MLSs via a RESO standards-driven listings API with one Terms of Use agreement , no up-front fees and gain product exposure with 100,000+ Agents via an App Store within the Agent’s MLS System.”
Not the post I was expecting to read from reading the title. I thought NAR’s Annual Conference had moved to Colorado.
So here’s the situation, you are packing up the booth and putting everything back in their boxes. If your marketing team was smart enough they included packing tape so you could tape all the boxes up.
But then you need scissors to cut the tape. Not anymore! Enter Scotch Tear-by-hand tape! Totally works too.
I’ve written about decreasing the “friction” of customers signing up for your products and services. My company still does a lot of transactions at live events (demos and trade shows). I found its much better to close deals at the event and not rely on them signing up when they get home.
To do this we still have to rely on paper order forms.
This is due to mostly crowd control issues. If a single presenter is doing a Cloud Streams demonstration to 40 people in a room there is no easy way for those attendees to sign up for the service asynchronously other than a paper order form.
I see more and more REALTORS coming to events with their digital devices, but filling out an online form by taping on a screen (whether an tablet or iPhone) is still a cumbersome process.
Yesterday Apple announced a brand new service called Apple Pay. They are also releasing an API for developers. With this service you can order online product with the Touch ID button on your iPhone. No forms to fill out, and a receipt is emailed you automatically.
Imagine the scenario at a presentation where after your demo you direct an attendee to a website address and have them click a choice of Monthly or Yearly Plan and then use Touch ID to sign up. That’s it. Boom.
I’m here at Greater Las Vegas Association of REALTORS MLS Technology Forum today and wanted to do a quick post on a few thoughts I had about trade shows.
1. VP MPH. Nothing will help your product pitch better than working a busy booth. You quickly learn what features/benefits are a hit or miss with the agents. This is invaluable especially when launching a new product like our Cloud Streams. Reactions I get here will also overflow to our website landing pages and marketing materials.
2. More vendors, more better. The MLS/Associations/Organizations that put together a good trade show gather together relevant vendors. Stephanie Hill has done a great job here of bringing together some top industry vendors and the agents can tell.
3. Agents are buying.
4. Agents will take anything that is not nailed down to your table. It’s like some sort of twisted Halloween. “Excuse me Ma’am, but those are my car keys you putting in your bag.” Sheeesh!
5. I still get a rush every time I make a sale. There is something about the face to face, overcoming objections, banter, back and forth, asking for the order and getting it, that I will always love.
I’m looking forward to attending Real Estate Connect in San Francisco next week. I’m participating on a couple things that I think are worth sharing.
CEO Summit
This is being held on Tuesday the 15th (a “pre-conference” event) I’ve been before and its a good mix of people. I’m scheduled to give 3 live interviews.
David Charron, CEO of MRIS Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia Steve Berkowitz, CEO of MOVE, Inc.
I did something similar at NAR Midyear that was a lot of fun. Brad has asked me to ask each of these guys some really “tough questions”. I’ve got a few, and really looking forward to mixing it up. (And if you have a few tough questions of your own hit me up via email or leave something in the comments.)
Marketing Track – “How to Create, Build and Launch Things People Want.”
Dan Woolley and I will also be co-presenting on the Marketing Track Thursday, “How to Create, Build and Launch Things People Want.” We will be joined by the super talented Michele Serro of Doorsteps (Swipe), Winston Welborn of Hawaii Life Real Estate. Marc Davison from 1000watt Consulting will be moderating.
Getting Dan on stage is like pulling teeth, so I’m really psyched to be able to show off the brains of our operation and share our creative process.
Looking forward to seeing everyone. Just email or DM me if you want to hook up.
I’ve been asked to conduct 3 interviews next week at the MLS Executive Session at NAR Midyear. The session is called – “The Big Three”, What Now?
I will be speaking with Curt Beardsley of Zillow, John Whitney of Trulia and Steve Berkowitz,CEO of Move, Inc./realtor.com
If you have any questions you would like me to ask, drop me an email. The interviews will be conducted separately.
The MLS Executive Session is co-chaired by Wes Wiggins and Chris Carrillo. It will be held Wednesday, May 14th at the Omni Shoreham Hotel – Regency Ballroom, Lower Level from 3:00PM to 5:00PM.
I was lucky enough to attend Clareity Consulting‘s MLS Executive Workshop last week. As usual, Gregg Larson put on a great event. A perfect mix of fun and learning (and great weather). Here’s a few highlights.
Of course a lot of the buzz was centered around Errol’s departure to Zillow. This was announced the first day of the conference and made some interesting conversations at the kickoff cocktail party. Not sure if Zillow’s timing on this was on purpose, but it certainly got everyone talking.
Gregg started off the conference by mentioning that we all thought that 2014 was going to be a transitional year and so far things are proving out that way.
Along with the normal shtick on pocket listings, syndication, REDPLAN, anti-scraping, I really liked the presentations about MLS providers focusing on their subscribers. Amy Geddes gave a great presentation on maximizing subscriber experience. Which along with Matt Cohen’s presentation on Improving Subscriber Communication and even Gregg’s daughter Amanda Larson got in the mix about using social media channels in business. Maybe its because I recently attended a Email Marketing Summit by Marketing Sherpa but Matt’s presentation really resonated with me, you should read his summary here. I mentioned via Twitter that I think there is room for a consulting agency just focused on helping MLS providers with membership communication. So important.
A lot of hub-hub was created by Jon Green‘s informal study of non-MLS listings. You can read Andrea’s article here at Inman News, although I think her title of “Study suggests MLS played little or no role in nearly half of 2013 home sales” is a bit sensational. The founder of “Producers Forum”, Eric Trailer, spoke about their agent network and advocated for an off-MLS listings network. I found his speaking style hard to follow. To me the issue of off-MLS listings are a fad, not a trend. As soon as the inventory creeps up to a normal level you’ll find these networks faded away to cocktails hours. In my opinion they serve more as a marketing vehicle for pretentious sellers and their agents.
Gregg also interviewed Dr. Michael Sklarz from Collateral Analytics. There has been some controversy about CA and having Michael there to take questions from the audience was a constructive thing. The main objections I heard were from MLS providers who didn’t think AVMs are the same as a BPOs or CMAs. Underlying some of that contreversy was that many of the brokers who are utilizing CA were not exactly being forthcoming on the usage of the data to MLS providers when requesting data. Whether this was due to ignorance or something else remains to be seen. One take-away, from a vendor’s perspective, is even if you are following all the rules, you have to make sure the clients who have contracted you are also doing the same.
Lisa Larson and Jeff Nieto did a bit of an “App Shoot-Out” that I thought was fun. About 80% of the apps they previewed I hadn’t heard about and most of them were really cool. I’m not sure if Lisa has published the list but maybe you can reach out to her or Jeff and get a copy.
Then of course was the presentation of the 13th Annual MLS Customer Satisfaction Survey. Matt kept the presentation short this year (which I liked) and just went over the highlights. In a nutshell LPS (now Black Knight Financial Services) and FBS are killing it. CoreLogic is dealing with some focus problems but promise to fix them by doubling down on Matrix. Rapattoni looks to be improving on overall customer satisfaction and Solid Earth is heading in the wrong direction, fast.
The event is also known for giving away some of the nicest raffle gifts. Many attendees left all types of the latest gadgets and gizmos.
Dan Sales, Lucky Winner!
Homes.com did something special this year I thought was a good idea. They gave away an all expenses paid return trip to conference next year. That includes, registration, airfare, and hotel. Dan Sale, CEO of the Capital Area REALTORS of Springfield, IL was the winner. A prize I’m sure every attendee, including me, would have loved to receive.
Many thanks to Gregg, Matt and Amanda for putting on a fantastic conference and their wonderful hospitality.
Looking forward to heading out to New York City next week for Inman Connect. I’m doing a “Quick Hits” preso on the main stage (Wednesday at 10:25am) on “The Best CRMs in the Business: what should you use?”.
I’m also going to be participating on a panel moderated by David Charron dubbed, “Who Owns What? The Protection of Intellectual Property in Today’s Market”.
Also on the panel will be: Ann Bailey, President, Pranix, Inc. Constance Freedman, Managing Director , Second Century Ventures, NAR Jay Gaskill, President, Real Estate Digital
For more information on the panel check out this video:
If you haven’t registered, and thinking of going let me know, I’ve got a link for a big discount.
