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It seems that exp agents pay only $50/month for their tech bundle including CINC access.
Is your assertion that users put their sensitive data about their sales pipeline, contacts, etc and this is shared with other agents and other real estate companies??? Do you mean that this is what you sign up for or you think it will just happen illegally?
CRM systems are commodities and do not provide differentiation (they may have in the 1990s but not today) and very few companies would even think about building one from scratch or hiring a third party company to build a custom one. The largest companies in the world use Salesforce.com for CRM and management of some of their most sensitive data (sales opps - including sensitive client data, etc). All in the cloud. if they decide to stop using it, they take their data. They own their data.
There's much more chance that something you build for yourself will become outdated as compared to a commercial package that always needs to evolve to remain competitive. And investment is shared across many companies that use it. Salesforce.com is investing huge money in AI, analytics, mobility, etc. And as big as they are, they have a whole ecosystem of vendors building tools for the platform.
You're concerned about competitors being involved in the system. Netflix and Amazon are arguably two of the fiercest competitors in any industry yet Netflix is run almost entirely on Amazon owned and managed infrastructure.
Successful tech based challengers to the established RE model will do so by orchestrating commercially available and open source tech, building a very small proprietary content and application layer, marketing it properly and weaving it together for the best agent and consumer experiences. Hiring armies of software developers to build proprietary software that really is just commodity will be the strategy of the losers, not the winners.
You have to remember . . . we're not talking about the general sales industry here. This is the RE sales industry. I've never heard of anyone using software likes SalesForce in RE. All the companies like C-Inc, Boom Town, Top Producer, LionDesk, etc., etc., etc. are much smaller companies than SalesForce and don't have the same resources nor the same size user base.
IMO you're using knowledge from one industry to judge a totally different industry.
As for what data is shared . . . I personally don't have access to that information. It may be detailed data like sales prices, names, phone numbers, etc. It may be higher level data that can be mined to create useful reports, etc. It's a question Gary brought up that personally I don't have all the answers to.
You have to remember . . . we're not talking about the general sales industry here. This is the RE sales industry. I've never heard of anyone using software likes SalesForce in RE. All the companies like C-Inc, Boom Town, Top Producer, LionDesk, etc., etc., etc. are much smaller companies than SalesForce and don't have the same resources nor the same size user base.
IMO you're using knowledge from one industry to judge a totally different industry.
As for what data is shared . . . I personally don't have access to that information. It may be detailed data like sales prices, names, phone numbers, etc. It may be higher level data that can be mined to create useful reports, etc. It's a question Gary brought up that personally I don't have all the answers to.
Fair points. Salesforce.com was just an example as I know that there are specialist systems (still) that are used for RE but similar in concept.
The data point is extremely important because there should be absolutely no ambiguity as to how your data is used and I doubt that there is any. You might agree to high level, anonymous data that is just aggregated (usually not harmful and beneficial to everyone). If there are serious data breaches or worse, companies illegally accessing data for competitive purposes, that's criminal and any technology company that plays like this will likely be out of business soon with its reputation down the toilet.
I'm not being argumentative with you as you seem to be just repeating Gary's views but charges that if you are an exp agent, your sensitive business data will be 'handed over to your competitors' is a very serious charge. Obviously an agent's sensitive data is one of the most important asset to them so such statements can be inflammatory and defamatory and should not be made lightly. Perhaps KW's user agreements are much more agent friendly or other specific factual differences with regards to data but from what you've said, it rather seems that the arguments are grounded in vague cloud privacy hysteria that was more seen 10+ years ago.
jm1982 real estate school teaches you how to pass the license test, not how to sell real estate. For that you need a broker/office that will teach you how to do it. Every broker will probably tell you they do that.
I would ask any broker a few basic questions and of course a ton more if you can.
Let me see your training calendar?
Let me see your training room?
What does the training costs?
If they don't have a calendar and they don't have a room, I ? if they can train you well.
I don't think most people are at the point yet where 100% online is the best method. Probably a better supplement or part of a combination.
Don't join any broker that says they will "give" you leads. You want them to teach you to get your own leads. Giving them to you will make you dependent on them. Generating them on your own will give you freedom.
I personally would want to know if they are profitable and growing, shrinking or holding their own. I would want to know what their future looks like if you can gather that.
Fair points. Salesforce.com was just an example as I know that there are specialist systems (still) that are used for RE but similar in concept.
If you boil it down enough all CRM's at their heart are just a database of personal information.
Quote:
Originally Posted by just_because
The data point is extremely important because there should be absolutely no ambiguity as to how your data is used and I doubt that there is any. You might agree to high level, anonymous data that is just aggregated (usually not harmful and beneficial to everyone). If there are serious data breaches or worse, companies illegally accessing data for competitive purposes, that's criminal and any technology company that plays like this will likely be out of business soon with its reputation down the toilet.
I wouldn't doubt that with any technology an agent signs on for CRM or otherwise there is a clearly spelled agreement as to how their data is handled. I also wouldn't doubt that it's in the fine print somewhere and that 99.9% of agents couldn't tell me how their data is being used by the technology companies they've contracted with.
I'd be surprised if the data was being blatantly shared in detail but I wouldn't doubt that it's being mined in order to gain a competitive advantage. Gary mentioned DotLoop as a bolt on piece of technology and went out of his way to say that KW's contract with DotLoop precludes them from sharing our transaction data with anyone which would include their parent company, Zillow.
Quote:
Originally Posted by just_because
I'm not being argumentative with you as you seem to be just repeating Gary's views but charges that if you are an exp agent, your sensitive business data will be 'handed over to your competitors' is a very serious charge. Obviously an agent's sensitive data is one of the most important asset to them so such statements can be inflammatory and defamatory and should not be made lightly. Perhaps KW's user agreements are much more agent friendly or other specific factual differences with regards to data but from what you've said, it rather seems that the arguments are grounded in vague cloud privacy hysteria that was more seen 10+ years ago.
I don't think you're being argumentative. We're just having a discussion here about data. As you mention, I'm really just relaying what Gary said. I wouldn't doubt that he's had a few contracts come across his desk where the technology partner insisted on owning the software they were asking him to pay for and owning the data his company would be inputting into the software.
I don't think this is hysteria because I don't believe he's referencing blatant data sharing. The impression I got was that he was more talking about mining that data and sharing the insights gained with the competition. Let's talk about Google for a second . . . they basically own your data. They have access to your email, your search history, etc. basically they know more about you than you do. They happily share this data with anyone willing to pay for it. Is it blatantly shared? No. They don't hand over your name and contact info to advertisers but through their Google Ad Words service they happily use that data to target ads at you. So, data is a very powerful asset that people are willing to pay for whether we're talking about the base data or the results of mining that data it doesn't really matter.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TeamLynn
Don't join any broker that says they will "give" you leads. You want them to teach you to get your own leads. Giving them to you will make you dependent on them. Generating them on your own will give you freedom.
If you boil it down enough all CRM's at their heart are just a database of personal information.
It's a commodity and anyone, big or small, can get it without investment (hence why most companies just use the same systems - SF.com, MS Dynamics, or specialist RE systems in that industry). This is why I questioned KW's strategy of building a proprietary CRM (if that's what they are doing). On one hand you're reinventing the wheel and on the other hand, even KW can't afford to build a competitive CRM toolset to rival the leading commercial packages with fast changing features like mobility support, AI, digital marketing tools, all kinds of things like direct integration with Uber, and whatever else for today and what comes tomorrow. Salesforce (just an example) has infinitely larger technology investment resources. And they ARE a technology company, not a company hoping to evolve to be a technology company. CRM is just an example here to illustrate the philosophy of building and owning vs using cloud applications. Could be any kind of business system.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MikePRU
I wouldn't doubt that with any technology an agent signs on for CRM or otherwise there is a clearly spelled agreement as to how their data is handled. I also wouldn't doubt that it's in the fine print somewhere and that 99.9% of agents couldn't tell me how their data is being used by the technology companies they've contracted with.
I'd be surprised if the data was being blatantly shared in detail but I wouldn't doubt that it's being mined in order to gain a competitive advantage. Gary mentioned DotLoop as a bolt on piece of technology and went out of his way to say that KW's contract with DotLoop precludes them from sharing our transaction data with anyone which would include their parent company, Zillow.
Agents should understand how their customer and transaction data is used regardless of who runs the systems. Even if a broker/franchise does not use external/cloud systems, I bet most agents don't know how their data is used, who can access it, etc. From an agent point of view, the issues are the same and as long as it goes outside of their personally owned laptop or their notepad they need to understand that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MikePRU
I don't think you're being argumentative. We're just having a discussion here about data. As you mention, I'm really just relaying what Gary said. I wouldn't doubt that he's had a few contracts come across his desk where the technology partner insisted on owning the software they were asking him to pay for and owning the data his company would be inputting into the software.
I don't think this is hysteria because I don't believe he's referencing blatant data sharing. The impression I got was that he was more talking about mining that data and sharing the insights gained with the competition. Let's talk about Google for a second . . . they basically own your data. They have access to your email, your search history, etc. basically they know more about you than you do. They happily share this data with anyone willing to pay for it. Is it blatantly shared? No. They don't hand over your name and contact info to advertisers but through their Google Ad Words service they happily use that data to target ads at you. So, data is a very powerful asset that people are willing to pay for whether we're talking about the base data or the results of mining that data it doesn't really matter.
OK, what you said could have easily been misunderstood in a hysterical way - "your data is handed over to your competitors". You also raised the issue of what happens to the agent's data when the agent leaves the firm. This has nothing to do with who runs the system and is a question/concern even if the systems are entirely owned and run by the broker.
Owning data in cloud systems is the norm and there are industry standards for these things. The industry knows that it must be very careful or the whole cloud software momentum can be killed with just one high profile misstep. Owning all of your software on your balance sheet is increasingly not the norm. It's my opinion that a strategy of building all kinds of custom built software is generally not a good strategy and it is old fashioned. Capital intensive, high fixed costs, inflexible. Even the most conservative companies (banks, insurers, etc) make heavy use of things like salesforce.com for very sensitive competitive data, Workday for very sensitive HR data, etc. They run data/analytics processes on open source software running on Amazon's cloud, etc. Most businesses do not want to be in the business of building and running data centers, maintaining all kinds of applications and upgrades, making sure your databases and OSs are compatible as you upgrade, patches, security, etc. This is increasingly looking like a company with a strategy to generate its own electricity.
The point about allowing your company's data to be aggregated and mined for market insights, etc which are made available to all users or subscribers, etc is more of a philosophical one. Usually when you share data for these purposes, you get benefit back. Companies used to think that all their magic happened within their walls. That's a decades-old mentality. As with everything in business, it's complicated and the devil is in the detail but I'm surprised that Gary is, on one hand, ratcheting up the "we're a technology company" language and at the same time appearing to embrace a very old school, insular technology philosophy (custom build most things, own your own software IP, internal data vs. open industry data, etc.).
This is not a slam on KW which appears to be an admirable company. Just a reaction to your comments on their technology strategy.
Speaking of data being shared , some how brokerages including Keller Williams obtained my name and mailing address and knew I was taking the real estate exam . KW’s material was definitely the best quality .
I don’t remember saying specifically I wanted to share the info, but it might of been in fine print . Do they buy the data .. Or is the data public record ?
jm1982 real estate school teaches you how to pass the license test, not how to sell real estate. For that you need a broker/office that will teach you how to do it. Every broker will probably tell you they do that.
I would ask any broker a few basic questions and of course a ton more if you can.
Let me see your training calendar?
Let me see your training room?
What does the training costs?
If they don't have a calendar and they don't have a room, I ? if they can train you well.
I don't think most people are at the point yet where 100% online is the best method. Probably a better supplement or part of a combination.
Don't join any broker that says they will "give" you leads. You want them to teach you to get your own leads. Giving them to you will make you dependent on them. Generating them on your own will give you freedom.
I personally would want to know if they are profitable and growing, shrinking or holding their own. I would want to know what their future looks like if you can gather that.
Good questions to ask , thanks
So you’re telling me I won’t have a shot at the Glengary leads ? ... hopefully a brand new Cadillac is not out of the question.
This is a good point. In most businesses you are really in the marketing business .
I sold my home late last year through a top producing broker in the area . He’s been in business since the late 70s but spends he said over $30,000 a month on marketing .
So you’re telling me I won’t have a shot at the Glengary leads ? ... hopefully a brand new Cadillac is not out of the question.
This is a good point. In most businesses you are really in the marketing business .
I sold my home late last year through a top producing broker in the area . He’s been in business since the late 70s but spends he said over $30,000 a month on marketing .
The synergies of a good firm should deliver traffic and inquiries that will be distributed.
As a newbie, don't look for management to hand you contacts that a more experienced agent will be more likely to serve better, maybe to close at higher percentages.
Any good firm should develop enough traffic from the aggregate associates, there should be business to offer. Just don't make it a cornerstone of your business plan, ever.
But, the synergies of many agents working under one Brand/Mark should bring traffic, virtual or on foot, and should also make development of a book of business easier.
LOL
If training includes playing of clips from Glengarry Glen Ross, run away.
That is "Tin Men" stuff....
I lean toward traditional brokerage, brick and mortar, particularly for newbies.
Good luck with making a good choice right out of the chute!
Speaking of data being shared , some how brokerages including Keller Williams obtained my name and mailing address and knew I was taking the real estate exam . KW’s material was definitely the best quality .
I don’t remember saying specifically I wanted to share the info, but it might of been in fine print . Do they buy the data .. Or is the data public record ?
I don't know how it works in your state, but here in MA you can buy a list of new licensees from the state licensing board. Perhaps in your state, they sell your name once you apply for the test.
One thing I was wondering . I know some of these brick and mortar franchise locations have hundreds of agents when you look at their roster on the website .
I’m guessing that not each agent has a dedicated desk or work space ?
It’s more like a “co working space” or something? Or do they offer a dedicated space for an additional fee or something ?
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