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Real Estate 2.0: Broker Turns to MoxiWorks for Creating Integrated Solution
As seen in RISMedia’s online magazine.
By Jameson Doris
As principal broker/owner of Mississippi-based eAgent Realty, Justin Allen is intimately aware of the main problems agents regularly face in this ever-changing real estate landscape. Being in the industry for some 17 years, those issues have changed, but Allen notes three main struggles agents are facing today.
The first two are that the 6% commission is on the chopping block since the listing agent’s tasks can now be largely automated with new options for sellers arriving every day, and the fact that developing your own brand as an agent is harder than ever.
Thirdly, many agents have to do double data entry since the technology on the brokerage level is often subpar and not integrated. In order to be more efficient, many agents end up purchasing their own tools for lead generation, CRM, CMAs, websites, transaction management—the list goes on and on.
These unwanted expenses all add up, which led Allen to take a step back. After much consideration, he determined that what the industry needed was a much more efficient model where the agent could strike out on their own and develop their own brand without the burdensome costs associated with doing so.
“Within a short period of time we had this new model figured out, but needed a software company to help build the intranet that it would take to roll out this new, non-traditional partnership between ourselves and entrepreneurial-minded agents,” says Allen.
That’s when he found MoxiWorks, a company that already had an excellent handle on the integration issue that many agents face. Thanks to the MoxiCloud, real estate professionals are able to integrate various tech partners so all of their tools seamlessly work together. This also lets folks use a single sign-on (SSO) for access, saving time and limiting double data entry.
eAgent Realty Owners, Justin Allen and Darlene Allen
“The service from MoxiWorks was amazing and in just a few short months, we had an intranet that could act like a network where we could easily connect different vendors,” says Allen. “Having a weekly conference call with our dedicated account manager from MoxiWorks made it easy to stay on task and get a lot accomplished.”
With MoxiWorks on board, Allen was able to face the other two issues agents deal with head on. Allen repurposed his office into what he calls a “Synergy Office” where other brokers have access for a low monthly fee—which took care of the need for their own office space. And for branding, to remove the guesswork, he came up with two different branding options that brokers can choose from.
“Incorporating a partner like MoxiWorks gave us the ability to create something new for the industry and launch an evolution for the next generation of entrepreneurs who have staked their claim in this new world we call Real Estate 2.0,” Allen says. “More importantly, our new partnership with MoxiWorks has changed the team dynamic within our new evolved office.”
He adds that the support his office has received from MoxiWorks through regular phone calls and webinars for the entire brokerage with his local account manager, Melissa Anderson, has been integral to his brokerage’s innovation, enthusiasm and overall growth.
“MoxiWorks has not only exceeded our needs and expectations, but was the only company we could find that even came close to being able to assist us in achieving our vision,” says Allen.
For more information, please visit www.moxiworks.com.
Real Estate Agents: Stay Safe with Revolar Wearable Tech
By Maddie Jostol, Senior Marketing Manager
There are too many headlines about real estate agents feeling unsafe in their jobs. By the nature of the job, real estate agents are often alone, in unfamiliar areas, in public, and on-the-go. Unfortunately, there is a constant stream of stories of agents being targets of violence or harassment.
There are many steps you can take to ensure you’re safe while going about your daily grind, such as:
- Taking self-defense lessons
- The buddy system
- Safety technology
- Use your brokerage office for meetings with new clients
- Only show properties before dark
When you’re going into a vacant home, when you’re in an unfamiliar neighborhood, when you’re meeting with somebody new, or when you’re walking alone at night. Whether the situation is perfectly safe or not, it’s important to have peace of mind.
Everything MoxiWorks does is powered by the drive to make real estate a prosperous business to be in, from integrating all of a brokerage’s technology to reduce hassle, to helping you agents manage their database and taking the pain out of Facebook advertising. MoxiWorks is committed to making real estate agents more successful, and that means enabling you to do your everyday job with more ease. Feeling safe in your job and in your everyday life is not a perk, but a necessity.
So, we set out to find a way to help. Even though we aren’t experts in the field of physical safety, we knew those experts were out there and we knew there had to be something we could do. We partnered up with Revolar, an innovative safety device company, to help extend peace of mind to as many real estate agents across the U.S. as possible.
Through the end of April, you can get 45% off your Revolar Instinct purchase by using the promo code “moxiworks” at checkout.
Disclaimer: MoxiWorks is not making a dime off this partnership. It is not an affiliate marketing trap, or a perk for us, but truly an effort to give back to the community in which we operate, and it turns out Revolar wanted to do the same.
Revolar creates personal safety devices that connect you to emergency contacts with the click of a button. It’s a small piece of wearable technology syncs with your smartphone via Bluetooth technology. The simple 1-2-3 click alert system makes it easy to check in or request help in situations where you might not have the time to fish for your phone to call or text. The three types of alerts, each with a customizable message, is sent to your emergency contacts when you click the safety button. Whether it’s a check-in, an uneasy feeling, or an emergency, your designated contacts will receive your pre-set message via text, along with your GPS location so they can ensure you make it to your destination safely.
While we hope you never have to use it, we do hope that it gives you peace of mind and comfort as you go to work every day with the comfort of knowing you can reach someone for help if you need to. Take advantage of this promotion, stay safe, and know that MoxiWorks has your back.
NPS Score: How Our Clients Think We Measure Up
By Nathan Losch, Tech Support Team Lead
What does a dream vacation look like to you? In the summer of 2016, I took my dream vacation, traveling all over Spain for three months. I saw La Alhambra in Granada, the Prado Museum in Madrid, La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, hiked along the coast line, and ate delicious meals while conversing with fantastic people. It was an amazing trip, with just one exception.
Being an impromptu type of person, I did not plan my hotel arrangements ahead of time. There were days where I didn’t know where I would be sleeping that night. This led to a wide variety of hotels, hostels, and host families gracing me with their hospitality. Many of them were amazing, but there were a few that I would not choose to go back to.
I wasn’t completely lazy in choosing my accommodations. I looked at the pictures of the places online and made sure all of the basic requirements for what I needed were included. Looking back on my experience, the places I enjoyed vs the places I disliked were similar in many ways. The one major difference was that the good ones had better service.
My favorite accommodation from the trip was in Madrid. Not only did I get a bed, breakfast, and somebody to give me a key at my arrival, but the hostel provided other services as well. Every morning, one of the employees gave a free guided walking tour of the city. This helped me so much with understanding Madrid, with its labyrinthian layout and its fascinating history. This paved the way for me to better enjoy the statues I saw around town, the artwork in museums, and many of the conversational references made by the locals. Without this guided tour, my overall Madrid experience wouldn’t have been as strong.
Contrast that experience with my experience in San Sebastian. I arrived at the hostel, got my key and a map, and was told “Welcome to San Sebastian!” I didn’t have any context of the town’s history or its layout, and wandered around aimlessly. San Sebastian was pretty, but I didn’t enjoy myself there nearly as much as I did in Madrid, especially after the initial novelty of exploration wore off.
You may be asking, “Okay Nathan, you went to Spain. Good for you. Why does this matter?” The answer is that getting good service and quality assistance can drastically improve your experience with something, whether it be traveling in a foreign country or working with real estate technology. Just as I rave to all my friends about Madrid in large part due to the service provided by the hostel, MoxiWorks’ customers rave about MoxiWorks in large part because of the service our Support team provides.
One of the metrics we track at MoxiWorks is the Net Promoter score. The NPS score asks, “How likely are you to recommend MoxiWorks to a friend or colleague?” Responses are sorted into three categories: promoter, neutral, and detractor. The percentage of detractors is subtracted from the percentage of promoters, and that gives you your NPS score. Anything above 50 is seen as outstanding, and MoxiWorks has been consistently sitting at an NPS score of 60.
How have we managed this? Sure our products look nice and are useful for agents, but we also are equipped to help out when needed. Are your listings appearing out of order on your presentation? Our support team can help you out! Do you need help setting up Neighborhood News or Listing Announcements? We’re eager to assist! Having trouble getting your custom domain to redirect to your website? We’re pros at getting this turned around!
I maximized my experience traveling in Madrid by having access to a local expert who could show me the ins and outs of the town. Agents can maximize their experience within MoxiWorks by using our local experts, the MoxiWorks support team.
An Open Letter to Compass From a CEO
Dear Compass,
I have to call you out on your boastful approach to an industry that we all know and love. While we agree that there’s a great opportunity to employ technology in ways to make both the consumer and agent experience better, we don’t think you need to resort to the trash-talking and grandstanding that we’ve heard from you – you’re better than that, and frankly we don’t want you to tarnish an industry that has funded the creation of the very technologies you now claim credit for.
You claim to have started the tech talk in real estate. In your recent LinkedIn post titled Before Compass, Technology Was Barely Mentioned in Real Estate you said: “As it relates to technology, Compass truly revolutionized an industry that had become complacent and had fallen behind terribly.” In just a few words, you risk losing your credibility. The first wave of brokerage tech took place in the 1990’s. For instance, Windermere Real Estate, just one example of many, launched Windermere.com in 1995, creating the first known brokerage website, and added a complete suite of agent tools by 2000.
Since then, Windermere, Long & Foster and Howard Hanna have funded MoxiWorks, whose platform and tools now help make 60 brokerages and 110,000 agents better at what they do. Other obvious examples of innovative technology use in real estate include Zillow (founded in 2006), Redfin (2004), and the long list of startups that have been hard at work for decades, funded by hundreds of millions in capital that was invested prior to your founding.
And stated by your head of product Eytan Seidman in his recent Built In Chicago interview, Compass claims to be “the first and only company to bring engineers together with agents under one roof.” Yet Windermere, Long & Foster, Howard Hanna and countless other leading brokerages have had software engineers and agents working side-by-side in their brokerages to evolve real estate technology since the mid-1990s, developing the technologies, data exchange mechanisms, and standards you now rely on.
You claim to create all your own technology. And speaking of untruths, your CEO Robert Reffkin has publicly stated, “We build everything in house, and all the tools and support is in house.” But anyone can look at the websites you run and see that they’re licensed from MoPro, that you’ve licensed MailChimp as your email marketing tool, and that you licensed Honey for your internal social network. These are all fine choices, but you don’t “build everything in house,” so why the distortion?
Your CEO Robert Reffkin recently claimed in a live interview on CNBC that Compass “just launched Seattle five weeks ago and we already have 5% market share.” We took it upon ourselves to do a deep dive into the data – the Moxi Cloud Open Platform now contains the data for 90% of the home sale footprint of the United States, so like everyone out there with access to MLS data, we can calculate your actual market share in any of your markets. For example, that data shows that for the Seattle metro area, the best you could claim is 0.7% of transactions where Compass was either the listing or selling agent. That’s a far cry from the 5% you claimed. Your CEO Reffkin also said Compass “is the only company empowering agents.” That’s not credible, so why say it other than to antagonize the industry you’re clearly a part of, and in business with on the other side of many of your transactions?
You say that your goal is to “improve the lives of agents.” You pay six figure signing bonuses “to less than 10% of your agents” and claim 98% retention, yet notable agents flee to their former brokerage as soon as the contract is up. We did a deep dive into that data too. For agents that joined Compass any time after January 1, 2016 and have left Compass since, the average tenure was only 245 days.
Bottom line. The tech stack you tout is something every other brokerage can quite literally replicate on the open market – many already have. Compass may not be a brokerage that is great at building technology (that has yet to be seen), but you are a brokerage that is great at integrating the technology you buy, and you happen to build some of your own tools too. That sounds like Windermere, Long & Foster and others before they recognized that choosing the best mix of tools from the vendors that use the $1B of capital invested annually into real estate technology was a better strategy.
Side note to all the brokerages out there: You are investing in tech. Keep your independence. If you haven’t already, choose a platform, whether that’s from MoxiWorks or from any one of our worthy competitors and mix the unique set of agent tools that match your brokerage value proposition and business style. That’s all that Compass has done, only their platform isn’t open, which means they don’t have the flexibility you’ll have.
Compass’ strength of integration is one MoxiWorks has already built and established – nothing new here. The Moxi Cloud has been available to our customers for exactly this purpose for three years and has over 40 partner companies whose products work with it, sharing and contributing to the broker and agent data in the platform for the benefit of all. And we’re not the only ones – many of our competitors have similar abilities, and brokerages are mixing their unique blend of technology to support their value propositions just like you are.
We set out to better the industry, not terrify it or antagonize it. Consider this open letter an invitation. Consider it an opportunity for you to set the record straight.
Candidly,
York Baur, CEO of MoxiWorks
Checkout more of the data at moxiworks.com/compass.
To Worry or Not to Worry: Blockchain’s Role in Real Estate
By Tiana Baur, Content Marketing Manager
Blockchain, Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies…what’s the difference? Why does it matter? What does it mean for our future? It feels like the topic of the year regardless of the industry you’re in. Earlier in the year we wrote an article on cryptocurrencies in the real estate world; buying homes and paying rent with digital currency. While some are splitting up a transaction to use some cryptocurrencies, others are doing the entire transaction via cryptocurrency. There’s even a “Blockchain real estate platform” called ShelterZoom that just announced their application is live in over 10 states.
It’s all happening very quickly, but it’s important to make sure we’re all caught up on the basics. Let’s start here:
Cryptocurrency: Digital currency, exchanged and traded over the internet. They’re designed to create a more secure route for trading, and more secure documentation of who traded what, when.
Bitcoin: A decentralized cryptocurrency, that works without a central bank, allowing for less restrictions. It’s the most well-known cryptocurrency.
Blockchain: The network and ecosystem in which bitcoin sends and transfers money on. It’s the foundation that powers Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies.
The gist, is that this network is public and can be used to transact anywhere in the world without a bank or “middleman.” It’s also cheaper to do the transaction on Blockchain compared to the traditional way. Our favorite way description of how it all works:
“Imagine that you and your best friend Bob are standing on a stage in an auditorium, and there are 1,000 people in the audience. In front of these 1,000 people, you hand your car keys to Bob, and Bob hands you his Rolex. You declare, “Bob, you now own my car.”
Bob declares back to you, “You now own my Rolex.” There are 1,000 witnesses who can each declare, without doubt, that your car now belongs to Bob, and the Rolex belongs to you. If anyone in the audience later tells a conflicting account of who owns the car or the Rolex, the other 999 people will refute it. And, if you take a spare set of your keys and try to give that same car to someone else, the 1,000 audience members will confirm that Bob owns the car, as each of them witnessed the “transaction.”’ (Forbes, 2018)
While some may say they don’t feel comfortable using Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, or don’t trust the network Blockchain itself, others will swear by its innovation in security. The thing is, if you buy a house with bitcoin, you’re technically still buying it in cash, it’s just being converted into a cryptocurrency first. So, how will Blockchain affect the industry as we know it?
Buying/Selling
Before you write it off, real estate transactions could get a whole lot easier. Not only that, but they could get a lot more secure as well. With accurate data and efficiency as its strengths, Blockchain will eliminate the need for a third party; no more waiting for bank wires and checks to clear. On Blockchain, every user has a unique identity via cryptocurrency, meaning financial info can be shared securely to other parties, making the Escrow process a walk in the park.
MLS
As we all know, the MLSs across the nation are tremendously scattered and fragmented. Each one has different restrictions, making it hard to compare data and find trends. While others in the industry, such as Upstream, are trying to solve this issue, Blockchain technology could be the single point of truth that fixes the MLS problem. Secure, nationwide data, with real-time access to property information, what’s not to love?
Records
Titles can be hard to access. Blockchain is starting to change this, with its ability to be a record-keeper for any kind of transaction out there. Smart contracts, personal records and credit history, trademarks, elections, titles – you name it. That means it could also provide a central database for all property titles, saying goodbye to paper titles for good.
In the future where Blockchain rules the land, real estate professionals will actually thrive in it. This technology will only improve the industry and lives of those in it; it’s not a technology you need to be afraid of. We say, learn as much as you can on the topic, stay up-to-date, and get involved hands-on as early as you can. For every one person who is against a decentralized currency, there are two more who are about to hop on the bandwagon.
82% of MoxiWorks Clients Make the Swanepoel Mega 1000
By Tiana Baur
Photo via t360
The Swanepoel Mega 1000 just came out and we are thrilled to see so many of our amazing clients on it! Of course, we couldn’t pass up an opportunity to give everyone a special shout out (and we mean everyone). After all, 45 of our 55 clients made the list!
For those of you who may not be familiar, this is the annual analysis of brokerages, franchisors and real estate holding companies that Swanepoel kicks out – and because of that, it’s kind of a big deal. So, without further ado… here are our lovely clients that made the Swanepoel Mega 1000 this year.
For the Top 20 Franchisors category, four (20%) are our clients, including:
– Windermere Real Estate
– Realty ONE Group
– Howard Hanna Real Estate
– Crye-Leike
In the Top 20 Holding Companies category, eight (40%) are our clients, including:
– Windermere Real Estate Services
– HomeServices of America
– Realogy Holdings Corp
– Realty ONE Group
– Hanna Holdings
– Pacific Union International
– William Raveis Real Estate
– @properties
In the top 150 of the Mega 1000, 22 (40%) of our 55 clients made the list, including:
1. NRT
2. HomeServices of America
3. Howard Hanna Real Estate
4. Realty ONE Group
5. Pacific Union International
6. William Raveis Real Estate
7. @properties
8. Crye-Leike Realtors
9. Sereno Group
10. Watson Realty
11. Daniel Gale Sotheby’s Realty
12. Lyon Real Estate
13. Michael Saunders & Company
14. Realty Austin
15. J. Rockcliff Realtors
16. Zephyr Real Estate
17. Paragon Real Estate Group
18. Century 21 M&M and Associates
19. Better Homes & Gardens Rand Realty
20. Michael Bean Group
21. Carrington Real Estate Services
22. Gibson Sotheby’s Realty
And included in the Mega 1000 in total, 45 (82%) of our 55 clients made the list!
23. Better Homes & Gardens Reliance Partners
24. RE/MAX of Boulder
25. Berkshire Hathaway HS Verani Realty
26. Chase International Real Estate
27. Willis Allen Real Estate
28. McGuire Real Estate
29. J.B. Goodwin
30. Podley Properties
31. RE/MAX Metro
32. John Greene Enterprises
33. Realty ONE Group Complete
34. Keller Williams Sacramento
35. Berkshire Hathaway HS Verani Realty
36. Keller Williams Santa Rosa
37. Four Seasons Sotheby’s Realty
38. Jim Maloof
39. Kinlin Grover, Page Taft, & Randall Realtors
40. Coldwell Banker Kappel Gateway Realty
41. Phyllis Browning Company
42. Weidel Real Estate
43. Cressy & Everett
44. RE/MAX Direct
45. Terra Firma Global Partners
Congrats to all of these amazing companies! It’s a pleasure to work with you and evolve real estate technology together. We can’t wait to see what the future has in store for each and every one of you!
How MoxiWorks Empowers Its Employees
By Tom Shively
What attracted me to MoxiWorks was the level of collaboration that’s expected from every department. Upon first starting, I was asked how I felt about working with many, if not all, of the other teams here and if working as a part of a dynamic fast-paced team was something I could excel at doing. Fast forward two years and I can honestly say this experience has lived up to the promise.
One of the greatest parts about working at Moxi is if you have a fun, creative idea, it is encouraged you run with it. I have been at a number of tech companies and nowhere else has had an atmosphere of not only collaboration, but encouragement to think outside the box, outside the building, and outside your comfort zone.
It had been about five months after I started as Moxi’s trainer that I was sent across the country to host a series of talks teaching agents about our products. The event went spectacularly well, in no small part because of the teamwork our office has. On this trip I was joined by Senior Account Manager, Daniel Bailey, and our Manager of Product, Jillian Igarashi and the strengths of these two became obvious very quickly. Daniel can talk to anyone, about anything, at any time, and Jillian has an encyclopedic knowledge of our products and what’s coming! It was because of these two that this conference went so well.
Before I left I realized many people don’t know what happens when we travel into the field to present. So, I decided to bring my camera and film what happened, so I could create a recap video for the rest of the office to see what we accomplished. While on the trip I filmed all the different aspects of a Real Estate conference from our booth to the classes we taught and the travel from coast to coast. When I got home, I was able to piece together a story I thought would be interesting for the rest of the company to see.
The response I got was nothing like I could have imagined. I first sent the video to the executive team who asked if they could show it at our “All Hands” meeting later that day so the whole company could see it. The rest of the company seemed excited to see what happens when we go into the field and the response the industry has to our products. It was because of this positive response, I have continued to create videos for the company.
You see, our company has a mantra. “Think outside the building,” and nowhere is this more apparent than our community service day each year. Moxi shuts down for an entire day, takes all 70 techies and rolls up our collective sleeves to help Ryther. Before we made our way over, I was asked if I could bring my camera to capture some of the day. I agreed without hesitation and began shooting the moment we got there. Being able to speak with the staff and tour the facility to see what impact Moxi can make in helping the lives of the people in our community can only be described as extraordinary.
Making the video for this day was one of the most rewarding projects I have had the pleasure of creating. None of this would be possible without the support of Moxi as a whole, and the ability to accept a mentality that doesn’t just focus on what comes across your desk but is limited only by your creativity. Moxi empowers its employees to do better, follow your goals, and think outside the building, where ever that may be.
Watch Tom’s Community Service Day video below!
The Power of Best-In-Class for Your Brokerage Solution
By Marc Chouaniere, VP of Marketing, MoxiWorks
It’s no accident that three of the largest and most successful regional real estate brokerages in the U.S. use MoxiWorks – which we extend to help 72 other independent brokerages as well. We pride ourselves on providing best-in-class tools and services to our clients, but what does that mean? Best-in-Class is a set of superior solutions (an entire toolbox) for a given market vs Best-of Breed which is a single tool (a hammer).
While I’m still learning about the intricacies of the real estate industry (I come from a fairly diverse software background), I am very familiar with best-in-class or best-of-breed technology solutions. Best-in-class simply means; Your product or service is what your customers revere as superior and the standard by which all others aspire to. You are the highest level of quality, the benchmark of top performance, the best of the best. Often you are the first to innovate and continually lead in your respective category. I was fortunate to have had worked at Microsoft early in my career to engrain a solid sense of high standards in building and maintaining best-in-class discipline in product execution and team leadership. However, small companies can also quickly catapult themselves to best-of-breed, as is the case with my recent experience at Icertis in the enterprise contract management space. Getting to this level takes deep focus and commitment but staying at the top can be equally as challenging. MoxiWorks was built by agents and brokers that live and breathe real estate every day to deliver one thing; best-in-class.
How we became best-in-class
Best-of-class can be achieved in many ways. At MoxiWorks, our recipe for success comes from a deep connection to real estate (being born out of Windermere), a passion for improving the experience for our agent and broker customers, and a focus on thinking about what’s the next innovation we can bring to our products. This, coupled with a leadership team that hires and nurtures the best talent with the insight to know how to shape the right course or to get out of the way when people need the freedom to push the boundaries of convention. Additionally, we think about the whole market. We align with select partners that benefit the entire ecosystem since we know that no company that is best-in-class can be a solution island.
It’s also several other unique things, like the wonderful depth of collaboration we have. I sit right next to the support desk and hear every day how we can evolve and become better. On my other side I have the development team, who regularly bounces ideas off my team to gain a perspective on how customers might receive a new feature or a change to a current product. Having the entire team under one roof is so valuable when needing to be extremely agile to create the best solutions in the market.
As with my joining MoxiWorks, we have recently been bringing different people onboard with diverse experiences to think outside the box and learn how other industries have brought innovation to their business.
What “best-in-class” means for your agents
Due to constantly having to change out old technology for new technology, agents now have major tool fatigue. Because of this they are ultra-sensitive to new tools, so they need to be thoughtfully integrated in a way that doesn’t take a lot of time or effort (or another password to remember) on their part. When it comes to technology, a brokerage’s value proposition needs to be centered around helping them grow their business and making their lives easier, putting more time and money back in their pockets. Therefore, picking the best tools and services for the type of business that your agents do and the style of your unique brokerage, while minimizing the hassle factor, is essential.
Best-in-class helps you accomplish this. Because we have a strict vetting process, you can rest assured that the Moxi Cloud tools and services are truly best-in-class and choosing amongst them will minimize the need for changing them out in the future, making tool fatigue a thing of the past.
This is all thanks to MoxiWorks having an Open Platform which allows technology and service companies to integrate and share data. Without an Open Platform you would lose a system that makes it easy to find and know when to use the various best-in-class tools and services provided, SSO (single-sign-on), and the data sharing that eliminates the need for data reentry.
Best-in-class doesn’t just mean superior tools for your agents, it means an entire ecosystem seamlessly working together, driving your agents’ success and making their day-to-day life more efficient and rewarding.
Why MoxiWorks is growing FAST
By Ring Nishioka, VP of Operations at MoxiWorks
I joined MoxiWorks about 18 months ago and when I joined, the company had just under 50 employees and an office space of about 5000 square feet. The Little Engine that could has come a long way in the past 18 months. The doubling of our agent count has included 25 new employees and the doubling of our office space square footage.
As one of the HR folks in the company, it has been my responsibility to hire these last 25 employees along with our HR Specialist, Emily “HRSavage” Sherwood. We have hired 13 employees since the beginning of 2018 and we’re not looking to slow it down anytime soon.
MoxiWorks is based in Seattle, Washington and the market for technology talent is very similar to the real estate market – there are more buyers than there are sellers/inventory. All of the large tech companies have created more job openings than there are candidates. So recruiting quality candidates can be tough.
In the same way that the market has driven up the price of homes in Seattle, the market has driven the starting salaries for technologists through the roof. Graduates from good schools with computer science degrees and zero experience are making more than their parents. While that might sound absurd, it’s the truth. Supply and demand at its finest.
The multiple offices of Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and the numerous startups including Uber, Lyft, and CHEF, to name just a few of the more recognizable names, is putting a squeeze on the little engine MoxiWorks.
So, what is a non-Microsoft sized tech company to do when it needs to fill openings? Like most brokerages, we try to entice candidates by creating a cool place to work and creating a strong brand in the marketplace, but the best thing we have done to recruit new talent is the use of our employee referral program and the use of social media.
Like most companies, we offer a referral bounty for employee referrals. We pay this bounty on the first day of the new hires employment. We don’t ask the employee who made the referral to wait three months before we pay out because it was the hiring manager and the interview loop that made the hiring decision.
Our bounty is $1500.00, which is modest by Seattle standards. We don’t want Moxians to quit their day jobs because the bounty on a referral is too high. We want to say “thank you” with a token of appreciation. Why do we want referrals so badly? We want referrals because our employees feel this is a great place to work and want to share the experience. Make the referral $10-$20K (yes, it is a thing) and folks will throw random candidates against the wall in the hopes of getting lucky.
Our employees are MoxiWorks BEST source of referrals and leveraged with Social media, we can make a serious dent in the list of open positions. And the same could be said for new agent recruits. Moxi employees know what our culture is, they know what success looks like, and they know the hiring managers. As an HR guy, what I like the most about employee referrals is that new hires that are referred by a current employee have a friend, ally, mentor and big brother / sister to watch their back. We know this is typical for brand new agents just getting into the real estate world. We all need someone to show us the ropes. These employees put their reputations on the line and are motivated to make sure their referral is successful.
To give you some perspective, the last three months at MoxiWorks looked like this:
- Our Test Engineer referred TWO technologists.
- Our Marketing Automation Manager referred our VP of Marketing
- A new hire developer liked the interview process so much, he referred his developer friend BEFORE HIS FIRST DAY OF EMPLOYMENT.
- Our CEO referred our CFO
If we went through a hiring agency using outside recruiters, we would have spent close to $170,000.00 in agency fees. We also would NOT have had organic relationships with these new hires.
We create a job posting and then our Content Marketing Manager, Tiana Baur, creates links that the employees can post on their persona LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter feeds.
And just like that, we’re swimming in plenty of quality referrals from our employees we know and trust.
Yes, we are hiring, and currently looking for:
If you’re not currently a Moxian and want to refer a candidate that we hire, we would like to say “thank you” with a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue. Hit me up at Ring@moxiworks.com.
How Facebook changed real estate marketing for better or worse
By Tiana Baur
Facebook is definitely not everyone’s favorite topic right now, especially when it comes to politics. That may not be our scene, but the Book has affected the real estate industry fairly heavily as well. It has changed the way we look at digital marketing and the way brokerages and agents alike view social media as a business tool.
In our industry, there are now specific tasks that are expected. Creating a business page and implementing property ads to your marketing campaigns are now the status quo. If you’re not doing them, you’re falling behind, and if you don’t at least update your page 2-4 times a week, you’re not doing nearly enough.
It has also become one of the hot topics to write about – every update, newsfeed changes, ad creation, features, etc. There are millions of blogs and articles giving tips of how to use the channel to its fullest (we have quite a few in our repertoire as well). It’s all due to the fact that Facebook has become the ultimate channel across all forms of social media – it’s where the world hangs out… or at least 2 billion people do. Therefore, it’s where all your prospects and clients are hanging out. So, whether we like it or not, the Book is still king, and therefore is a channel no one can ignore. Not the agents, or the brokerages, or even companies like Moxi. We’re all slaves to the Facebook Machine.
It’s also why we completely transformed our Moxi Marketing suite. Although agents know they need to be active on it, they don’t necessarily know where to start, or how to effectively advertise their listings or themselves. With over two billion active people on Facebook, we felt it was important, no, vital for agents to showcase themselves and their business on the channel in every way possible. Plus, we also wanted to take some of the pain out of Facebook, so agents can spend more time focusing on their precious spheres.
Our Facebook Ad tools, Advertise Your Listings and Advertise Your Services, are some of our absolute favorites. We’re especially excited about Advertise Your Services, the latest installment of the Moxi Marketing suite, since it has all the juicy goodness that is Advertise Your Listings, only this time it’s for agents’ personal brand and business. Like previously done in Advertise Your Listing, you can link to your personal Facebook Business Page, and if you don’t have one you can still use it. Even if you have no personal profile, even if you never ever want to have to type facebook.com into your navigation bar, you can use Advertise Your Services (and Advertise Your Listing). Talk about leveraging the Book with very little effort!
We try to not only focus on trends, but what we’re hearing from our clients. That’s why Moxi Marketing was created and why we’re rooting it on and celebrating its successes. If we can put just a few more hours back into an agent’s week – we’re happy. At Moxi, we’re only as good as our tools and we stand by calling them the best-in-class. Try these time-saving tools out today – won’t regret it.
