When Broker Chris Lyons of Lyons Realty came home after a busy week at the BoomTown UNITE Conference in 2014 — the ONLY conference he attended in 2014 — he wanted to try something new. The emcee for the week of BoomTown Unite was Jeff Turner, President of RealSatisfied, who had briefly mentioned our customer satisfaction platform from stage.
As a busy, goal oriented, independent broker, he knew he was getting ready to plan for 2015 – and he wanted his 2 offices and 42 agents to focus on their performance, understand where their leads were coming from – and like any business owner, he wanted happy and returning clients. RealSatisfied provided a hub to start managing it all.
The Best Real Estate TV Promotion That Ever Died
2015 was going to start of with a BANG. Lyons Real Estate put together one of their biggest TV promotions with a huge listing rebate. The goal: pull in a big number of new sellers, be flexible on commission. The problem was, it fell flat. Not because of lack of promotion, it was everywhere. The answer why wouldn’t come for a bit, but in the wake of a large number of customer survey responses, Chris noticed a piece of data that he had not realized was being collected – Factors Of Influence.
“My REAL a-ha moment came when I looked at the Factors of Influence and why clients chose us,” Chris said, “Understanding the ‘Needs and Wants’ of our customers came in at CRITICAL, #1 – while our commission came in at the bottom of the nine influence factors measured… LAST PLACE. I would have never known if we hadn’t collected feedback in this systematic way.”
When Chris looked through the results, what he saw gave him the answer to why their big TV promotion may have died. Broker commission, according to his own clients, not a national survey, was the least important factor when choosing Lyons Realty. His ad campaign was targeting an aspect of their service that his clients were saying had little to no impact on their choosing Lyons. This was business intelligence he had never had before. And it was powerful.
Agents That Are “Killin It” And How They Are Doing It
It wasn’t just his imagination. It wasn’t a few great client testimonials. It wasn’t marketing spin. His agents were killing it. Client satisfaction and agent performance scores were coming in at or above national benchmarks. If there was one word to describe it – it was validating. Lyons Realty was on target in their hiring, training and coaching of agents to have the highest percentage of most likely to “refer and recommend.”
Trusting The Data, Not Your Gut – And Bringing It To Your Team
One year into collecting detailed customer feedback, with the accumulation of business intelligence data, the rave reviews and heightened numbers of recommendations, Chris Lyons has new clarity surrounding what works, how it works, and WHO it works for.
“I bring the data from our results to our team meetings every other month. Knowing where our business is coming from, and that our local knowledge is what gives us the competitive advantage keeps us on track. And you know what? ” Chris added, “ The feedback is spot on.”
Strat Planning 2016: Don’t Collect Stars, Collect Business Intelligence
As Chris Lyons moves into 2016 strategy planning, like so many other brokers across the country, there are many competitive advantages he will have this year: A year’s worth of insightful data, validated agent performance, and smart business intelligence that illustrates what Lyons does so well, where they want to improve, and how they are going to get there as a team – not just gold stars.
Fortunately, they have lots of those too. 🙂
