How do you get agents to use the wonderful products and services that you offer? Many times, the technology is complicated, or the agents don’t want to invest the time into learning a new program. However, much of the time it’s due to a lack of management support, few training opportunities and a dearth of incentives for sales associates to commit to your brokerage tech platform.

After struggling with agent engagement with their tech products, The Keyes Company decided to go a new direction and found success with Inside RealEstate’s kvCORE product. “With the lead landscape changing, we needed to take control of our destiny and control it ourselves away from the major portals,” says CEO Mike Pappas. “To do that, we needed a smart CRM (customer relationship manager) to handle longer-term relationships with our clients and leads. When we analyzed the lead generation we were getting from portals, we found we had an average 6- to 18-month close time on those leads. Without being able to engage in the process using a tech platform actively, we were losing a lot of opportunities.” With kvCORE, “we find it allows us to build deeper relationships with associates’ databases.”

One of the brokerage’s biggest struggles, according to Wendi Iglesias, chief information officer for Keyes, “is that sales associates throughout our industry spend their time out in the field working with customers, and they’re very good at that.”

“They’re not often as good at using technology platforms and engaging with their sphere of influence or engaging with past customers, because every morning they’re working with the customer who needs them right at that moment.” She notes that many times a brokerage brings in a fantastic technology and rolls it out to the sales associates, but it requires too much engagement from an agent, so it doesn’t get used. Agents either don’t have the time, or they don’t know what to do with it. “We had all the tools, but we weren’t setting it up in a way that the lead generation was what it should be,” says Iglesias. “It was too difficult for agents to manage.” Thus, they began their journey to tech goal setting and finding a more accessible platform that “would do everything that the agent was supposed to do for them—without them having to go in and set it all up,” she adds.

Download the full story below to learn how they set their tech goals, chose a platform, and crafted a successful rollout.