Facebook is worth 277 billion dollars, with 2015 advertising revenue hitting 4.3 billion dollars. Billion. That doesn\u2019t make much sense, does it? Why is Facebook worth so much? In no small part, it is because of the data on you that they collect and can leverage.<\/p>\n
Data is a valuable asset, and one that brokers and agents are letting fall to the ground to spoil. Data about clients, website and app visitors and users, how those users interact with the sites and apps, and other information about leads should be incredibly valuable to brokers and agents. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Business intelligence can be gleaned from it. Amazing customer experience can be created out of it. And all sorts of products should be growing up around that data to add value for brokers and agents. <\/p>\n
How you’re losing out<\/h2>\n
But brokers and agents aren\u2019t getting the value out of their data because that data sits in individual product silos when available at all, inaccessible as data to others. <\/p>\n
Why? Because brokers and agents haven\u2019t done the work \u2013 or applied the pressure on software vendors to do the work \u2013 to create and adopt data standards.<\/p>\n
To make this real for my readers, I\u2019ll provide some examples of some of the types of benefits that should be available:<\/p>\n
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- When a consumer goes from Zillow to the broker or agent website or app, they should be able to bring their preferences, saved searches and favorites with them. This would be a great user experience for consumers.<\/li>\n
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- Likewise, when the agent wants to set up a prospecting search in the MLS, they should be able to leverage everything the consumer has already set up online on other sites. This would save agents time, and make the transition to MLS prospecting search much better for consumers too.<\/li>\n
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- With information about how consumers and clients interact with websites available, apps could be built to analyze that behavior to let agents know what kind of contact may be immediately needed. Even knowing that a buyer is telling you they have $30,000 for a down payment but is filling in $20,000 in the website calculator could be useful.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Traditionally, the industry sits back and waits<\/h2>\n
There are all sorts of data \u2013 client collaboration, lead management, transaction management, and more that could benefit from data standards<\/em> \u2013 enabling all sorts of great new applications. Not to mention, no longer would brokers and agents be stuck using a product they don\u2019t like because that\u2019s where their data resides and it\u2019s hard to switch and start over. <\/p>\n
To date, brokers and agents have sat back and waited for the MLS to develop data standards \u2013 which the MLS has, but mostly just to solve the MLS\u2019s problems. <\/p>\n
Brokers and agents need to realize that they have a business interest in data standards too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I\u2019ve written some additional articles that get a bit more technical but provide additional insight into this problem:<\/p>\n