Today is Back to Work Monday. The holiday break is over and everyone is back in the ‘grind’ as they say. It is also the evening of the college National Championship Game and I have relatives in Florida and Alabama. With all of that said, there was a lot of competition for my attention today, the day I received a book written by Tyler Smith titled Going Paperless, Taking Real Estate into the 21st Century.
I cracked the book to read a few pages and planned to get back to it, but it was a page-turner and 98 pages later, there is 8 minutes left in the first half and Auburn has a 14-3 lead over Florida State.
In the book we learn about Tyler Smith and his path from adolescence to top producing REALTOR® to CEO of a 40 person technology company. It is the story of how SkySlope Transaction Management software came to be. It is a nice story of entrepreneurial spirit in real estate technology and definitely worth a read. Smith is clearly proud of his path, his success, his software, and his team at SkySlope. There is a little bit of chest pounding, but it is well deserved. He has built a successful product and a successful company.
Transaction management has been a thorn in the side of real estate since we started looking at real estate software in the early days of WAV Group consulting. Our transaction management adoption study is just as relevant today as it was when we first published it in 2005, then again in 2009, then again in 2012. In one study we surveyed over 1700 brokers from 22 MLSs. If I were to boil it all down to one word, it would be ADOPTION.
Smith does a good job talking about the problem of not being paperless. He does a nice job of characterizing the trouble of paper transactions. The old way invites tireless driving around, killing trees, escalating costs, increased liability, and escapades of searching and searching and searching for the missing paperwork. He should know. In 2009, at the top of his career as an agent he says he was completing 264 closings in California, with each file containing 200+ pages.
Smith built SkySlope around his workflow as an agents. It took him a few years to get it right, then he incorporated broker workflows. Rather than try to get brokers to adapt to his software, he designed the software to work the way the broker works. If you use a checklist for transactions, SkySlope will work for you. He claims that his software is not fancy, its simple.
Many of the largest brokers in America are on his platform today. The book has pages written by his customers including Dale Milton of DPR Realty; Mike Zagaris, PMZ Real Estate; J Scott Leonard CEO Guarantee Real Estate, A Berkshire Hathaway Affiliate; Larry Matos, President of Century 21 M&M. They all write about the tipping point in choosing SkySlope. The two strings that held them together was system flexibility and customer service.
WAV Group has helped lots of brokers and MLSs through the technology selection process for Transaction Management Solutions. Finding the right one for your business is personal. We have clients who have selected SkySlope and they are happy.
The single most important differentiator with SkySlope is that they have 24-7 customer support. Their customers rave about it. Agents don’t call the transaction manager or the office manager for support – they call SkySlope – and someone is always there to help them. Always. I am sure that it is not easy to do this, but it is dedication to the customer that takes moxy.
It’s half-time. Auburn leads Florida State 21-10. Looking forward to the second half. You can order the book on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Tyler-Smith/e/B00HCO01GA. I also expect that you can call Tyler Smith for a complimentary copy.
