Last Friday, Inside Real Estate CEO, Ned Stringham sent a letter to all customers with a simple message – We Are Here To Help. Customers who have impacted businesses by the coronavirus pandemic are eligible for immediate deferment of payments on existing subscriptions.
My inbox has been bombarded with CEO emails telling me how they are all working remotely and etc. I am sure your inbox is full of them too. They feel like spam. Some are sales tools – like 30% off. But this message is pure. This hurts, we will help soften the blow. Way better.
In addition to providing payment deferral, Inside Real Estate is doing other creative things that will help firms stay productive and bounce back as soon as this crisis shows signs of the skies clearing. They are hosting a Virtual Training Summit with live, weekly training focused on strategies that help agents, teams and brokers keep their businesses moving forward. Topics include things like virtual open house best practices, how to promote listings digitally, how to engage customers in a time of crisis, how to leverage video marketing, and how to build out community landing pages.
There is quite a bit that real estate firms and agents can be doing every day to shore up the foundation of their business. All of those behaviors that agents should always be doing but say they are too busy to be doing can now be done. Agents have time on their hands to put their arms around the best practices that will enable their business to thrive as soon as the barriers to commerce are lifted.
Inside Real Estate is also offering considerations for new customers, with immediate financial benefits for those who are choosing to focus on and invest in their business now – so there is some sales focus too. Overall though, the tone is to take care of their existing customers first and foremost – with both money and with training and support.
From what we’ve seen, Inside Real Estate is the first tech partner to proactively offer this kind of support. And they are uniquely positioned to do so, with significant operational scale (over 200k platform customers) and with the financial backing of Lovell Minnick Partners.
We are hearing of other companies who are attempting to structure similar programs, however, we expect many of the smaller providers in the space will be challenged in doing so. If you have a program, please share it. We will pull them all together and publish them on RE Technology. If you need help putting a program together for your customers, reach out to Marilyn, Victor, Kevin, or David at WAV Group and we will fast track a project.
