In what seems like a blink of the eye, the business of real estate looks very different than it did even just a few years ago. Many seasoned agents remember a time when the MLS was printed in a physical book, and now, it seems every step of the transaction and beyond is taking place in the digital space.

These shifts have left agents scrambling to piece together a virtual client experience that matches the highly personalized physical one they may have spent years perfecting. Yet, many have found this experience falls short. While technology offers consumers on-demand information and choice, nothing can replace the human-to-human connection and sound counsel a real estate agent provides. As consumers move toward the largest transaction of their lives, they need a trusted fiduciary guiding them through it.

This gap between the digital and physical is where Keller Williams has targeted its technology-development efforts. It is also the space where KW is commanding a new real estate reality.

1. Giving Agents a Voice

Keller Williams was built on a creed that in order to achieve a true win-win, the company would be built by agents, for agents. Staying true to this philosophy, Keller Williams implemented Labs – an open forum where agents partner with the development team to provide input and insights that are transformed into the product features they want most. Essentially, the Labs program ensures that every product addresses and resolves an agent’s most pressing business challenges.

2. Saving Time (and Money)

Throughout Labs, agents consistently requested tools to help them reduce the amount of time and money spent on non-dollar productive, functionary tasks that took them away from time they could be spending interacting with their clients. SmartPlans, the workfl ow automation tool baked into Command – KW’s end-to-end operational system – is a result of this partnership.

As of September 30, 2019, 3.5 million consumers are on SmartPlans, and that number is expected to grow once a custom SmartPlan builder arrives. This feature will allow agents to create step-by-step workflows for any and every event that happens in their business. So, if a new lead enters their pipeline, Command can automatically send out a text, phone call reminder, email, or any other series of actions. Everything agents may be paying virtual assistants to handle can now be conquered by SmartPlans.

3. Maximizing Insights

Because delivering personalized consumer experiences is how successful businesses thrive, the ones with the most data and insights win. An individual agent may be able to recognize some patterns in their business, but they quickly run up against limiting factors. There’s only so much data you can create and crunch by yourself. That’s why the idea of a collective platform is so important. The tens of thousands of agents working in Command are generating a massive amount of proprietary insights, which in turn provides a distinct competitive advantage for individual Keller Williams agents.

4. Tracking Opportunities From Lead to Close

Models and systems are what underpin every successful real estate business. That’s why Keller Williams technology is designed to let agents customize and create specific action plans and processes that work for their individual businesses. The Opportunities dashboard in Command – where agents manage their entire book of business from lead, to close, to payday – enables the creation of custom stages for every deal and even more detailed action steps within each stage. That way, agents and teams can easily replicate and then deliver the same world-class client experience, every single time.

5. Differentiating the Agent Brand

Another challenge agents identified through Labs was creating a consistent and unique brand across every marketing piece and channel. “Whether you’re an agent that does 2 or 2,000 transactions, we all have to make collateral,” explains mega agent Jason Abrams. “When you use a third party that isn’t designed for real estate, it all ends up looking the same.” Enter Designs.

Designs helps agents stand out in the crowd by giving them the ability to create real estate-specifi c marketing materials through Keller Williams’ vast library of 1,300plus professionally designed templates for both print (listing presentations, fl iers, postcards, and brochures) and web (email signatures, profi le banners, social media graphics, and more). As of September 30, 2019, agents have created 233,139 unique designs.

Templates are organized in specialized categories that matter most to agents, such as for sale, just listed, open house, price update, and local expert.

In addition to off ering a cohesive look for their marketing materials, Designs allows agents to drop in neighborhood or individualized market data – such as average sales price or days on market. This further enhances an agent’s ability to provide clients with the information they need while solidifying their brand as a local expert.

Once completed, an agent’s centralized marketing profile in Command extends to all applications so their brand can be easily pulled into marketing materials.

6. Curating One-to-One Relationships

Today, real estate agents are challenged to build one-to-one relationships with clients who are tethered to technology and surrounded by a thick layer of noise. Combined with Command’s workflow automation tool (SmartPlans) and social media advertising application (Campaigns), Designs allows agents to break through the noise by creating a unique brand and easily extending it to every touch.

Keller Williams technology doesn’t just help agents remain top-of-mind and distinctive, it allows them to be present for their clients and deepen connections like never before.

7. Nurturing by Neighborhood

In an effort to further differentiate the agent brand, Keller Williams researchers discovered that when agents provide information that is organized by neighborhood, client engagement increases roughly 300% to 400%.“The closer you get to the home, the more relevant it is to the consumer,” explains KW president Josh Team. From the new KW App to reimagined websites for agents, Keller Williams is empowering agents to stoke the curiosity of their clients through neighborhood-based information. One such example? The Designs application in Command now houses a marketing suite that allows agents to quickly drag and drop neighborhood-specific stats, updated nightly and automatically, directly into their collateral.

“We disagree. The battle for search is just beginning.”

Gary Keller

8. Enhancing the Power of Teams

Like individual agents, real estate teams have also struggled to operate efficiently in a sea of disconnected technologies. Keller Williams is rewriting this narrative by empowering teams to collaborate and run every aspect of their business in Command. With key functionalities that assist with database reporting, pipeline management, and collaboration, Command is helping small teams pack a punch and move into new levels of profitability. With just a few clicks, teams can look at the contributions of individual members, review where leads/ contacts are coming from, get a comprehensive understanding of the activity behind their database, and see exactly how they stack up against teams in their market center, state, and all other users in Command. Combined with Keller Williams’ proven models and systems, Command enables teams to go further, faster.

9. Reimagining the Consumer Experience

One facet of the new real estate reality is that consumers now expect the level of personalization they see in other digital spaces they frequent (think Amazon or Netflix). The new KW App combined with Command will allow Keller Williams agents to provide a fully curated, on-demand experience for each of their clients at an individual level. Instead of a generic search map or collection of featured listings, clients will see a personalized feed tailored to their preferences and the neighborhoods they select. And, because agents are equipped to share information their clients truly care about, deeper connections are fostered.

The new KW App will also allow users to discover homes in a more organic, open-ended way; inviting them to tap into their curiosity. Instead of searching in the traditional, linear fashion by number of bedrooms or by price, clients can find homes based on their unique preferences, such as lifestyle or whether they prefer hardwood floors or tile. Consumers will also be able to get real-time updates through the app. Complemented by their agent’s unique insights as their deal progresses, this brings complete transparency to the buy/sell process.

10. Unleashing the Agent’s Potential

When technology allows agents to have more time and more mental energy, it allows them to release their real superpower – creating personal relationships with their clients. After all, real estate is a relationship-based business and real estate agents are people. And, that’s why Keller Williams technology was designed to enable agents to be more present, more human, more everything.