Agents Slow to Adopt New Technology?
dotloop
June 05, 2018 | comments
Follow this 4-step plan to help your team overcome their fear of technology
To survive in today’s competitive market, you know your brokerage must innovate. Real estate agents need the customer-facing digital tools as well as the transaction and back office tech that makes your entire brokerage run smoother and more efficiently.
But finding the right technology to achieve your goals is only half the battle. You also face the formidable challenge of getting your agents to actually adopt and use it.
According to the Harvard Business Review, the failure rate for business transformation initiatives (read: the adoption of new technology) is nearly 70%. It may be even higher in real estate, in which most agents work as contractors rather than employees and thus have more say in what tool they actually choose to use.
Furthermore, nearly 70% of agents said they feel it is “very important” that their brokerage provides them with technology tools.
Yet, researchers have found that the biggest reason for failure is typically not an unwillingness of workers to change, but the leadership’s inability to motivate and support their people through the transition.
Adopting Tech Using the 4-Step Process
According to Evan Peele, Senior Success Manager for Strategic Accounts at dotloop, a successful path to helping brokers transition their team onto a new platform like dotloop requires four basic steps. This process has been used repeatedly to help brokers transition thousands of agents onto the dotloop platform.
1. Determine the fit. First, the platform and adoption process must be customized around the way the brokerage already works. Technology is most effective when it enables people to do their current jobs more efficiently. Plus, there’s more probability of full adoption when the new system is in step with current processes.
2. Train the trainers and early adopters. For a brokerage to “own” the transformation, they must have the proper resources in place to train their own people. Only then can smaller trained groups serve as both beta testers and influencers.
3. Engage and train the team. Clearly communicate the motivation for the change and roll out brokerage-wide training for the rest of the agents.
4. Grow the relationship for effective support. Plan for challenges by setting up lines of communication for technical support. Provide hotlines for those agents who prefer to talk through their challenges as well as simple demo videos and written tutorials for your visual learners.
Case Study: Virtual Real Broker Applying the Adoption Process
When NYC-based virtual Real Broker decided to replace the traditional brick-and-mortar office location with an app, the management knew they would face a tech adoption challenge. Today, their agents manage their CRM, create CMA reports, search properties, interact with clients and much more — all using their smartphones.
But according to Real Broker Operations Manager Lauren Ford, the brokerage first and foremost needed an equally seamless transaction management solution. After a thorough search, they determined that dotloop was their best choice, both for the platform’s technology and the company’s philosophy.
Ford said that the challenge then became how to quickly bring hundreds of agents in multiple states onto the platform.
Working with Peele, they followed the four-step process. Before training began, dotloop’s success managers analyzed Real’s transaction workflow, form libraries and distribution processes.
Once they had a plan, they began training Real support staff on the platform to teach the teachers, who then trained 50 of their most successful agents to collect feedback and gauge how they were using the platform.
As the buzz among the agents began to build, the staff communicated companywide why Real had chosen dotloop and how it was going to make transactions more efficient for admins, agents and clients alike. Ford reports that they expanded training to another 150 agents and then onboarded 300 more, all over the course of six weeks.
Real and dotloop worked closely together to fix technical issues and provide agents with support for any challenges, before handing off the primary support to Real with dotloop success managers at the ready if needed.
One of the challenges of being in 25 states is that each one has its own set of forms. Dotloop provided great support in incorporating all of those into their brokerage-wide library.
Ford says that the transition to dotloop has been well worth the effort, making their company more efficient, nimble and better able to serve their growing client base.
