One CB: One Year Later

Helping our agents sell more homes, make more money and work more efficiently – by building products with them, not for them.

A guest post by Kacie Ricker, National Vice President, The Studio 

It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since I wrote a blog post for The Studio entitled, “Game On: How 36 Hours Changed Everything.” We had just come off a 36-hour, 2.5 day product summit and days later, President and CEO, Ryan Gorman, announced Coldwell Banker’s intent to bring together the teams that support the Coldwell Banker affiliate network and the Coldwell Banker company-owned brokerage in an effort to look toward the future to proactively and strategically position the company for future competitive advantages. The move would help the company to leverage the full scale and size of Coldwell Banker to create a singular voice in the industry, with the ultimate goal of driving market share for Coldwell Banker.

Our objectives for the product summit were clear:

• Build a plan toward a one Coldwell Banker product suite
• Build clarity around the Coldwell Banker CRM strategy
• Define and execute on the open ecosystem strategy
• Prioritize agent experience improvements

The intent was for us to identify the best technology quickly, build the strategy and execute fast and aggressively.

Through that meeting, we built our product strategy, focusing on these core principles:

• Help our agents sell more homes, make more money and work more efficiently
• Keep the product line simple, focusing on products that are based on the moments that matter most (#noshinypennies)
• We build products with agents, not for them

One year later, as I write this blog post, it’s incredible to see what a team of passionate, relentless product owners and team members can accomplish (despite a year of challenges that only 2020 could bring) when they put their (now) mask-wearing, social-distanced heads together.

We’ve immortalized the work in a new Technology Mission Video (below) and this timeline. We unveiled this at the September Coldwell Banker Virtual Gen Blue. So where are we one year later? Take a look.

Think it’s a lot? You’re right! When Ryan Gorman tells you to move fast and aggressively – you do! By uniting the behind the scenes teams and everyone working towards the same common goals, we’ve been unstoppable. By the end of 2020, we will have launched seven new products to the affiliate network along with countless user experience improvement updates across our existing product suite. And, while with more than 650 brokers across the Coldwell Banker network, we do still have a ways to go to achieving a true one Coldwell Banker product suite, to think we started a year ago worlds apart to being in such a stronger, unified position as a company, the progress is incredible.

And best of all, we are beginning to see the business results of this unified plan. Among them:

• Desk, our virtual office for today’s real estate agent and the foundation by which our entire product suite is housed, launched in August across the Coldwell Banker network and into Canada; through August we’ve seen a 78% product adoption rate
• Exclusive Look, a product that helps agents capitalize off of one of the largest and most established networks within the industry by allowing agents to share Sneak Peeks, Brokerage Exclusives and Buyer Wants and Needs, also launched in August to the entire Coldwell Banker domestic network; within days of launch, we saw a 73% increase in product usage
• Uniting the best in powerful data from Coldwell Banker’s award winning CBx Buyer Locator application with an industry-recognized best-in-class CMA application, Moxi Present, we will next roll out CBx + Moxi Present – a proprietary version of the application that no other competitor can offer. Our first grouping of some 300 affiliate brokers begins rolling out this month.
• Prospect Square, an all-in-one integrated e-mail marketing solution featuring Market, Area and Quarterly Reports plus property e-mail marketing, digital newsletters and more, also begins rolling out to some 300 affiliate brokers this month. The company already sends an estimated 3M e-mails a month via Coldwell Banker Realty users and that effort will only expand the upon the company’s market presence and capabilities as we onboard our affiliate partners.
• BrandSrv, a digital content management solution and digital asset generator, launched earlier this year across Coldwell Banker Realty and our affiliate network. The product gives agents and staff the ability to create simple, customized digital assets in mere minutes and, with users last month increasing 95% MOM, it’s clear they are liking what they see.
• We will finish the year off strong by piloting two of our Concierge products within the affiliate network – Listing Concierge and Design Concierge. Both products were previously rolled out nationally to some 45K users across the Coldwell Banker Realty operations and we couldn’t be more proud of the benefits and results our agents and clients have witnessed firsthand, including:
  • Properties that use Listing Concierge sell 35% closer to list price than those that don’t.  
  • Properties that use Listing Concierge close with a 1% higher sale price than those that don’t.  
  • On average, sellers whose agents use Listing Concierge benefit as well with a 1% higher sales price.  With a national average sales price of $539,682 and a 1% increase in the sales price, that equates to an additional $5,300 in our sellers’ pockets, on average.
  • Listings involved with the program close with a 2.6% higher commission rate.  
  • Agents that use Listing Concierge are twice as productive as those affiliated agents who don’t.  

So there’s my one year, one Coldwell Banker update. I told you 36 hours changed everything and they certainly did. While 2020 has certainly thrown all of us plenty of punches, I couldn’t be more confident of our strategy and proud of where these efforts will take our agents, our clients and our company. A very special thanks to our local affiliate companies and their respective teams who helped pilot, provide feedback and who have championed product use across their companies. And, I’d like to thank our amazing Brand Ambassador team who, overnight, have become product experts, working to bring this amazing product suite to life across our network.

Here’s to finishing the year strong and making 2021 a year to shine like no other. Stay tuned, because we are just getting started.

Gustavo Gonzalez

Senior Manager, Content & Multimedia at Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. In his role he manages content strategy and execution across several platforms. He’s held other roles within the Marketing Department ranging from Previews & Product Development to the day to day management of the coldwellbanker.com redesign. Besides being a marketer, Gustavo is a filmmaker, musician and writer.