It’s fair to say that real estate brokers are under attack — from startups, from new hybrid brokerage models, from the decline of brick-and-mortar offices. In this environment, there’s more pressure than ever on brokers to provide value for agents and consumers. That means better tools, along with the training agents need to use them effectively.
Our age right now is about self-discovery. It’s about understanding where you want to be, who you want to be…then about bringing in the right tools [to] help you do that.
— JACK MILLER
To their credit, many brokers are rising to the occasion. In fact, a large majority of agents say they use tech products provided by their brokerage daily or a few times a week. What’s more, agents rank technology second among the most valuable services their firms offer, and most give their brokers passing grades for the tools they provide.
Still, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. About one third of agents cite buyer leads as the most valuable service their brokerage could do better at, or doesn’t provide at all. Nearly a quarter say the same about technology. Sixty-eight percent disagreed that their brokerage was good at generating leads, while 41 percent “strongly disagreed.”
So what can brokerages do not just to survive, but also thrive? For Jack Miller, it all comes down to self-knowledge. “So much of making effective use of technology and marketing is understanding your company, understanding yourself, understanding what you want to be in the marketplace,” Jack told us.
As CEO of T3 Experts, a real estate consulting firm that empowers real estate professionals and firms of all to build better marketing systems, Jack is an expert in implementing technology at the brokerage level. In fact, Jack’s first love is technology, having spent much of his career building hardware and software before transitioning into the real estate industry. “I found the intersection of people and technology was really what I wanted to be,” Jack says.
Today, Jack spends his days in the trenches with real estate professionals, helping them understand the what, why, and how of using technology to grow their businesses. For Jack, brokers still have a major role to play in creating better outcomes for both agents and their clients. “A broker has a real opportunity to set a standard of quality and provide services that are frankly better than an agent going and looking for those services themselves,” he explained.
In this interview, we sat down with Jack to talk about the challenges and choices facing today’s broker, the real estate industry’s “race to the bottom,” and the four factors that separate a mediocre real estate company from a successful one.
– Matt & Seth
