Rivers Pearce’s Post

Wow!! First, let me say thank you to everyone for the thoughtful feedback!! Really helpful. I ran all comments through a GPT I am training and it helped me boil down the common themes below. Adoption has so many downstream impacts to agents, brokers, proptech's & consumers. 1. Simplicity and Usability: Agents adopt proptech tools that are simple, user-friendly, and easy to integrate into their existing workflows. Complexity and steep learning curves deter usage. 2. Effective Training and Support: Tailored onboarding and responsive support are crucial. Agents need clear guidance to use new tools effectively. 3. Clear Value and ROI: Tools must solve real pain points and demonstrate tangible benefits like increased productivity or income. Agents are more likely to invest time and money if they see a direct payoff. 4. Seamless Integration: Proptech solutions should integrate smoothly with existing systems to minimize extra work, especially avoiding duplicate data entry. 5. Realistic Market Understanding: The actual number of agents willing or able to adopt new technology is smaller than it appears due to inactive or part-time agents. Recognizing this helps in tailoring solutions to meet the needs of active, productive agents.

Hi all... thank you again for the feedback on this topic. I have a new article that I just published and wanted to share with you all: https://www.parcelstrategic.com/approaching-100-adoption-in-proptech/ I chose to really lean into focusing on the pursuit of simplicity. Would love your thoughts and feedback!

Train your brokerage support team and make them subject matter experts prior to launching any new technology. Leverage early adopters and get their testimonials so that you can lean into social proof. Have the leaders of your organization endorse the technology and talk about it often. Map out the quickest time to value for agents and have a white glove onboarding that gets them to that point. One of the biggest hurdles is always getting contacts into whatever system or platform that the brokerage is utilizing. Conduct a survey to see where the bulk of your agents are storing their contacts so that you can have very specific strategies for helping them bridge that gap. The “build it and they will come” field of dreams mentality works here too. Have all your brokerage assets and marketing available in the new tool and update the content frequently so that agents have to go there to get the latest and greatest. Probably the most important is the product itself. Are there available API’s that will talk to your other systems and enable time saving automations. At Sotheby’s International Realty Canada we built inhouse tools with near universal adoption. It’s a big hill to climb, but with consistent effort, not impossible.

Speaking from the brokerage side, I’d still like to see vendors provide different kind of pricing structures. Ones that are made where we pay more on adoption rates than for enterprise/all agents. It’s not a good use of our dollars to pay for all agents if 50% even or using it I’d rather pay a little bit higher rate per user, then commit the whole company. My point is with constrained budgets, I’d rather see some more creative solutions to get brokerage adoption. I have some systems that I have 80% adoption some 50% and some 20%. A lot of it depends on what kind of platform it is and what they need is. Sure, it’s not a One size situation for agents, hope things are good in your world Rivers Pearce. I also suggest if you really want to dig into this, get a focus group of brokerages together to discuss what their needs are.

I think this happens for a few reasons. First brokerages want their agents to use their tech, so there is effort put into forcing the agents to use the homegrown solution. The problem is, unless you are a massive national brokerage, your budget for development is not big enough to keep up with the proptech companies so your homegrown solution costs less but does less. For the proptech companies, it's hard to get small to mid-sized brokerages on board as it's very expensive. Take a good CRM for example and even if you can get it down to $20/mo/user when you hit 200 brokers in an office, that is $4k a month or almost $50k a year. If you don't consider what their awesome drip campaign might do to increase your lead conversion (but most offerings have bad templates so you have to create your own) so, is $50k a year worth it for a fancy contact management system? Then, can it talk to other tech? And how much do you need to pay for that "other" tech like transaction management software and e-signature? You do have some bigger companies that are trying to provide A to Z (you know who you are) but they have acquired other companies and then "Frankenstein" the tech together so they have it all but it doesn't flow smoothly.

Look at the % of agents transacting then readjust the math. Then consider if theyre adopting to A tool, just not the took youre looking at. Hence why there's direct to agent vs enterprise products So it seems it's not an adoption issue vs (1) need for tool- you don't need if you don't transact and are a part time agent, or (2) for the transacting agents, is the enterprise tool you're referring to right for the agent, or are they purchasing something else on their own

I’m a grizzled veteran with 40 years in the biz, I’ve been challenged by this reality from different perspectives as a former Realogy exec, MLS CMO, “power user”, startup Entrepreneur with 5 successful exits, and senior product exec. My colleagues above have listed some thoughtful analyses and “we” all know the inherent difficulties in working with independent contractors, which is the heart of the matter. To me the real demon is redundancy and duplication. Aside from Google docs, there’s just one “Microsoft Office” that owns 90% of the market for example. we’ve got duplicates in every vertical, many with little or no substantive differentiation and compelling value prop. We have waaaaay too many of everything from lead gen to CRM to TM to MLS to forms to whatever. Swing a dead cat, as the crude saying goes, and there’s no room or space among them. As 2025 emerges and a literal new world order takes hold, IMO and respectfully, we need less and not more. We need transformative change to simplify and streamline, to maintain 100% NAR/DOJ compliance (both proactively and reactively in terms of education and operational authority) and my friends at RESO have work to do.

Let’s assume producing agents and move from there. -There is a lack of awareness. Then, there is a lousy broker backend for using the tech. There are also broker admins that choose crappy tech. If the tech is cumbersome to use, big fail “don’t make me think”. MLS orgs don’t do enough to promote tech. Some of the stuff I see just makes me roll my eyes because it sucks. -Popular coaches or leaders promoting tech I think works. Video demonstrations are key.

1. TAM is half of what it appears to be. 1.6M agents but only 780K are active (have done a deal in the last year) 2. 1099 nature means you can’t force adoption 3. 60K teams all doing things their own way 4. Best practices differ by municipality There are more but these are the big ones that people are willing to talk about. I personally think it’s the “oh shit, I said the quiet part out loud” that’s preventing true adoption.

1. Great products with real teams supporting them, relentless QA culture, and a fast exciting updates on a cadence. 2. Coordinated launch between vendor and customer, finding a perfect blend of in-house remixed training with vendor support 3. Build better more thoughtful stuff. Agents 100% adopt tools that get them paid. Think of 30% adoption as feedback not an indictment