Craig Schneider runs a tight ship. His business, Norchar, has 29 agents right now, but only three staff. And he’s one of them, joined by his wife Lus and an operations manager.
Schneider and his wife launched their Rochester, New York brokerage just over eight years ago. After some false starts, they selected Real Geeks.
“Like any new business owners, we wasted a lot of time doing a lot of the wrong things or chasing the wrong things in the wrong direction,” Schneider shared. “At one point, I built my own website. And if you’re ever considering that, don’t do it. Even if you have $200,000, it’s going to be irrelevant the minute you’re done — and you’re not going to build up a system that’s as good as Real Geeks.
Schneider originally chose Real Geeks because it offered an all-in-one package where the CRM is integrated into the web site. “That was the most impressive part of what Real Geeks offered: the ability to not only provide information out to an audience, but actually capture their data if you provided enough value to them.”
Another aspect Schneider appreciated was that Real Geeks is an open source tech platform. “For those who aren’t techie, that means they play well with others,” he said. “They allow data to be transferred from their system to other systems, and then the same is true, they allow data to come into their system as well.”
Tripped up by lead distribution
As Norchar grew, so did the need for effective lead distribution. And there wasn’t a system Schneider didn’t try.
“Some of my agents are doing 100% of their business off of my leads,” he said. They implemented Round Robin but found the lead would just keep circling if no one moved on it.
Then they developed a digital version of the traditional ‘desk duty’ assignment, called Lead Shifts. Agents signed up for a block of time in which they would receive all the incoming leads. But that, too, proved a problematic and far too manual process.
Then Schneider hired a few ISAs, but found the right temperament for sales calls wasn’t the same person who wanted to sit at a desk all day.
“I also realized I was outsourcing the most important opportunity to create a connection with a client. So we stopped using ISAs.”
Then Schneider found a tool he wanted to incorporate: Slack. The messaging platform solved several internal communication issues for the brokerage, but configuring it with Real Geeks proved to be too much. That, on top of some MLS integration issues, proved to be the last straw. Or so he thought.
He came. He saw. He tried it. Then he went back to Real Geeks.
Scheider is nothing if not thorough. You name a platform, and he explored it. He moved away from Real Geeks and tried every competitor out there, testing for ease of use, the robustness of performance, and responsiveness of support. But he found many were outsourced to the point where customization was beyond possible.
The Norchar Team
“There are some great platforms out there,” he noted. “But I think that Real Geeks is the best investment I have in my business. The street price for Real Geeks is unbelievably low in contrast to any platform that’s even similar. And I’m at a point in my business where I’m willing to pay more to get extra features.”
In all his experience exploring other platforms, Scheider came back to Real Geels with a wishlist of what he wanted. And happily, he was able to work in concert with the team, including the primary architect Kevin McCarthy, who is also the CEO.
“What I love about Real Geeks is that I can make it as complex as I want to, but I also have the freedom to keep it as simple as I want to. And I’m still an ‘infant’ with the platform. Real Geeks is continuing to grow and provide new types of awesome services. If you’re not using them, there’s no value in them. But figure out ways that you can make them work into your system and there’s no stopping you.”