For 45 years McColly Real Estate has been one of the most prominent companies in the Northwest Indiana and South Chicagoland areas. They have set out to provide the best customer service imaginable and now with their new McColly Connect platform, their agents are working more efficiently than ever. In the first two weeks of the new platform rolling out, McColly experienced a 23 percent increase in new traffic to mccolly.com.
With the help of T3 Sixty, the brokerage industry’s leading technology consulting firm, McColly was able to provide their agents with a single login system, rather than the multiple platforms with multiple passwords issued before. Director of Marketing for McColly Monica Decker said McColly started working with the T3 Sixty consultant back in March to ensure they had the best tech available.
“Basically, Ron McColly wanted to make sure that we are investing our dollars wisely in the best technology to bring our agents the most leads and create the best user experience for home buyers and sellers,” Decker said. “So we reevaluated all of our systems and many of them were fine, but there were some areas where we needed to make some improvements just to stay ahead of the curve.”
They considered the broker website, the agent websites, emarketing, CRM, and how they do their digital media campaigns in the total reinvigoration process. They partnered with several new vendors to rebuild the broker website (mccolly.com) as well as the agent websites from scratch to offer them and consumers a better overall experience while also marketing listings better for sellers.
Decker said creating the ideal internal customer service experience for McColly agents ultimately translates to exceptional external experiences for the community. In the rebuild, they considered everything from how agents manage their sales flow, to how they track personal goals on an annual basis to make sure they’re meeting their own expectations.
It was an intricate 6-month process to recreate everything and try to get six different vendors to work together. Travis Saxton, the consultant from T3 Sixty, consults brokerages both regionally and nationally, and coordinated the effort on the vendor side.
“It was a challenge, but we did it,” Decker said. “There was a lot of programming, a lot of communication, a lot of testing that had to be done and what we have now is an industry-leading platform that is new to not only the region but nationally as well.”
Agents typically have several dashboards to log into when it comes to emarketing, which is why McColly Connect is revolutionary. It’s a hub where an agent has a single sign on to every single dashboard they use. It’s also how over 500 agents communicate internally and see homes before they even hit the market.
“It sounds minor, but it’s a huge advantage for agents because they can spend more time doing what they do best,” Decker said. “Being out in the market and selling homes.”
One of the new features that McColly added is the home value calculator. Consumers simply type in their street address and are able to find the estimated worth of their home through an automated value module that give them three averages based on Zillow, eAppraisals, and a third automated valuation model. It also features a heat map, where buyers are looking to buy.
“Obviously Zillow isn’t a local expert, so they don’t really know the neighborhoods or any upgrades you’ve made, so it’s important for the consumer to have a local agent,” Decker said. “Those leads go directly to our agents to follow up on so the consumer can get connected.”
According to Decker, Ron McColly, the founder of McColly Real Estate, has always been a forward thinker. He was born and raised in Northwest Indiana and is vested in making sure the community connects with the ideal home buying and home selling experience. When individuals succeed, communities succeed.
Decker said Ron McColly’s local roots are also why he keeps McColly Real Estate closely connected with community organizations and charities.
“He always, always, always, thinks of what’s best for the agents and the local community,” Decker said.
The new www.mccolly.com has just recently been ranked in the Top 10 Best Real Estate websites for Mobile and Property Detail through the RealTrends Website Rankings. You can read the full story of that here: https://realtrendswebrankings.com/2019-website-rankings/
Visit their top-rated website https://www.mccolly.com/ today to start your journey toward finding your new home.
