Mark Eibner: Hi this is Mark Eibner with Broker IPTV and we are at the Inman Connect in San Francisco and today I am... have a pleasure to be with David Carroll and David Caroll is with Soft Realty and David could you tell us a little bit about your product?
David Carroll: Absolutely, absolutely. We were the first company to build an IDX service where we wanted to challenge the quality of what the user or the consumer experiences when they are doing their search. So we built this brilliant MLS base property search engine and we are bringing to the real state agents for free. So we got free IDX first and foremost.
Mark Eibner: So this is an IDX product for agents to use and which MLS's are you working with right now?
David Carroll: Right now we are integrated with MLS's out of the Atlanta market, FMLS [phonetic], Georgia MLS, we have got MLS's in Florida, Alabama, Chicago and we are expanding pretty much in areas including San Francisco across the country right now.
Mark Eibner: So what is your... explain to our viewing audience what really the differences as far lead registration and how your product works versus the traditional fill out of form, leave my e-mail, leave my phone number?
David Carroll: Absolutely so not only we are saving money for the real estate agent by just eliminating the cost for the IDX service, we are also helping them expand their market reach by eliminating that barrier what we call "Forced registration barrier" by allowing the agent to engage with the visitor without them even... before they even register their information. So to give you an example Joe Buyer might come to their website and do some searches. He hasn't identified himself, he is saving some properties, he has come back maybe three or four times. The agent is going to pick up on that type of activity and realize "Hey I know this, this area and I am going to send him a message". Again the agent doesn't have his phone number, his e-mail address or his name, but the agent might say "Hey I am Sally agent [phonetic] and I know this area, if I can help you out in anyway please let me know". Joe Buyer might log on the next day and realize there is a message, it's going to be a link up to the top of the search interface and it's going to say "You have one unread message". Joe Buyer might actually click on it and he is going to realize there is somebody that is engaging with him. At this point the buyer is introducing himself or responding and he says "Look we are looking for better school district, some more closer to work", whatever their life story might be its relevant now the conversation is started, they begin the next step of converting that lead. When the agent sends the message to the, to the consumer, the visitor, its not this instant chat message at all, its un-invasive, it's a very subtle "Hey we know you are here, we are here to help, let us know how to start that process". Its not unlike the example that if you are an agent and you are standing in line at a star box and in front of you, you might hear two people talking about this property that they went to look at, not what they were looking for, the kind of bumped out. As an agent you might introduce yourself you don't know their name, you don't know who they are and you say "Hey I am Sally agent, I know this area let me tell you about this property in this other neighborhood". All of a sudden you have just engaged with them and they are saying "Hey great I am so and so let's continue this conversation" and so we want to bring that that real road experience online, it's the same way to build your network in the real world do it on the Internet.
Mark Eibner: So response from a user so far?
David Carroll: We have had a lot of people that were skeptics, [Inaudible] and they were really concerned about how is this going to work for them, we have gotten a lot of response back saying we have met more people this way than we ever would have otherwise, so it's been brilliant.
Mark Eibner: Oh great, great information David and it sounds like a great product.
David Carroll: Great [voice cross over].
Mark Eibner: Thank you. For more great interviews on real estate or real estate technology make sure to go to brokeriptv.com.
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