Keller Williams agents closed more transactions at greater volume in the first quarter of 2020 versus the same period last year despite the global pandemic impacting the last month of the quarter, according to select company earning results provided by the privately held franchisor on Friday.
Gary Keller | Photo credit: Keller Williams
Keller Williams agents closed 224,759 transactions, up 4.8 percent over the first quarter of 2019 and $70.2 billion in sales volume, up 10.6 percent year-over-year.
At the same time, the company’s U.S. and Canada agent count declined from last quarter. Keller Williams reported 159,168 agents in the United States and Canada as of March 31, 2019, a drop of 204 agents since earnings for December 31, 2019.
“I’m in awe of what our agents have achieved as they navigate this new normal,” Gary Keller, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Keller Williams, said in a statement. “Our agents are studying their markets, understanding the specific conditions and doubling down on the technology, training and heart needed to serve their clients and communities in this unique moment.”
The company also reached a number of technology milestones in the first quarter, including the launch of its proprietary consumer-facing app and home search experience. In the first quarter, the company saw more than 60 million home searches on the app, KW.com and agent-specific websites.
Command, the company’s properties customer relationship management (CRM) tool, which has been live for roughly a year now, had more than 126,827 active users as of March 31, an increase over the 116,740 users it had at the end of the year. As of March 31, Keller Williams agents had added nearly 50 million contacts into the CRM.
Keller Williams agents generated 265,548 leads through the Campaigns App of Command; sent 16,569 live referrals through the company’s Keller Cloud platform; created 1,262,120 unique designs in their graphic design platform and tracked and managed 1.2 million deals across the company’s sales pipeline
“Every day, I talk to agents who are finding new ways to respond and, they are able to do that through our end-to-end, digital platform,” Keller said. “Our agents are able to provide a consumer experience — from initial consultation to close — that meets clients where they are, safely and conveniently. And we’re proud of that.”
Outside of the U.S., Keller Williams is home to 10,487 agents and 243 market centers. Those agents closed 8,249 transactions in the first quarter, an increase of 12 percent year-over-year, for $1.3 billion in sales volume, up 10.8 percent from the first quarter of 2019.
Keller Williams’ first-quarter results don’t fully show the impact that COVID-19 has had on the market, since the results only run through March 31. To help prepare agents — at both Keller Williams and across the industry — the company this week launched a four-week digital education course for agents across the industry, regardless of their brokerage affiliation.
The course, dubbed BOLD Pivot, is a re-engineered, digitized version of the company’s BOLD coaching course, which is offered through its KW MAPS Coaching platform. The first course went live on Tuesday, May 5.
As of May 7, there were 40,900 users registered for the education course.
“We see our historic registration tally for BOLD Pivot right now as indicative of the immense power training and coaching can have right now that’s strongly linked to this market of the moment and based in best practices and lessons learned from the last significant economic shift,” Darryl Frost, a spokesperson for Keller Williams, said.
