Former RE/MAX SVP Jen Barton has moved to a role at the real estate technology firm Tribus, the company announced this week.
Barton will serve as the director of change management at Tribus, which so far has bucked the trend of companies in real estate downsizing, growing by 30 percent over the past month.
Barton’s new role as performance and change manager will have her assist Tribus’ clients in the onboarding and implementation of their software systems, providing a human touch to a process that can be intimidating.
“It’s really around helping our clients to manage change in moving to a new platform like Tribus as we onboard them on to our tech products,” Barton said in an interview. “It’s really focusing on the people side in implementation.”
In her previous position, Barton worked on initiatives related to strategy, transformation and culture at RE/MAX. Her new role will see her apply some of those same focus areas to working with Tribus’ clients.
“When you’re going through a big change, like a software change, it’s easy to implement a new system, it’s even easy to follow a process, but what’s really hard around execution is the people side,” Barton said. “So having a people-focused approach to your strategy on what you want to do from a technology investment perspective, you’ll tend to have a better outcome.”
At a point in the industry when real estate tech is more married to sales than ever, maintaining a human relationship between tech vendors and brokerages that utilize them is an overlooked but important dynamic, according to Johnny Pfeiffer, who works as as the director of brokerage coaching at Tribus.
“The marriage of technology and real estate sales is more prevalent than ever for real estate agents and brokers,” Pfeiffer said. “What I think Jen is doing is she’s creating this harmonious relationship that historically for us as leaders within the real sales industry have always been afraid of.”
Johnny Pfeiffer | Tribus
“We’ve always been afraid of technology and getting our agents to adopt and utilize the programs and tools and systems, and she’s creating that bridge that’s taking that fear away and allowing the companies to truly utilize what they’re paying for,” he added.
Tribus was founded more than 13 years ago and offers a variety of real estate technology products including intranet, email marketing, transaction management and various other tools. The company has also steadily expanded its offerings. In May, it debuted a collaborative search feature for its platform. Six months earlier, Tribus acquired multiple listing service technology provider Solid Earth.
