ShowingTeam’s intent is ideal for new agents needing to learn a market, and can be used by brokers to tell top talent there’s a system in place for handling the tasks that become mundane as you experience success.
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ShowingTeam is a showing and real estate business task outsourcing solution.
Platforms: Browser; mobile app on iOS, Android
Ideal for: Brokerages, teams, agents and admins
Top selling points:
- Brokerage focus
- Open market pricing structure
- Developed by real estate agents
- Activity monitoring across all accounts
Top concern:
How well can the full-time agents who built the app transition into becoming technology company leaders, specifically as support teams and product managers? The app is comparable to its market brethren, Showami and Unlockdbox.
What you should know
ShowingTeam is the third app in this category I’ve reviewed this year and the second in as many weeks. The app’s intent is to help busy agents outsource business tasks — primarily showings. It’s ideal for new agents needing to learn a market and can be used by brokers to tell top talent there’s a system in place for handling the tasks that become mundane as you experience success.
This time, I’ll just get to the point.
With Showami, it took me a few stanzas before I pointed out that there isn’t a solid in-app mechanism or third-party integration for verifying the buyer’s identity or ensuring the agent’s safety when agreeing to accept a job. That’s my primary concern. Every agent should be able to vet a buyer according to their own level of risk. Moreover, that’s also something that an agent eager to earn money may be willing to sacrifice, although they shouldn’t.
While I’m certain the team behind the company, who are all active agents, are absolutely concerned with user safety, I’d like to see the software in some way integrate it beyond the best practices documentation it provides as part of its onboarding packages.
Also, like Showami, ShowingTeam neglects communicating with the client, assuming that pawning them off to a lesser experienced agent is totally okay with them. It wouldn’t be with me. I want to know my time is as valuable as my agent’s. Send someone else because you’re too busy, and I may think my commission money isn’t all that critical to you.
But, it can be argued that what I’m ranting about is a greater industry problem. As long as that is an acceptable industry practice then I’m relegated to only considering the software. In that case, ShowingTeam does what it’s supposed to.
Conceptually, it helps agents publish tasks, and their related details and other agents accept or decline those tasks. The software divides its functionality into Upcoming Jobs, Post a Job and Grab a Job.
Posting and grabbing are the primary areas of interaction, and each demonstrates a fairly basic user experience. It’s a mobile app first and foremost and could use a visual refresh and additional time spent on shrinking some of the steps.
For example, listing information input doesn’t really require the full address, which uses five or six input fields when it can be summarized faster with only the included Listing URL field. I’d use only that because I’m going to want to see images, nearby amenities and the like, so I least have some context for the showing. A full MLS integration is going to be crucial for ShowingTeam to fully modernize.
It also relies on a notes field to fully communicate any special instructions about the property and handling the client. Oh man, that would worry me. That’s important data and at the very least, should be copied and pasted from the brokerage CRM. Otherwise, you now have valuable client insight existing in disparate software entities, and in the case of ShowingTeam, often entered by someone who is too busy, right?
And how does the showing data get reconciled if it’s a brokerage listing? I didn’t see a field for the person conducting the showing to add context about the event. On the contrary, did the buyer say something that changes things? What stood out for the buyer on the showing?
There’s a command for indicating a task has been completed, and that can serve to engage each party in a manual back-and-forth about the buyer. Remember, listing agents love feedback. Who leaves it, the person showing the home or the person who didn’t have time to show it? And who enters the interaction into the aforementioned CRM?
I like ShowingTeam’s lack of involvement in payment. No minimums. This is smart. Why wade into being responsible for the transfer of funds when products like Venmo exist?
The software uses a simple selection drop-down for users to indicate how they’ll pay the person who accepts a job. And the price is entered upon posting a job. Also, if there isn’t verification of payment entered after five jobs, the non-payer gets booted from the software until they make good.
People wanting to show a home have a cool map interface pinned with different jobs, color-coded by type, such as a showing, open house or other miscellaneous task. Clicking a pin opens the dialogue box with home and job details and a chat tool for engaging the person who posted the gig.
The software allows for a number of home screen notifications to be set up, such as when a new job is posted, accepted or completed. Users can choose how they’re reached, too.
ShowingTeam enables the user to select who will see the job they’re posting and can relegate it to a specific team, office location or other categorized groups.
The product is being rolled out by Howard Hannah, which will make it a brokerage-wide benefit.
Could ShowingTeam become a draw for agents wanting to join a brokerage? Maybe, but probably not on its own. It’s certainly a nice add-on, but marketing and lead-gen tend to dominate tech-oriented recruiting efforts.
I’m all for the idea of delegation and helping new agents learn a market and make some extra money as they go. That’s a great business case around which to build a product. But, this is a time of sophisticated client contact platforms, high-touch, well-informed consumers and powerful, business-critical data, all of which are a part of showing homes. It’s a vertical process.
Minus those caveats, ShowingTeam is mostly good. I trust that its founders, who are all full-time agents, will remedy my concerns over time. It has good bones, as they say.
But we’ll find out over time whether Howard Hannah thinks it’s move-in ready.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.
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