Brokers – all demographics and experience levels. They can be with an affiliated brand or outside our network of brands, however for MVP we focused on affiliated brand brokers with the expectation of being able to open it up to general use and licensed as a platform.
2 primary personas were defined: New Brokers and Veteran Brokers.
- New Brokers tend to need more guidance and are likely only have one or two office locations. They tend to be younger and tech-savvy.
- Veteran Brokers tend to have a good understanding of their business needs, however as they often have more office locations they tend to be very busy and can easily be overwhelmed. They tended to be a bit older and less comfortable with new technology.
Office administrators were also discovered as a potential user during research, which appeared to be a differentiator found only with Veteran Brokers.
User Research Notes:
- Brokers are very loyal to their brand affiliations, rarely changing brands unless moving up their perceived “chain of prestige” (generally ERA < Corcoran < BHGRE < C21 < SIR < CB).
- Brokers may occasionally add or remove an office within their brokerage, when looking to grow or focus their business.
- All brokers who currently set goals (8 of 10) indicated that they use Gross Commission Income (GCI) as their primary goal tracking metric. The 2 brokers who don’t were New Brokers that indicated needing help with defining business goals.
- Brokerages rarely change brands, but they can. The most likely reason for a brand change being unaffiliated brokers converting to an affiliated brand, the next most likely reason being dissatisfaction with their brand’s tools.
- All offices within a Brokerage are associated to a single brand (ex: C21, Sotheby’s).
- Unaffiliated brokerages may be with an unaffiliated national or regional brand, or may be stand-alone organizations (ie: “mom and pop”).