How Salesforce is helping disrupt the real estate brokerage business: Q&A with Rokham Fard, CMO TheRedPin.com

Can you please share a little about your company. How did TheRedPin get started?

In 2010, three friends and I founded TheRedPin.com. We’re Canada’s largest online real estate brokerage with a unique business model that streamlines the real estate journey and provides exceptional end-to-end services, not found at other traditional brokerages. We recognized that the real estate industry is one of the few sectors not influenced by technology advancements and so our vision was to connect people, data and technology to create a completely new real estate experience for buyers and sellers. We combine easy-to-use, powerful technology with the savvy of full-time, local realtors who offer full-service real estate services. We can do all of this while saving money and eliminating the hassle for our clients.

What are the top priorities for TheRedPin?

Everything we do is about creating a less fee, more service approach. Exceptional client service is at the heart of our business and what makes TheRedPin stand out. We have a team of seasoned subject matter experts — in sales, customer service, technology, marketing, digital and social media — who are marketing, prospecting and qualifying leads so our realtors can focus on the client experience throughout the buying and selling process. For TheRedPin, the real estate process isn’t transactional—it’s often someone’s largest investment, with a great deal of emotion tied to it—and we’re there to ensure there’s the highest level of service throughout this important event.

What keeps you up at night? How are you addressing these in your business?

I sleep pretty well at night! I believe that a good night’s sleep is critical to solving big challenges and to innovative thinking. It’s the first time that innovative technologies are intersecting with real estate and that’s got my mind swirling with ideas. What’s exciting for me is how the invisible hand of technology can vastly improve the home buying and selling experience and make a client’s journey so much more personal and positive. Real estate still needs a human element but technology is addressing the key pain points of the business.

What are the keys to your company’s successful growth?

Focus, collaboration and innovation. TheRedPin is highly focused on making changes to the traditional real estate brokerage model to improve our clients’ experience. At the same time, we try to focus on scalable solutions that can easily be applied to all of our clients—this is what sets TheRedPin apart. We have many experts on the team who work collaboratively to ensure we’re delivering on our promise to clients. Finally, revolutionizing the traditional real estate business can’t be done without a high-level of innovation so we’re always focused on staying on top of new technologies and how they can help power our business.

What’s one piece of advice you’d share with other SMB executives?

A successful business is a marathon, not a sprint. Focus on long-term goals, be ready for a long journey and pace yourself. Ensure you’re creating a balanced life that allows you to carve off white space to think of the next big ideas and innovations. Also don’t forget that leaders are readers and new ideas start cross-pollinating when we expose ourselves to alternate thinking.

How does your company think about customer service? What does it mean to your company to be a customer company?

Great service is very intangible but everyone knows it when they experience it. For TheRedPin, to be a client-first company means we discover a client’s problems or pain points and solve them, in ways that are often subtle, but that are most certainly felt by clients. We also test our assumptions at the end the client’s journey but having them fill out a survey. I’m happy to report that this method has yielded us a 95%+ client satisfaction to date.

What was your company’s biggest business challenge before engaging with Salesforce?

Our goal was and still is not just to create another brokerage but to be a true client advocate in the real estate buying and selling process. Creating a brokerage with centralized and cohesive sales, customer service and marketing, in an industry that’s traditionally not run that way, was no easy feat. Real estate brokerages can have hundreds of brokers and yet not have any central tools or ways to easily collaborate. Salesforce changed that. With Salesforce’s customer relationship management platform, we now have a single view of our clients. Furthermore it keeps our realtors much more organized and on top of the ball.

When you take one step back and zoom out a level, it also allows for a streamlined two-way communication between departments, such as marketing, in the company. Building this proprietary user flow was probably one of our biggest challenges that Salesforce has allowed us to solve.

What’s next for TheRedPin?

We’re planning to take our unique business model nationally. TheRedPin sits at the intersection of technology and service and so we’ll remain steadfast in scanning the horizon for new and innovative technologies that will allow us to continually enhance our business and the client experience.

About Rokham Fard

At fifteen, Rokham Fard moved to Canada with his family and had to learn a new language, culture and make new friends. He studied Computer Science at the University of Toronto and at 21 became the employee of the year at a Fortune 500 company. He decided to tackle entrepreneurship right after graduation, which eventually lead to co-founding TheRedPin.com.

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