When I decided to build one of my very first Amazon Alexa skills back in April 2017, I asked the question…
“What type of skill or use case would make the biggest impact for the real estate industry?”
So I created the Realtor Party Amazon Alexa skill which quickly became one of the most popular announcements in anything I had sent in the last 10 years. Number one opened. Number one clicked. And number one shared on social media. The skill had 10 reviews in a week so I knew I was onto something.
Then I get a letter from the National Association of Realtors legal department saying I needed to remove the skill from the skill store because of a trademark violation for using their logo on the skill store (like the Apple app store).
Ouch!
Didn’t matter if I paid membership dues or was a major investor. The skill had to be killed.
You couldn’t imagine what it felt like to have a viral idea extinguished by an organization you love so much. NAR has actively promoted innovation, collaboration, and working alongside software developers. If indeed partnering with developers were a priority then someone should have asked, “How can we make this work?” instead of “You can’t do that!”
No one had ever done anything like this before and if I were going to wait for a committee to decide on something it probably would have taken a couple years or I would have given up. And giving up on NAR is what I did.
Staying Committed to Innovation
The ONE thing that kept me motivated to stay committed to the #VoiceFirst movement was my clients and professional speaker pals who believed in me. There were so many roadblocks, barriers, and closed doors on the topic early on because so few real estate leaders understood the trends and how voice assistants would transform the everyday life of a Realtor. I believe that will change in 2020 because leading organizations are already lagging when it comes to voice.
Since my first crash and burn, I have developed many different Amazon Alexa skills for different use cases, been hired as a keynote speaker to kick off big conferences, and was asked to speak at the National Association of Realtors Convention Monday November 11th, 2019 at the Moscone Center. Turns out someone is listening after all.
It gets better…
On June 5th, the Canadian Real Estate Association hired me to speak at their Association Executives conference in Halifax and I gave them everything that I normally give at my full day voice marketing conference as a big thank you to supercharge the voice first movement across Canada.
Now, I’m hired as the Voice Marketing Strategist and Developer for REALTOR.ca and the Canadian Real Estate Association. I cannot share the specific details yet so stay tuned…
The Voice Marketing Trends
The trends quoted on Voice Marketing trends are kind of absurd when you look at them. The overused 50% of voice searches done by 2020 is a projection, not a realization. I made my own projections with a few fun ones at the end (to show the ridiculousness of trend predictions).
The Industry Road Map
Most people have smart speakers but they don’t have any idea on what they can do with them in the real estate business because no one has done anything like this before. So let me help you see a couple different ways you can look at setting these up for your offices.
Voice Marketing Guides
It can be a challenge to know what you can do with voice assistants if you have never seen someone use them in a productive way. You will start to say, wow, that was easy. Cool, I can do that, and much, much, more. Take a look at one of our guides to help you on your journey.
Voice Marketing for Business Podcast
Listen to audio recordings of presentations, expert interviews, and discussions on how you can use Voice Marketing for Business.
Upcoming Speaking Dates
9/25 Minnesota Realtors, Minneapolis, MN
10/9 Burlington Hamilton Association of Realtors, Burlington, ON
11/11 National Association of Realtors, San Francisco, CA
1/23 Victoria Real Estate Board, Victoria, BC
3/4 Kansas City Regional Association of Realtors, Kansas City, MO
Join the Conversation!
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