Inside Sierra Interactive: AI, IDX, and the Future of Real Estate Tech with Peter Maglathlin
Download MP3We don't have a monopoly on innovation in this space. And in order for us to do what I said earlier, which is focus on our strengths, we need to be able to integrate with other really great point solutions. And in a fast moving market, open architecture and a public API is what it is what enables you to do that. Right?
Announcer:Welcome to the Real Estate Distilled podcast. Get ready for a smooth pour on insights on sales, marketing, lead conversion, and technology. All shaken, stirred, and perfectly balanced to help you succeed in real estate.
Scott Hack:Hey, everybody. Thanks for coming in and joining us for another episode of the Real Estate Distilled podcast. Really excited to get this one recorded. Today, we have a guest coming to us, one of our sponsors from Real Estate Distilled. And those of you who have not met Peter yet, hopefully, you'll have the opportunity to do that soon.
Scott Hack:But I'll jump into some more details about Sierra. But let's go ahead and get Peter on and have him introduce himself. Peter, thanks for joining us.
Peter Maglathlin:Thrilled to be here, Scott. Thanks. Thanks for having me. So yeah, I've Hi, everyone. I'm Peter McLaughlin, CEO of Sierra Interactive.
Peter Maglathlin:I've been with the business about two and a half years, my two year anniversary will be in October. I've been in software for, God, about fifteen years at this point. I'm a reformed entrepreneur. I built two prior businesses, one in talent management and one in construction tech, and had the opportunity to join Sierra and partner with Sierra's founder Ben Pesco, who is a product visionary and just wonderful guy in helping to take this business to the next level. So software is in my blood.
Peter Maglathlin:It's been really fun and really fascinating to to apply my skills in a new space in real estate. And it's very helpful to have customers who also serve as advisors like Scott, to learn from on a daily basis, and bounce ideas off of, as much as possible. So thrilled to be here and, you know, real estate distilled is is our favorite event of the year and was was wonderful again this year.
Scott Hack:Appreciate that, Peter. So I think that, as just a real quick side story, I actually ran into Ben randomly at the airport just about a week ago. I was coming back from That's awesome. Yeah. I was coming back from Florida, and he was coming back from a trip as well.
Scott Hack:And we're sitting, in the Atlanta Airport waiting for our connecting flight. And I was like, I sat down. Was like, man, that guy looks familiar. And then I looked over again. It's like that's Ben.
Scott Hack:So that that was an interesting and fun little, side adventure that happened. So you you mentioned that you had come over from to Sierra. And for those that do not know, the parent company now for Sierra is ASG, correct?
Peter Maglathlin:Alpine Software Group. Yep. So they partner with businesses that that they call vertical SaaS companies. So businesses that are wholly dedicated to serving a specific customer archetype. Right?
Peter Maglathlin:And so for for Sierra, that's real estate agents, real estate teams, real estate brokerages. And, we identified Sierra as really best in class in the space, we're really wanted to partner with them in bringing the business to the next level over a subsequent six, seven year period. And so now we're we're firmly on the path to doing that.
Scott Hack:That's awesome. And and your journey to Sierra through ASG is because of your acquisition of your previous companies. Right?
Peter Maglathlin:Yeah. So I actually got introduced to ASG. Mean, careers are funny, right? They end up a lot of it's based on luck and relationships. And so my prior business, one of my board members said, hey, have you ever heard of Alpine Software Group?
Peter Maglathlin:It's a really cool software investment firm. And I hadn't. And he said, hey, well, my wife's there and she thinks you would be a wonderful fit. And so I began speaking to the folks at ASG and I really fell in love with two things, right? My work satisfaction fundamentally comes down to like the people I work with.
Peter Maglathlin:And so I really admired and respected and felt like I could learn from the folks there. And then secondly, fell in love with the model. I think the businesses they partner with are hyper focused, tend to be very customer oriented because they've been founder run for the better part of five to ten to fifteen years. And I think our partnership model with founders and within existing businesses allows for number one like value creation for the business and for our customers but number two an opportunity for people's careers to be transformed and up leveled etcetera. And so I feel very lucky, right?
Peter Maglathlin:Because I didn't know that Sierra was gonna be the business I was partnered with and I feel very fortunate that that is what has happened. And Ben, as we mentioned earlier, was a wonderful partner throughout the transition and the team he's built, the technology they built over a wonderful run has set this business up for a really exciting ride as we as we move forward.
Scott Hack:That's awesome. So it's for those that do not know, so Sierra was actually one of the founding sponsors of Real Estate Distilled. So we actually had the the pleasure of being able to go face to face and sit down with Ben, the the the founder, and pitch the idea. My wife, Liz, and I, who normally joins us on the podcast. And so we we were able to establish that relationship.
Scott Hack:So Sierra has been with us since the very beginning. So we hosted our first conference in 2018, and Sierra has been there every every year that we've hosted. So hoping to keep that that partnership alive and well for many years. Peter, as we are kind of talking about, you know, the real estate industry in general and Sierra specifically, and like I just said, like Sierra has got a lot of people that are in the ecosystem at Sierra that are part of real estate distilled as well. So I'm sure that if they knew that we were having this conversation, they would have had like a long list of questions.
Scott Hack:So why don't you take a couple minutes and like, tell us what's going on with Sierra? Like, rip the curtain back as much as you're comfortable doing and share a little bit.
Peter Maglathlin:Yeah, more than happy to. So I think my journey with Sierra has been interesting because ever since I joined in October 22, the market has looked fundamentally different than it did in the prior period. Right? Rates started their March upwards, transaction volumes started their March downwards. And, what we've been most focused on is partnering with our customers to ensure that the technology and service we're delivering them is enabling them to continue to wade through what is certainly a challenging market.
Peter Maglathlin:Who the heck knows when we'll get relief from a rates perspective? Who the heck knows when we'll return to more normalized transaction volumes? But I think we're in this together with our customers and I think that we a lot of folks doing really interesting creative things to grow their businesses amidst what is a really challenging set of exogenous factors out there. And for those of you that don't know Sierra very well, we are an IDX plus CRM platform that primarily serves independent brokerages teams but then also high performing single agents. We got our start and this is all thanks to Ben in the IDX website space.
Peter Maglathlin:That's where our DNA really resides was Ben was one of the first folks to realize, hey, there's an opportunity to build high performing sleek websites for real estate companies in a way that allows them to generate more leads, convert more leads and service their customers better. And that business grew to include a back end system that is really differentiated around, two things. I'd say our our automations. Right? We provide folks the capability to create many different unique, we'll just call it like if then statements that allow their agents, their teams to operate efficiently, but also enable them to get in front of their customers with the right message at the right time, which we all know is really important.
Peter Maglathlin:But then secondly, something we call our accelerator platform that allows coaching organizations and training organizations to partner with our customers and building out action plans and ensuring they're using the system really well. But what we've been focused on of late and what we continue to be focused on is what I call leaning into our strengths, right? Our customers are with us for very specific reasons. We've delivering good results for our customers for years and there's no need to necessarily rewrite that recipe, right? How do we make what's already good better?
Peter Maglathlin:How do we enable our customers to extend the advantage that they have in their market through Sierra versus needing to build out a bunch of different new software to deliver to customers that they may or may not need. I would say our customers tend to be the most forward thinking and smart about SEO and lead generation. Right? Our websites undoubtedly are best in class in SEO. They also are really really powerful from a lead conversion perspective whether that's organic or PPC.
Peter Maglathlin:And how do we make a step change on that front? We have a product that remains in beta and is coming out at some point over the back half of the year called ImpellerSearch. We've gotten some really good feedback from customers and have a clear path I think to delivering something really powerful. But the rationale behind that product is a few fold. Number one, we understand that the fastest websites rank the best, right?
Peter Maglathlin:And so we've modernized our architecture to allow those sites to be faster. Number two, it enables our customers' customers to search across MLS. I think one of the biggest challenges for growing brokerages or growing teams is, hey, if I'm now covering multiple MLSs, my customer doesn't understand like the MLS construct. And so forcing them to search by MLS is just a strange consumer experience. So removing that from the equation removes a ton of friction for the consumer.
Peter Maglathlin:The third thing is flexibility through keyword search. We understand that the MLS data structure remains important and it allows for folks to whittle down search criteria to get exactly the results they want. But the MLS search criteria is also incomplete. There are a lot of different desires or needs of customers and those needs are or preferences, those needs are evolving fast and being constrained simply to the MLS criteria sometimes doesn't allow the results to be as relevant as they otherwise could. And so this keyword search capability paired with the kind of faceted search not only enables our agents to create more powerful save searches but allows our their customers to discover more properties that are hyper relevant.
Peter Maglathlin:And then lastly, we continue this is all with SEO and content creation and content generation in mind because we know that's what our customers care about. Right? And so if your website is faster, if you're able to create content based on keywords that are relevant to consumers, then your website will rank better, right? And so we're leaning in hard on the IDX front and we have a lot of iteration to do to make sure we get this right, but we know that's top of our customers' minds. I'd say the second piece is around data analytics, right?
Peter Maglathlin:And this is kind of an ongoing theme for us where there's so much data that resides in our customers databases that we are not yet doing a good enough job of surfacing to them so they can make decisions. So when you think about all the daily activity that ISAs or agents are engaging in the CRM, that activity is really important for team leads and broker owners to be able to understand, okay, who are my highest performing agents? What are they doing? Right? Like what is it that makes them highest performing and what are our, how can our processes be evolved or tinkered with in order to make the organization and certain individuals perform better?
Peter Maglathlin:Right. And I think the beauty of being a CRM platform is that data, we have access to all that data. There are a lot of businesses that take that data and create analytics or charts with it but we can do that ourselves too. And so what we're bringing to market back half of this year is this concept that we're calling agent leaderboard which allows team leads, broker owners, etcetera to understand, okay, like on a per agent basis what are the core activities that my agents are engaging in? How do they rank against one another?
Peter Maglathlin:And how do those activities correlate or not to results? And that's our first foray into I think a really exciting data analytics capability that's gonna put insights into our customers hands that allow them to make decisions which is what's most important. A couple other smaller things around where we're going. I mentioned automations as a big differentiator for us and they are. I think what we're now leaning into is more powerful out of the box automations that give our customers the ability to stand them up in a way that isn't as labor intensive.
Peter Maglathlin:And so getting back to this agent leaderboard point, there are automations that you can pair with core activities or follow-up that you want your agents to be engaging in that make sure they actually do those activities. Right? It's one thing to show them the report, it's another thing to set up the system to say, hey this lead hasn't been followed up within twenty four hours, it came from this source. Our rule is it needs to happen so make sure it happens. And then around lead task, we talked a lot with you, some of our other customers down in Louisville at this wonderful dinner where we were able to learn so much around what your and others key priorities were and in a tight market where sellers matter and have always mattered but I think matter even more in the existing environment allowing for what we're calling partial lead capture for seller leads.
Peter Maglathlin:Putting you all in the position to acquire leads in a way that's more flexible and maybe a little bit incomplete but positions you to then follow-up with those leads, amalgamate that data and follow-up. And so, in summary, it's really about, like I said, leaning into our strengths, right? Our customers like you, I think have continued to stay with us for reasons we understand well. We dilute ourselves away from what those strengths are, I think it would be an irresponsible move on behalf of our customers, which is why we're doubling down.
Scott Hack:So Peter, going back to your your comment about, IntelliSearch really and talking about, you know, those those feeds. And one of the things that I think is kind of interesting just to make sure that all the listeners kind of get a grasp on. I'm actually on a MLS task force from my association right now. And, you know, like, once or twice a year, we come out with new fields. It's not very often.
Scott Hack:But you all, as a company, are managing probably, what, 700 different feeds?
Peter Maglathlin:Yeah. A little less than that, but but 500.
Scott Hack:Yeah. So it's a it's a it's a ton of data. So every single association across the country, for instance, we're we're just like last year, introduced some fields that were related to like electric car chargers. So, you know, some things like that. So anytime something new happens, you know, green energy initiatives, things there are fields that people might want to search for.
Scott Hack:It takes a while for those fields to end up in the MLS. So I might have that in mind, but they might not exist in your other 450 customers feeds. So it's tough for you all to roll something out with the search feature unless you're able to pull that like you're talking about from the remarks and pulling all that info. So it's going to I think it's going to be really important for speed because that's ultimately what you're able to be able to bring to your clients next, you know, next year, essentially, is the speed to do something even if the field doesn't exist.
Peter Maglathlin:Totally. Yeah. It's speed and flexibility. Right? Because I think that as we've you know, one one of the terms that we found is really important to a lot of consumers across this country is this concept of multi generational.
Peter Maglathlin:Right? Multi generational housing. And that term exists in the listing description in a lot of places, but it doesn't necessarily exist as a field within the MLS. And so it's unleashing the power of being able to translate a consumer preference to a search result in a way that doesn't necessarily require for it to be within the structured data of the MLS. We are still going to enable folks to base searches on the structured data within the MLS and this is complementary to that.
Peter Maglathlin:And you know consumer preferences are constantly changing and so what I think this allows folks to do is to stay ahead of that curve, be able to meet consumers where they are and create really interesting like high ranking content on terms we know folks care about that again aren't necessarily based on the structured data within the MLS. Right? Because you could create some really interesting compelling content around multi generational homes. Or know Scott something you and I have talked about like homes with historic charm in Louisville that this platform now enables you to do that the prior kind of construct didn't allow you to do. And given our customers tend to be marketing forward, SEO forward, content forward, we feel this is only gonna pour fuel on that fire and give them a competitive advantage in the market.
Scott Hack:I'm gonna make an assumption that, you know, a big part of this IntelliSearch, both from the name, but also from, you know, what's being needed is is leveraging some form of AI to have that context of what these terms are. So is that I mean, that's part of it. Right?
Peter Maglathlin:Yeah. Over time, yes. I mean, the the core technology we're we're we're leveraging here is something called Elasticsearch, and I won't I won't get into the kind of the technicals around that. But what that enables is just a far more flexible and fulsome search, not just against we'll call data values, but against free text. Right?
Peter Maglathlin:And where we can go with that, to your point, is layering on artificial intelligence to make decisions about what a match is, what a match isn't, etcetera. But you got to be careful with AI and I know we're going to talk a lot about this. I think that there are some really exciting interesting applications today. I think there will soon be some really exciting interesting applications tomorrow. But how do we think about a phased sequence approach such that we're not putting AI where it shouldn't be, right?
Peter Maglathlin:Because in a lot of ways this technology remains hyper nascent And my perspective is you gotta be really careful around putting AI in between you and your customer. And I can unpack that a lot. And it will get there. Right? But as a real estate agent, you're dealing with folks who are going through the most important financial transaction of their life.
Peter Maglathlin:It's highly emotional. And I think that my perspective is AI is gonna be able to serve you in a way that doesn't necessarily require you to insert it in between you customer, but in the background to enable you to do things you couldn't do before.
Scott Hack:Yeah. A lot of the conversations that I've been having with friends and family about artificial intelligence and specifically in the real estate industry, I've I've been very open. I'm not worried about my job. You know, I don't think that, you know, AI can replace what I do. It it doesn't have the ability to understand the the empathy that's needed when someone's going through those emotionally charged, you know, negotiations and that that process.
Scott Hack:I do think that AI obviously will be a tool that we will be using more and more and leveraging for some of our day to day tasks. And, you know, we had a conversation with Brandon Duncan. He was on the podcast here probably a couple episodes ago, and he gave his presentation at Real Estate Distilled on AI. And it's it's definitely a topic that you can't, you know, walk into a room of real estate agents and someone not be talking about AI. And I think that, you know, really, I've seen Terminator, you know, and I know I know I know at some point Skynet's going online, you know, that's the end.
Scott Hack:But until we get there, like, obviously, like I said, we're there's just so much going on with it. How how do you think that we're going to really embrace and how do you think it's gonna impact real estate industry the most over the next twelve to twenty four months?
Peter Maglathlin:Yeah. Yeah. This is gonna be a fun conversation. I I think about this a lot, because, hey, our job is to deliver great technology to businesses like yours, and AI is undoubtedly going to have a profound impact. But, really, the construct I try to use is like now next later and then at the same time how do we ensure that we're supporting that continued human connection between you and your customers?
Peter Maglathlin:Because that is invaluable. Right? Again, for a real estate transaction people are always going to rely on other people for advice but there's a way for AI to work in the background. So I'm going to run through what I believe to be like some of the most exciting use cases today. And then I have a couple ideas around where it's going to be most exciting tomorrow.
Peter Maglathlin:But there are a lot of technologies out there today that facilitate faster and in some ways more effective we'll call it like lead qualification and lead engagement. So we have a product at Sierra called Lead Engage that enables inbound leads to be interacted with based on an LLM that is constantly training itself in a very fast and usually pretty effective manner. But the whole purpose of that is to qualify them such that they're agent ready. And I think that this is a valuable use case. I think it's the best use case today and I think really the only one today that you should be comfortable in injecting AI in between you and your leads or your customers because this technology is pretty grooved.
Peter Maglathlin:You can see it operating in real time and its ability to qualify and learn and hand off is pretty strong. Where I get really skeptical at least today around lead engagement is with voice AI. And so I think voice AI is gonna be a game changing technology. I really do. Do I think it's a game changing technology today?
Peter Maglathlin:I do not. I think it's a little dangerous. Hey certain people are comfortable with enabling a voice agent to answer and call leads or customers. I think it's I don't think the technology is there yet. Right?
Peter Maglathlin:And so like when I think about kind of the agent to consumer relationship, I think the best application right now is text based lead qualification because it's relatively grooved, it's low risk, and at the end of the day it's the agents that should be speaking to customers because it's fundamentally the best use of their time. Right?
Scott Hack:Yeah. You you mentioned, about the voice, and I I think one of the things to keep in mind too is that it's an expectation too. The consumer is not expecting a robot, essentially, that's the term I'm gonna use, to call them. It's different if you call into a call center and then you have an AI robot that's trying to answer your question or guide you to a you know, eventually, someone live needs to be to answer. And, again, that's kind of like that I'm using my hands here, like really skimming the top, you know, 20% off of here's the people that I think we can hand off to someone live and actually help.
Scott Hack:And these other 80%, maybe we can do something with an automated fashion or help push into the correct channel. But, yeah, I I'm not comfortable with the outbound right now either.
Peter Maglathlin:No. And and and, hey, I think this count that technology is only going to get better and better. But, like, the way I think about it is it's one thing to have voice AI handle a customer support conversation around, like, a 10 to $20 purchase. Right? It's a fundamentally different thing to have a voice agent handle a conversation someone who's considering the most important financial transaction of their life.
Peter Maglathlin:It's so much more nuanced. It's so much more risky that that I think it it needs fundamentally needs to be a human until this technology is perfected. That's not to say that like I'm not excited about it. I think it's really cool what's happening on that frontier but we need to be careful. Scott, this is something you mentioned earlier but I think what I'm most excited about in the near future with respect to AI is around like internal efficiency and effectiveness drivers for organizations like yours, right?
Peter Maglathlin:And there are a couple really interesting applications that partner companies we have integrations with have brought to market that I can walk you through. And I think you recently spoke with Justin Benson from Shiloh who's become a friend and has built a really cool product. But the first application is when you think about like rote tasks, like data input, right? And so CRMs are mission critical. They're really powerful but at the end of the day it comes down to what is the integrity and fullness of the data that people are putting in it, right?
Peter Maglathlin:And regardless of the industry the challenge for the buyers of CRMs is getting their teams to actually use them frequently and be really vigilant around data completeness and data accuracy. And agents have hard jobs, They're moving in a million different places. I feel a lot, right? And so this concept of making sure everything gets captured into the CRM such that it can be the source of truth understandably can be hard and in a lot of ways I think is deprioritized. And so there's a business out there called House Whisper that a few of our customers are using.
Peter Maglathlin:I'm not sure if you've ever heard of it Scott but it was founded by some former Zillow folks and really what this does is take a bunch of the data entry and call follow-up off of agents hands hands so that they can continue to do the high value work. So I think, know, Greg Delaire, he's on the bleeding edge of a lot of software. For those that don't know who Greg is, he's a customer based out in Green Bay, goes by Green Bay Greg. And Greg had set up an integration that isn't native to Sierra yet with House Whisperer that is proving to be a massive efficiency driver for his agents because it takes 50 to 60 to 70% of this data entry and rote task out of their rhythm, right? And so think about what that does for the agent's daily work happiness.
Peter Maglathlin:It's the type of thing I think is relatively easy to sell to your agent as long as they're comfortable with how it works and it's predictably good. And generally this technology is. And so I don't think HouseCostriders is gonna be the last example of a technology like this. Think the way CRMs are moving is that they will continue to be the source of truth but the way data gets input into them is going to be less reliant on humans and more reliant on artificial intelligence. And I think that's fundamentally a good thing because what that allows your team to do is spend more time talking to prospects, talking to customers and enabling them to buy and sell homes.
Peter Maglathlin:Another really interesting application with respect to internal efficiency and effectiveness is Shiloh AI, right? And so when you think about real estate teams or real estate brokerages, you guys are fundamentally sales organizations, right? Like your sales effectiveness determines your business success, right? And the better you get at qualifying, discovering and eventually selling consumers on your service, the more money your agents are gonna make and the more money your business is gonna make. That's hard, right?
Peter Maglathlin:Like we have a sales organization at Sierra that I'm heavily involved in. It's hard, right? And I think one of the reasons it's hard is technology that have come to market like a Gong etcetera allow you to parachute in and understand kind of what were the strengths of that call? What were the weaknesses? What were things that folks maybe could get better at.
Peter Maglathlin:But historically that's needed to be done on kind of a one to one basis and it's very time consuming. What Shiloh does which is insanely powerful especially for organizations that have five, ten, 15, 50 agents is it applies AI to grade and coach calls in an automated way and feeds that data back into the CRM such that number one the agent understands and has access to what that feedback is. Number two the sales manager has access to it and so it enables a much faster feedback loop, right? So number two, it enables a sales manager to likely be able to manage many more people due to the efficiency it drives at the organization. And so this again is a relatively new business.
Peter Maglathlin:We have a native integration with Shiloh. Have a bunch of customers using it and it's really powerful and it helps to solve for one of the I'd say top pain points that our brokerage owner and team leaders have on a weekly, monthly basis. And then I'd say, like, the third efficiency or effectiveness application I'm really excited about, but this one needs to be viewed skeptically is around content creation. Right? And Scott, I know you you know, you're you and your wife are very thoughtful about what your content strategy is, what you're producing, what's the so what behind it.
Peter Maglathlin:And I think content creation is hard. Right? It requires forward thought. It requires effort. There's the cold start problem.
Peter Maglathlin:It's like, well, hey, where the heck am I gonna start? Right? I think where AI can be really interesting is solving for that cold start problem. Let's just say, hey I wanna write about this. It can get you a 75 or 80% of the way there and then you take it over the goal line by applying your local market knowledge, what you've seen work in the industry and putting your own personal brand on it such that you can become more of a content generation engine.
Peter Maglathlin:The thing folks need to appreciate is this is not an easy button. It's a health button. Because what AI will not do is produce soup to nuts perfect content that you should go then publish. That's dangerous. Google's gonna see right through it.
Peter Maglathlin:It's actually going to penalize you for doing that. What you should be doing is getting 75 to 80% of the way there, making it unique in your voice and making sure you're implementing some of your own knowledge and then surfacing it to the world. And so we're doing a lot of interesting thinking and going around with, hey, how do we put the power of AI in our customer's hands from a content generation perspective but also how do we erect the right guardrails so that they use it the right way? Because I think what the global concern around AI is abuse. Right?
Peter Maglathlin:And hey, this covers every application of AI is is abuse. And so how do we make sure that we're it's being used responsibly?
Scott Hack:So, you know, going back to a couple of things you were talking about there, Peter, I wanted to kinda put a a little bit of a bow on some of those kind of services you were talking about that are that are AI based and, kind of also just honestly kind of tee you up, with some kudos because one of the other reasons why that I chose Sierra Interactive along with the obviously, I had had, a lot of comfort level with Ben and what I thought he was gonna be doing with the company. And then the organic portion of it, was, you know, obviously a big driver. But then also, Ben was pretty quick to be open to building that API to bring in other people, because there's only so much that you all can do as an organization. And you shouldn't be trying to be everything. There should be other people that are being experts in their field.
Scott Hack:And you all have had the open had the API, and I know that you all did some updates to make it easier for Shiloh and some other people to, you know, communicate with the database and be partners in our in our database. Is do you think that AI is gonna continue to push that so other integrations can take place? And is that still part of the I'm guessing that's still part of the company's DNA and philosophy is to allow those to take place. Right?
Peter Maglathlin:I'm glad you brought this up, Scott. So furthering open architecture is at the core of our product strategy. Because I think to your point, we don't have a monopoly on innovation in this space. And in order for us to do what I said earlier, is focus on our strengths, we need to be able to integrate with other really great point solutions. And in a fast moving market, open architecture and a public API is what enables you to do And it also helps to drive focus within our internal product organization to make sure we continue getting better at what we're good at.
Peter Maglathlin:And so we are this is an evergreen strategy. Like every month, we're making improvements or opening up new endpoints within the API because new great point solutions are coming out and need access to that data. And the approach we try to take here is one of partnering with our customers in the ecosystem to understand what are those great partner solutions as opposed to us internally saying, oh these are the endpoints we need to expose because eventually they'll be used by someone. No, There are new solutions coming out every month that are interesting and that gives us line of sight into okay what are the endpoints that are needed to maybe like integrate that solution with Sierra. And I think a really interesting cool example today and hopefully you don't get in trouble about talking about this but we have hundreds of customers that use Homebot, right?
Peter Maglathlin:Homebot is a sister company of our within the ASP family. Homebot is so fundamentally complementary to our platform, right? We serve the same customer but what they provide is I think best in class long term customer nurture that needs to be integrated natively into Sierra in a way that allows for the right actions to be taken by Sierra users based on engagement in the Homebot platform, right? Because a lot of what Homebot is enabling our customers to do is just stay top of mind and probably the most authentic powerful way at a pretty cheap price. Right?
Peter Maglathlin:But all of our users are in but folks that are on Sierra and Homebot live in Sierra. Right? And Homebot recognizes that. They live in their CRM. All the activity they take is out of the CRM.
Peter Maglathlin:So only if the Homebot consumer activity information, the important stuff can flow into the CRM. Then you can agents take action on this stuff in a way that is timely and compelling. And so the API strategy and the partner strategy, think is one of the most exciting parts of where we're going. And this space is moving faster than it's ever moved. Some of that's related to AI, some of that's related to other technology and the only way I think that we stay out in front of that is by is by enabling those great products and businesses to partner with us, not seeking to compete with them.
Scott Hack:Yep. That's awesome. So, you know, we have been chatting about, well, a lot of stuff about Sierra, lot of stuff about, you know, AI and where the the market's going. So we're we're, as as someone, at your organization used to tease about when he was finishing up his his weekly webinars. He would talk about we're getting close to needing to start landing the plane.
Scott Hack:So we're coming to the end of our our conversation. So as we are wrapping things up, what what do you wanna leave people with that are listening to us today? And what else do they need to know about about Sierra? Where do you think that they need to do some more research on the industry in general as tech is going to be continuing to evolve?
Peter Maglathlin:Yeah. So I'd say with respect to artificial intelligence, I would view it as one of the most powerful, I'll call it, like agent enabling technologies that we've seen in this industry for a long time. Do not expect it to remove the responsibility of doing the value add work, right? Like the phone calls still need to be made, the listing presentations and meetings still need to happen, but what it's going to allow your organization to do if you apply it the right way is focus more time on doing that stuff and getting better at doing that stuff. Right?
Peter Maglathlin:And so we'd love to talk to folks about kind of how some of our partner solutions enable that, but really be thinking about AI not as a replacement for people but an enabler for people especially agents because when applied correctly it can be really powerful. I'd say you know secondly the landscape for search and ranking and customer discoverability is rapidly changing. I like to believe that Sierra is at the forefront of that change and a lot of the things that we're bringing to market are only going to extend the advantage that we deliver to folks like you, Scott, in your market. And so for people that are serious about building long term sustainable businesses on the backs of organic traffic and are serious about honing in on lead conversion and getting really vigilant on that front, come talk to us because that's our bread and butter. And I think that what's happening in real estate now while it can be nerve wracking, I think inevitably is going to position the best any brokerages and the best teams to only accrue more transactions and more value from the market as long as they have their tech stack set up right.
Peter Maglathlin:So
Scott Hack:Awesome. I'll have, some information down in the show notes on getting, anybody who's interested in talking to the team at Sierra. We'll have a contact down there so you can reach out to them. Peter, thank you for joining me today and sharing your insights into, like I said, behind the curtain with the Sierra Interactive and how AI is impacting the industry. It's it's been a fun chat.
Scott Hack:Hopefully, we can get you on again maybe later this fall and find out how things are going with the rollout on IntelliSearch and the the other things. Get an update there.
Peter Maglathlin:Awesome, man. Yeah. I appreciate it and appreciate the the partnership we have with you and Liz.
Scott Hack:So alright, everybody. Thanks again for joining us for another episode of the Real Estate Distilled podcast. That's gonna be a wrap for today. We'll talk soon.
Announcer:That's a wrap for this episode of the Real Estate Distilled podcast. Visit realestateDistilled.com for more tips, and jump into our Facebook group to keep the conversation going. Here's to making every transaction a smooth pour. Cheers.
