Agents are busy people. While it’s commonplace to juggle multiple urgent tasks at once, those not-so-urgent duties, such as completing required Continuing Education classes or license renewals, may be forgotten until they, too, are in need of immediate attention. This is where a proactive association can once again prove its value proposition to its members.
The Greater Rochester Association of REALTORS® (GRAR) set out to find ways to make it easier for their members to keep track of these important milestones.
The decision to remind members personally of their upcoming renewals and class requirements came about after holding several focus groups. Participants overwhelmingly indicated they prefer taking classes in person. Unfortunately, though, because they have a hard time keeping track of license-renewal requirements until the last minute, they were forced into taking the fastest – but not necessarily best – route to fulfill training. Yockel realized the need for the GRAR to take on the role as a personal reminder system for its members. “They just love that we’re looking out for them,” he said.
“License renewals are a big deal for agents,” says James Yockel, CEO of GRAR. “Without a current license, REALTORS® cannot practice real estate, but sometimes the renewal date gets overlooked or forgotten because an agent’s main focus is on serving their clients”, Yockel said.
Contacting them several months ahead of their class-completion due dates ensures agents aren’t scrambling to meet the requirements at the last possible moment. Agents love these reminders. Besides saving the staff loads of time they’d otherwise spend tracking down such information manually, Yockel also finds the tool handy for ensuring membership information is current, per state’s requirements.
GRAR keeps track of all courses its members have taken, whether they’ve taken them through GRAR or by other means, and stores the completion certificates as backups in case of an audit. Tracking the courses also helps the association keep tabs on agents’ interests so GRAR can send information about upcoming similar class offerings. “Tracking education data provides our organization valuable insight into the topics that are most interesting to our members. We use these data points to continually evolve our educational sessions.”
The GRAR team uses MMSI’s License Updater, part of MMSI’s Membership Director AMS Suite, to identify members that are due for license renewal in the next several months. This generates a report of every such member, including all the required contact information to reach those members. At this point, the GRAR team uses Membership Director to contact those on the list personally to remind them. “We want to be like Google Maps, where we anticipate things coming up and remind them when it’s appropriate,” Yockel said. GRAR prides itself on member proactivity. Helping members to manage their CE Courses and licenses are just two of the ways they deliver on that promise.
“The Association itself benefits from the Licensing and CE tracking systems from MMSI,” says Yockel. “This automation saves our staff about 30 work hours a month. It is like having an additional staff person for one week a month who is free, fully trained, and able to support the members.”
GRAR has worked with MMSI for more than 25 years. Yockel credits the company’s flexibility and accountability as two key reasons his association has utilized MMSI for so long. “They’ve always been good to work with, and open to suggestions,” Yockel said. “With the custom nature of their software, they’ve been able to help us deliver the proactivity our members really appreciate.”
If you would like to learn more about how your Association can benefit from MMSI’s License Updater and CE Tracking systems, contact us here.
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