Hey Sisu community!
It’s been a minute since we put out a product update blog. Time to fill you in on what’s changing and improving within Sisu.
Last month we held our first ever onsite event. It was a collaboration between 50 or so team/operations leaders, the Sisu executive team, and The Utah Life Real Estate Group (which is the first ever team to start using Sisu).
Of all the takeaways, I think the biggest was how two teams with similar models can get wildly different results from using the system. And that shift in results comes from a relatively small shift in approach—a small shift that changes just about everything.
The Tale of Two Sisu Implementations
Consider two teams with their own unique Sisu implementations.
The main objective? Both teams want to see beautiful dashboards. They want real-time data to make better decisions. Their vision as a leader depends on this.
It’s a great objective.
How they get there makes all the difference.
Team A uses Sisu reactively and reporting is burdensome
Team A uses Sisu reactively. When a transaction goes under contract, they put it into Sisu. When it closes, they update it again. Better than a spreadsheet, but still a basic application of the system.
The only value coming from having the data in the system is in their reporting.
And getting that reporting takes extra work.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Team B uses Sisu operationally and reporting is an effortless result of using the system
Team B uses Sisu operationally. When a listing is signed, their agents go into Sisu to fill out a form.
It’s not extra work because completing this form is the only thing they have to do to kick off the listing—and it’s required if they want to leverage the admin team on the transaction.
When the agent goes into Sisu to complete the form, the transaction is already sitting in the system ready for them—because Sisu pulls in all of their “hot” leads (or leads with a certain tag on them) into their pipeline.
So the agent simply finds that pipeline transaction and starts filling out the form. Fields like “name”, “email” and “lead source” were already completed for them. They’re just filling in blanks.
The form requires key fields, like the MLS notes, MLS live date, open house date, etc. that aren’t found in the CRM. Some of the fields are optional. Others are required.
Submitting the form kicks off everything in the transaction. A yard sign goes in the day before the listing goes live. Your marketing manager is tasked to add the listing to a weekly “coming soon” email blast 7 days before it goes active. When it goes active, a social media post is scheduled. This is done through Sisu task management.
Fast forward to when this listing goes under contract. The agent simply pulls up Sisu and completes the next form—but the form only asks for information we don’t already know. It’s just filling in the blanks.
The next form gets submitted and the next workflow and task list kicks off.
Data runs THROUGH Sisu, not just into Sisu.
So here’s the vision. Data runs THROUGH Sisu, not just into Sisu. That’s the difference between the two teams.
If Sisu is creating more work for you, it’s likely because you’re gathering data after key data chokepoints, rather than implementing Sisu at those data chokepoints.
The difference between the two is a difference of hours and hours of manual data entry. It’s also likely the difference between accurate and inaccurate data.
In the example above, Team A and Team B both get the result they are after—beautiful reports in Sisu and a better vision for their business.
The difference is that Team B’s reports are effortless.
Here are some recent product updates that support this operational vision of Sisu
You’ll notice that we’ve done extensive work in the “forms and fields” section of the platform.
The forms themselves are more powerful:
- You can require certain fields.
- You can make fields “read only” to non-admin users.
- You can restrict a form so that only certain user types can view it, guarding sensitive data points.
What can go on those forms has also improved:
- You can add any type of custom field to the system, and then add that field to the report. You can do this on your own now without requesting our support team to add them for you. Simply head to admin>team settings>custom fields.
- Custom field types such as URL links, Picklist (Single Select), Picklist (Multiple Select) are now supported—in addition to the others we already had, such as date values, free text, etc.
- You can send these forms out as a URL that takes the agent directly to the form they need to complete. If you’re good with automation you can use this to bulletproof your sales processes.
Future updates will make these forms even more powerful—updates such as form logic(i.e. if response is A, then present them with fields 1, 2, and 3. If response is B, present them with fields 3, 4, and 5).
In addition to the updates above, we have updates like auto-emails with merge fields, additional triggers for task lists, improved document management and improved manual emailing that support this vision.
Sisu ties your systems and processes together
The scenario above also illustrates a powerful application of a CRM integration.
When leads reach “hot” status or accept an appointment they move over into the Sisu pipeline. This typically saves ~10 fields of manual entry. It also gives you reporting on the hottest leads and appointment conversion ratios.
Not only that, but it forces accountability for using both systems. It drives the mentality that “if it didn’t happen in the CRM, it didn’t happen”.
Over time, this drives very strong habits with your agents to stay on top of their leads. If not all of them, at least the ones that matter the most. Here’s why:
- Every week, they’re holding a one on one accountability meeting. The numbers are the heart of the meeting.
- When they walk into the office/virtual team meetings, a leaderboard is displayed with team totals and each team member's contributions.
- They’re going to have to fill out a form in Sisu at some point anyways. Leveraging the CRM means they won’t have to enter fields twice.
It doesn’t happen overnight, but over time these processes start to sink in. They start to create culture.
Here are some recent updates that support the integration vision of Sisu
We’re seeing more and more clients (and partners) leverage the API to build out integrations exactly how they want them. We have a network of consultants and partners who are effective and experienced with the Sisu API.
Speaking from experience here, integrations are often scarier than they seem. I’ve been able to work with a handful of consultants from this Facebook group to build custom integrations exactly the way I want them.
Recent updates to the Sisu API make this even more reachable:
- API - update vendor information without the vendor ID
- This update will allow you to pass the vendor name in the API update and if there is no match the system will automatically add it to your list of vendors and add it to the transaction.
- {URL}/api/v1/client/edit-client/<clientID>
- Use the vendor_VID field for the update
- Example: "mortgage_company_vid": "NewVendor"
- API - GET team commission templates
- Allows you to get a list of all commission templates for a team (including their template ID)
- /api/v1/team/commission-templates/<team_id>
- Passing in a specific template ID will allow you to see the details of that commission form
- /api/v1/team/commission-templates/<team_id>/<commission_template_id>
- API - PUT update a transaction with a specific commission template
- Allows you to update a transaction with the desired commission template
- /v1/client/{client_id}/apply-template/{commission_template_id}
- Coming soon - Ability to UPDATE commission data
- API - Added the ability to create custom forms for a team
- A consumer of the API can now create custom forms for teams. This includes setting the fields as “read only” and “required”. Coming soon is the ability to define display order.
- GET -> /api/v1/team/{team_id}/forms
- GET -> /api/v1/team/{team_id}/forms/{form_id}
- POST -> /api/v1/team/{team_id}/forms
- PUT -> /api/v1/team/{team_id}/forms/{form_id}
- DELETE -> /api/v1/team/{team_id}/forms
We’ve also doubled down on our out-of-the-box supported integrations.
In the last six months we’ve invested heavily in a new integration infrastructure that will help us and our partners kick out integrations much faster. We’ve also hired three new developers who have the core focus of integrating Sisu with as many applications as possible.
Whether you are looking at leveraging our API on your own or using one of our out-of-the-box integrations, we always consult on one thing: the most important thing an integration can do is support your operational workflow.
It’s the same difference between Team A and Team B earlier in this article. Is your data running through Sisu or just into Sisu?
That difference is everything.
We’re seeing more large scale rollouts of Sisu in mega teams, multi-location brokerages and coaching organizations. Here are some updates that facilitate this.
If you run a large team with sub-teams inside it, or a brokerage with multiple locations, the hierarchy you create within your Sisu accounts becomes extremely important.
Done right, you’ll be able to run reports in seconds that take most large multi-office or multi-team organizations weeks.
Here is a breakdown on how hierarchy works in Sisu
- The core building block in Sisu is called a Team. Every user in the system must belong to a Team, and most of the system configuration happens at the Team level.
- Inside of a Team, you can create groups. This is great for larger teams/brokerages who want everyone using the same configuration, but need to segment out groups of users. It’s great for creating seasonal group vs. group challenges, supporting teams within your team/brokerage, creating mentor groups inside your office, or handling reporting for an expansion team. They’re easy and lightweight to create (admin>team settings>groups). You won’t break anything by creating a group.
- At the largest level, we have what’s called an Organization. An Organization is a rollup of multiple Teams. With Organizations, you can allow each of your Teams to customize Sisu just how they’d like, and roll those teams up into one Organizational view for reporting.
We’re seeing more and more large-scale rollouts of Sisu. Mega teams with 50+ locations. Brokerages who are consolidating their multi-state backends into one scalable system. And we have a bunch of updates that make Organizations easier in Sisu:
- You can now run a variety of reports at the organizational level, notably the income report.
- When viewing the transaction screen, organizational views are now supported—and the Team ID is exposed, making it easy to export and manipulate data across a large organization.
- We support a variety of group vs. group and team vs. team challenges (configure these in admin>challenges).
Q4 is goal setting time and we’ve released features that make seasonal goals much easier.
It wouldn’t be Q4 if we didn’t talk about goal setting.
We’ve added features to our goal configuration screen that makes it much easier to adjust for seasonality.
This updated video explains how goal setting works, from start to finish, with the new seasonality updates.
Come Mastermind With The Sisu Team!
It was amazing connecting with a lot of you at the last in-person event. We spent a lot of time talking about the big vision of the product. We spent a lot of time talking about how Sisu can drive a shift in leadership and culture, and a shift in leadership and culture can drive a much higher level of usage in Sisu.
We’re running another event on December 9-10 here in Salt Lake. The details are here. Come mastermind with the Sisu team in person!
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sisu-mastery-workshop-sisu-hq-tickets-206626885577
