Mark, can you tell us a little about yourself?
My name is Mark Pattison, I am the Founder and CEO at PorchLight Realty in San Diego, CA.
What's your team structure look like?
My core team:
I have a Sales Manager, Operations Manager, and we have an Executive Admin that helps the operations manager and myself.
Then we have 2 ISAs that are virtual assistants; one is in-house (based in the States) and then we have 5 virtual assistants outside the U.S. that help with lead management.
For marketing-type stuff or anything on the backend, we use Sisu to make sure that our numbers are correct within our Skyslope (and repeat the process back and forth)
What does your production look like?
Including closed and pending, our production levels so far for 2022 are $285 million.
Our goal last year was $500 million. But the way things are changing, we are going to keep it right around $500-$600 million just to see how this year plays depending on what happens during the summer.
Can you tell me a little bit about your tech stack?
Our tech stack is pretty simple.
We use:
- Follow Up Boss
- Combined with Ylopo (for our home search site and CRM)
- We use Sisu for all our tracking, sales competitions, and backend finances and commissions management.
- For recruitment and agent attraction, we use WizeHire and Indeed.com
- We use Monday.com for transaction management but have recently been leaning more into Sisu because of its capabilities with project / transaction management.
- For training agents, we use Teachable, which is an online platform where we can set up an ongoing training curriculum for new agents who are onboarding. We create a 30 day onboarding course through Teachable.
What were some of the challenges you faced before using Sisu?
You know, the biggest thing about running an operation is that you need to have visibility. You need to know what in real time what's happening. You need to know your pendings, your closings, and what you're looking like for your schedule.
The way it works in California is those 'pendings' and those closings can change at any given time.
So it's nice to have our transaction management team in Sisu editing, making sure that if the close dates change, I can go in and run a report on anything.
Month over month, week over week, I can go in and check and see, "How many pendings do I have?"
It can show me that, dang, right now I'm actually negative for the month and it's June 22nd.
But then my operations manager and sales manager can say, "No—look at Sisu and you can see when and where historically all our closings are happening, and that we are actually projected to close the majority of the month". So historically we are weighted heavy for the end of the month.
You can pull up all the data you could ever want in seconds. All you have to do is log in and check out the dashboard.
Have you seen any tangible results since implementing Sisu?
The biggest shift was that we were previously using a (unnamed) company where we would log in and the information would not be correct.
So if you're looking at data and trying to make important decisions based on that data when running an operation; if your data isn't correct, how can you actually make informed decisions?
We had to switch and when we moved to Sisu.
The amazing thing is when we go in we see that it's correct. Not only that, but when we go into Skyslope sheets and Ylopo, everything is correct and accurate between all our systems.
We enter our information once and then we know it's not going to be mistaken through some algorithm or other formula.
Now we live in Sisu every day. We got it up on our big screens in the office for our sales contests, so it's become an integral part of our business.
What do you like best about Sisu?
The fact that it's intuitive.
When I look at an iPhone, I can quickly understand "Hey, this button you push—it's going to do something I'm familiar with."
I feel Sisu is the same way. It's not like you have to be this genius to go in there and figure out how to enter the data.
Once you get over the fact you have to input, you will be amazed at the kind of reports you can run on all your sales, hold sales contests, and see all your historical trends on closings, earnings, etc.
It's super easy once you start using, and we live by it day in and day out.
What would you say to someone who is considering Sisu for their real estate business?
So if you're considering Sisu, as a business owner, you need to know where your business is performing, what's your ROI, etc.
You should be tracking all of that and more. Trust me, I've tried a lot of other systems and they are either sluggish, don't work, or give you incorrect data.
Sisu works, and it's an easy way to see how your business is performing. You can just click a few buttons and have comprehensive reports at your fingertips.
We can take our agents and say "Hey, this is what you need to do, this is where you need to improve, Hey look, these are your offers, written cancellations, like let's go through it together..."
Sisu is a way to coach with data versus coaching with the emotion.
Mark, where can we find you?
If you are looking to buy or sell in the San Diego area, PorchLight Realty can help you. Their website is https://www.porchlightsocal.com/.
We also have a Facebook page.
