Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger is the CEO and Founder of Contract2Close, a company specializing in transaction management software for the real estate industry. With over 40 years of experience, she has become an industry leader, leveraging her extensive insights to develop cutting-edge solutions for agents and brokers. Lauren's platform, Contract2Close, focuses on streamlining operations and enhancing productivity while ensuring none of the crucial transaction details fall through the cracks. Continually evolving her offerings, she is passionate about empowering users with an easy-to-use, compliance-focused system for handling real estate transactions.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
[2:14] Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger shares how Contract2Close is transforming real estate transaction management
[4:16] The challenges in software development from a non-technical founder's viewpoint
[6:43] How Contract2Close evolved from buyer focus into a powerful tool for agents
[8:12] The central hub that streamlines communication among all parties in a real estate transaction
[10:37] Lauren discusses her transition from industry professional to tech company CEO
[13:14] How embracing a tech identity enhances the development process of a start-up
[18:16] The potential impact of AI on compliance and the customer experience in real estate
[22:23] What are the broader industry challenges, and how can tech solutions mitigate them?
[28:22] How companies adapt to serve diverse client bases, including offering multi-lingual support
In this episode…
Are you tired of cumbersome, convoluted processes in real estate transactions? Do terms like mortgage contingencies and inspection reports make you cringe? And how can a software platform remedy these stress-inducing hurdles?
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger, a seasoned real estate professional turned tech CEO, identified these pain points and created a solution with Contract2Close. She discusses her journey from buying and selling properties to crafting an indispensable tool that empowers real estate agents. Centralizing communication, automating deadlines, and making transactions Amazon-easy are just a few ways her company streamlines the complex dance of real estate deals. Reflecting on the critical role of AI and staying nimble in the face of industry changes, Lauren gives an intriguing glimpse into the software's impact on real estate transactions.
In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger, CEO and Founder of Contract2Close, about transforming the real estate industry through technology. Lauren talks about Contract2Close, the challenges in software development, the central hub that streamlines communication among all parties in a real estate transaction, and the potential impact of AI on compliance and the customer experience in real estate.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
"Networking Like a Pro: Matt McCoy’s Secrets to LinkedIn Success" on The Customer WinsÂ
"[AI Series] How To Utilize Work Automation and AI With Alane Boyd" on The Customer WinsÂ
"Revolutionizing Advisor-Client Interactions Through AI With Tom Rieman" on The Customer WinsÂ
"Emotional Sales Methodology of Empathy and Connection With Sam Wakefield" on The Customer Wins
Quotable Moments:
"We worry about your deadlines so you don't have to."
"If it's not Amazon easy, people won't be as likely to use it."
"I want to continue to strive and move forward; I don't want to become irrelevant."
"The more you use us, the smarter we get."
"I'm a deal junkie at heart, and I am all about making my users look like heroes."
Action Steps:
Empower customers through a user-friendly platform: A system that simplifies complex tasks makes it more enjoyable for customers to do business with you.
Adapt products to meet different market segments' needs: Tailoring solutions for diverse customer groups ensures a wider reach and relevance.
Embrace feedback for continuous improvement: Soliciting and implementing customer suggestions ensures your offerings stay competitive and meet their evolving needs.
Leverage AI for compliance and efficiency: Integrate technology that ensures regulatory adherence while speeding up transaction times.
Provide services in customers' preferred languages: Breaking language barriers can significantly enhance customer experience and open new market opportunities.
Sponsor for this episode...
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Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:02Â
Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn grow their business.
Richard Walker 0:16Â
Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins, where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Today is a special episode of my perspective series where I talk to people who bring a completely different perspective to our show. Some of my past guests have included Matt McCoy with Jobby, Alane Boyd of Arvo, Tom Rieman of Practice Intel, and Sam Wakefield of Close It Now.
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Today, I'm speaking with Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger, CEO and founder of Contract2Close. And today's episode is brought to you by Quik!, the leader in enterprise forms processing. When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time manually reviewing the forms. Instead, get Quik!, using our form extract API, simply submit your completed forms and get back clean context-rich data that is 99.9% accurate. Visit quikforms.com to get started.
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All right, Lauren is a seasoned professional with over 40 years of experience in the real estate industry, her exceptional expertise, combined with a deep understanding of market dynamics and client needs, has positioned her as a prominent figure in the real estate industry. With an unwavering commitment to excellence, Lauren has recently shifted her focus towards the development of a software platform for transaction management in the real estate industry, leveraging her extensive insights gained from decades of hands-on experience. She has curated a cutting-edge solution that streamlines operations and enhances productivity across the industry. Wow, this sounds so similar to what we're trying to do over here in financial services. Lauren, welcome to The Customer Wins.
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 1:54Â
Thank you so much for having me Rich. How are you?
Richard Walker 1:56Â
I'm great. I'm so excited to talk to you today. So for those of you who haven't heard this podcast before, I talk with business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they build and deliver a great customer experience, and the challenges to growing their own company. Lauren, I want to understand your business a little better. How does your company help people?
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 2:14Â
So our business actually started out as a buyer tutorial in the process of how to buy a home and the steps necessary to go through that. And then it expanded as I noticed some of my coworkers needing a dashboard to help them through the milestones in order to make sure that nothing really dropped through the cracks, that their inspections got scheduled, their mortgage contingencies were met. All the things that needed to be met throughout the transaction were done on time and on task. And then we evolved that platform from buyer to residential agent, and now we're the commercial agent tracking as well. So we continue to expand our platform.
Richard Walker 2:59Â
Nice, I think a lot of people have this idea of, like, buying a house is easy. I personally don't think so, because there are so many different things to think about. So it's really cool that you're helping the agents and the people involved keep this together. So, where did you actually start? Were you an agent? Were you a broker?
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 3:17Â
So my longest-term career, actually, which circles around to the customer is always bright, or the customer should always win. My longest-term career was an interior designer, and then, because I always paid attention to improvements compared to value of the property, I was suggested to get my real estate license, which I did, and then I went from there into realizing there was a hole in the market, mostly because I needed one, and my coworkers needed them. So I just took a step forward and went into software development and developed contract2close.com
Richard Walker 3:53Â
I mean, that's a big leap going into software development. A lot of people who are in a field, like in my own, like, if you're a financial advisor, jumping into saying I'm going to build software is not a typical thing. I did it because I came from technology. That was my career before I became an advisor. How did you feel about starting a tech company? Did you have this background already?
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 4:16Â
I didn't, and it actually came on the heels of an incident that I had helping a buyer, and I don't know about everybody else, but I don't like getting yelled at, and even though I continue to prod my buyer through the process and let him know what was going on and what we needed, and he kept assuring me that he had done everything we needed to do, including getting his money wired to the closing table. When we walked in, the money wasn't there, and he thought he meant the other money. So ultimately, we got the deal done. We got too close. The money got wired, but it.
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The end, I got yelled at, and I just don't like getting yelled at. So I walked away from that moment and I said, there has to be a better way, which is why we really started on the buyer platform. It's a step-by-step process, because if you know securities, you've got a three-day settlement and all the little nuances to closing a transaction and freeing up your money and making sure it gets where it needs to get. A lot of people just don't understand that, and it's not for any other reason, because buying a home is something you may do three or four times in your life. So even if you've done it and you wait again for your next cycle, whether it's five, seven or 10 years, things shift all the time, and after the 2008 cycle, we had the Fed that came in, and we started trib.
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So that triggered even more dates, where you had to know before you owe, and all these little catchphrases about what needed to happen in the process of buying a home. And it was really I felt my obligation and my duty to my customers at the time, which were the buyers, to make them feel empowered and help them through the process and make them more knowledgeable about what was coming. I lovingly call it the What to Expect When You're Expecting except when you're buying a house.
Richard Walker 6:20Â
Right. No, there's so many things in there, like having a child and then three years later you have another child, you've forgotten everything about the first child already. So buying a house is the same thing. It's different. But yeah, you know what I mean. So you built this guide for your buyers, but then said, let's turn this into software. So who is the customer then, of your software, is it the buyer?
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 6:43Â
Well, it started out as a buyer, and then we went into being very Asian centric, because you had all, when you're a busy agent, and you've got three or four deals going on at once, and you've got to schedule inspections. You have to deal with the inspector, you have to deal with the inspection reports. You have to make sure, although you've got the mortgage broker that's in the process, and you have to get all the feedback. And if you're an attorney state or an escrow state or a title state, depending on your jurisdiction, you have to know all the P all the moving parts, and instead of everybody making phone calls and texting, we put the platform together where we bring everybody into a central hub. The agent is the user.
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The user fills in their data, and then we email out all the parties that are in there for them. We keep a dashboard for the agent. It's interactive. The buyer or seller gets read-only dashboards, and so everybody is always notified within the process, and it just makes it much smoother and cleaner and easier for all parties in the transaction.
Richard Walker 7:57Â
So essentially, what you're doing is you're taking something that's rather complex, with a lot of pieces, putting it into one system so everybody can play in the same space, and you're handling the notifications and the management of communication throughout this process. Is that right?
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 8:12Â
That's right. That's right. And we keep growing, we keep expanding and pivoting back again to the title of your podcast, anytime I hear and interact with a user and they say, I wish it would do this, I go, that makes sense. So I'm continuing to evolve our offerings and the robustness of what we do. We do document resignature, we do transactional relationship management, which is, we aggregate all the information, so everybody, so the user, the subscriber, will always know all the parties that were in their transaction, in all the milestone steps. And it could get dicey. It can get hairy, and in our process, by notifying everybody really takes some of the burden off of the agent so you can actually sleep at night. And I say, we worry about your deadlines so you don't have to.
Richard Walker 9:10Â
Yeah, no, that's man. I hate deadlines. I only use an alarm clock if I'm taking a flight the next day. I mean, that's like an alarm clock is a deadline to me, so I need systems like you're talking about to keep me honest about things that are going on. In fact, I live and die by my calendar, so I imagine you created a lot of dependency with your customers on your system. How are you measuring that they're happy and successful and improving what they're doing? How do you know?
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 9:40Â
They close their deals and then they archive their transactions. So, in the real estate industry, there's a lot of compliance, and interestingly, it is one of the most heavily regulated industries and professions, because you have so many measures between fair housing. And there's just a wide swath of regulation that surrounds the process. So we make sure everybody is doing what they're supposed to on time, and then we'll email them out if we've got a target, depending on how complicated it gets, and each of the steps along the way.
Richard Walker 10:19Â
Okay, so you also mentioned that you're getting feedback from customers and trying to build that in. Now I want to mention you and I have talked, you're bootstrapped like I am, right. I am. How do you take all these requests and get them done? I mean, it's so hard to do this as a bootstrap company to keep everybody happy all the time.
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 10:37Â
When we were talking, we both, I think, shared, if you would have told me when I started this that I would be here, I would have laughed and said, that's just not possible, but it is, and I'm here and I always like to get better. I don't think you can stay static, especially today, I think with and I know we're going to talk about AI and the coming strength of AI, and how that's going to play. We have to be nimble, and we have to stay quick, and we have to be able to pivot, not only with the regulations, but with the technology.
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And how can we embrace new technology and continue to strive to get better so and, man, I think we continue to move forward. Or I just got back from DC with the realtors legislative meetings, and I heard a line from a woman I was talking to. She said, you either keep moving forward or you become irrelevant. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to become irrelevant. I want to continue to strive and move forward.
Richard Walker 11:42Â
Yeah, I had a philosophy I learned from a long time ago, and it stems from something else, it was a bank that said if, if we're not talking to our customer, somebody else is. And I took that to another premise, which is, if I don't try to put myself out of business, somebody will. And so therefore, I'm always trying to innovate and stay ahead of the curve so I don't become irrelevant, like you said, but that's really, really hard to do. I'm also curious, from a mental perspective, you were in real estate for a long time, right? Decades?
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 12:12Â
Well, you're right. My longest career started in, if I told you, I would date myself, and I really don't want to do that, but I got my real estate license, my first real estate license. I'm duly licensed both in Illinois and Arizona, in 2003 so I've been a realtor, an active realtor for 21 years, which I've seen a lot, and I've seen all the cycles. And it's interesting. You just are, always, as the saying goes, you wake up every morning unemployed. So, because there's a cycle that all the, there's a cycle to everything, to each transaction. If you don't continue feeding the pipeline, you'll wake up one day unemployed. And I'm not willing to do that either.
Richard Walker 12:58Â
Right. So my question is, gearing towards you running the software company, I think, what 6, 7, 8 years, something like that, or longer?
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 13:06Â
Yeah, a little bit. That's right. Yeah, I happen to be investigating. I happen to be in the sweet spot. So I'm really proud of that.
Richard Walker 13:14Â
Yeah, no, it's awesome. I mean, look, what is it, like 99% of companies fail in the first year, and 99% don't make it to three years, etc, you have accomplished a lot. So my question is, do you consider yourself a software person first or a real estate person first? Or do you have that distinction in your mind?
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 13:33Â
Well, the funny thing is, I now consider myself more of a software person, because when I realized that I am not as funny as I used to be, I go, I think I've become a tech geek, right? Because I just, I am so involved in trying to figure out the next process and how to make what we do better, and I'm always sending instructions to my engineers on how we can keep creating and keep growing. So I guess I find myself more of a software techie. So, yeah, who knew, who knew, but I'm here.
Richard Walker 14:13Â
That's part of that thing. Like, if you told me six or seven years ago where I'd be today, right? That's got to be.
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 14:18Â
That's right. I would have never said that. I would have never thought of it. But I'm here, so here we are, and it's fun. I mean, I'm really having, I was just in DC, and you hear what everyone's doing and really how I am with all the things that are changing within the industry, really how critical the component of Contract2Close is. While it seems sort of intuitive, which we follow the path I've followed, form follows function. There's so much that's changing, and because of that change, we can be that cohesive hub in the wheel to make everything smoother. So, we can make the change easier from running.
Richard Walker 15:02Â
Yeah, so I don't know how it is in your industry, between your customers and the vendors that provide tech, there is some amount of frustration in my own industry, I would say between, oh my gosh, it costs a lot. It takes too long. The vendors are slow, and vendors frustrated with customers can't make up their mind and agree on what's necessary things like that. I'm wondering, how do you take this feedback from your customers and turn it into actual product and features and translate that to engineer so they get it right?
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 15:35Â
I think because my background is real estate, and I think what sets me apart from some of my competitors, and there's some of the big noise, because I've been a realtor, and I really understand the process and really understand the nuances and understand what I needed as an agent broker, I'm able to comprehend it pretty quickly, and I map it out. I literally sit there with my note cards, and I map how it's supposed to go to my engineers and we just test it till we update the system.
Richard Walker 16:11Â
So there's a theme I'm feeling through these conversations on the customer wins, and one of it is that you have to become your customer in order to build the best customer experience. And those of us who started as the customer first, because you essentially did right. You were building this that you'd never get yelled at again, I feel like we have a somewhat of an advantage over the companies that just see an opportunity and say, let's apply tech to it, because it's hard to become the customer. And how do you keep doing that as you move further and further out of that real estate role and more into the software role.
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 16:42Â
Well, I can't help myself. And anytime I have a past client, I will say that I'm not completely out of sales in the industry, because I can't help myself. I think I'm at heart of a deal junkie, because I really love transacting and negotiating, and whether it's for me or my client or my daughter who's just buying a house, and you sit there and you go, well, you need to say this, or you need to do this. And because there's just a rhythm, there just seems to be a rhythm and a nuance and a language in and of itself. And I can't help myself. So while I am a technique, I can't help myself, but I'm still the deal junkie. So.
Richard Walker 17:28Â
Lauren, I love it. I love it when people love their craft and they stick with it, it's kind of like if you have body damage on your car and you have to take it somewhere, I would take it to the shop, where they also have their own restored cars, because they truly, truly care about cars. So yeah, I'd rather work with a tech vendor who cares about this industry and cares about the product, because they're still doing it, and they're still involved in it. All right, let's switch gears to AI, because it is something I love to talk about.
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I mean, as you know, chatGPT coming out. What is that? Two years ago, almost a year and a half ago, so much is changing, and it's changing so fast, but I don't see it necessarily manifesting in the right ways to benefit customers. So I'm kind of curious, from your standpoint, how do you see AI impacting customer experience, customer success, your product or your industry? How are you seeing it play out?
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 18:16Â
Well, I think that, having actually just come off of the realtors legislative meeting in DC, excuse me, there was a lot that was handed down, and the Association, the MLS, of which are really, they're the people that sort of run the local industries nationwide. And they were being told some of the new rules of commissions. And anyone who has been reading the newspaper lately, there's been a lot going on with National Association, realtors and the lawsuit and all that, and how that's all the settlement and all how all that shaping out. And part of it is, it's really cross-checking and cross-analyzing commission structures and how the payment is done, and making sure no one gets little crafty.
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I think that might be not the right way to say it, but AI, I think was going to play a big role in that. It's just going to have to because if there's, I think to 2023 2022 I think there was about 6 million transactions done in the United States because there was a limit of supply, and then the interest rates by the transaction went down to about 4 million. So there was a significant drop off when you think about 4 million transactions being done, and then you double side that making sure there's compliance on both sides now, that's a lot of data that you have to check.
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So AI things is going to keep everybody in the game and make sure everyone is the hero that they're supposed to be, and no one makes a mistake inadvertently, because when you're busy, it's easy to make mistakes. And so I think that's what AI will help do. And certainly that's what we do as a company contract2close.com.
Richard Walker 20:12Â
Yeah, that makes sense. So you're looking at it from how to how it's going to help enforce rules or capture things before they get out of compliance and help people stay on the lines they need to stay in, which also is to say it's going to be hidden from the consumer. It's going to be behind the scenes doing its job. It's not necessarily a new, I don't know, Alexa voice activation. Find me real estate type of stuff.
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 20:37Â
And just to be clear, at Contract2Close, we really live in the space between listing the close or contract execution to close. We don't do search. There are a couple of big boys that do that really well, and I think that to try to compete against that would be futile. And I just want to do what I do really well. So a lot of what we do and what we will be doing with AI, because we're talking to some companies, and we're going to be implementing that will really be behind the scenes, so that we take care of all that compliance issue behind the scenes, and so that the agents will be in good spot.
Richard Walker 21:17Â
Yeah, what I'm finding is, I think that AI is going to play a vital role. When it makes things easier, faster and more enjoyable. If it makes it harder less enjoyable, I don't think people will adapt to it or want it, and so it has to be applied in such a way that does have that kind of impact. So in the back end, you're taking out the necessary check all the check boxes that it can do all that work for you and make sure you did it. Do you see it impacting your actual user experience in your product?
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 21:49Â
I think it's gonna make it a little quicker. I think it's gonna make it a little faster. The typical agent is very busy, and the less time that they have to take keeping track of what they have to do the better. And so I think the implementation of AI will help that a lot. So there that will certainly help them moving forward.
Richard Walker 22:11Â
Okay, so what's one thing you wish for your industry that could change and make things better for everybody? Is there anything that's like, hot in your mind? You're like, oh, this is a frustration. We should change this.
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 22:23Â
I mean, in the industry, I mean, it's in the end users. Affordable housing is an issue. Interest Rate spikes have become a hurdle that a lot of first-time homebuyers get passed that, which doesn't really impact my company, per se, but, you know, if you can't transact and buy a home, then obviously you're taking some of our users out. I just think some of the hurdles, because of our system, we just really have the truth of the deal, the truth of transaction. So data is entered, and you get your documents, you get your disclosures, and all that's in there. So you make sure everything, each of the ribbons are compliant, and it just makes us cleaner.
Richard Walker 23:15Â
Yeah, yeah, for sure, Lauren, we're getting closer to the end, but I want to ask you a couple other questions, are there specific metrics that you look at to measure the success of your customer and your company? You talked about deal closings, but is that the only metric? Or are there other things you look at?
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 23:32Â
Obviously, when you start looking your analytics, you can go into screen time, all the things that most companies look at right daily average users screen time, how far they get in the transaction. Do they get exhausted? Were the pinch points, and so that's why we also keep upgrading and implementing new ideas in our site. I was told very early on by a mentor who actually was an angel investor in a company that just sold for a lot of money. He said, Lauren, this is really great, but if it's not Amazon easy, people won't be as likely to use it.
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And so I took that opportunity to take a step back, tear down the site, rebuild it, and take it from there to make sure it's Amazon easy, because truly, any of our systems you could enter your milestone data in less than 60 seconds. And then, if you're sitting in front of the TV with your iPad, you can do the more intricate data later. But I wanted to make sure that it's almost like you click this, you want to buy this, and you click that, use this credit card, send it here, buy and so you go, contract date, and it is just the same click list, contract date, purchase price, inspection date, legal review, more contingency, closing.
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It's that fast and so I wanted to make sure that we made it Amazon, easy, but for transactions and people who have used some of my competitors, just say we are more intuitive and easier. So I have fun with it. I mean, sometimes you as a founder and a self-starter, you know, sometimes you feel like a slog, but then I get re I just really get invigorated, because I just like having fun with it, and anytime I can make it better, I do, so I really enjoy it.
Richard Walker 25:29Â
Okay, that's new catchphrase, Amazon easy. I hadn't I've not heard that, I like that, but it makes a lot of sense. We've done that in our company. Very first product we built, we realized how many service request calls we were getting for specific things, and so we redesigned how you download, install and set up the product, and we eliminated 90% of the service calls we were getting. And that wasn't just our benefit. That's 90% of calls people didn't have to make. They didn't have to have that struggle. Have you seen anything like that, as your redesign had a impact like that for you guys?
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 26:07Â
You would want to say, market time has come in a little bit because they just, because you just can click a calendar or enter a date, and we will auto calculate timing. In some realm, you want a longer screen time, but we don't. We want complete user date, complete user fields, but we want a shorter screen time, because it makes people, the more you use us, the smarter we get, and the more people use us, the easier and more intuitive they know the process. So it's just been fun to watch.
Richard Walker 26:39Â
This is actually what I wanted our guests and audience to hear is hear it from a software development perspective, hear it from a vendor perspective, how much care you put into the individual steps, like how many clicks somebody has to go through, how easy you make it to work on an iPad interface. All that care and thinking in the user experience translates into customer success and obviously loyalty to you for your product.
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 27:04Â
Well, again, it's, it's not about me. I mean, I'm a byproduct of the industry, but I understand what you want to do and don't want to do. And for me, it was really important to pay attention that the things that Realtors need to pay attention to, and there's a lot of stuff you just don't really need to focus on that's sort of on the periphery. And what are the really critical, important elements that we have to pay attention to, to get the transaction closed.
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Because the quicker we are doing that, the more free time our users and the agents and brokers have to spend with our clients and getting referrals and things like that, because it's a referral-based industry. I mean, if you do a good job, and if I can make my users look like heroes, then they will get good referrals. And if the interaction between what we do and the user, and then what the user does and we send out on their behalf, looks good, then everyone looks good, and then we've done our job, and that's really what's important to me. Yeah, all
Richard Walker 28:07Â
Yeah, all right, so I have to give a shameless shout-out to my sister Caroline Ignacio with Modelux, because she's an agent. Maybe she needs your product. If she doesn't use it, she should look into it. So we'll tag her in this, and she can take a look.
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 28:20Â
Perfect. I'd love to do a zoom with her.
Richard Walker 28:22Â
Yeah, and you made me think of it because of the whole referral thing. When she got into the business, she had built up this incredible network of people around her. And so when she got in, she was super successful from day one, because they had trust rapport. They know how good she is at what she does. She is relentless at getting things done. And so I'd be surprised that she's not using a tool like yours, and she should. So we'll make the introduction
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 28:47Â
Perfect. Thank you. Thanks.
Richard Walker 28:50Â
So look, I have another question, but before we wrap up, what is the best way for people to find and connect with you?
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 28:55Â
You can find me on LinkedIn, Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger and contract2close.com so Lauren.Merdinger@contract2close.com easy.
Richard Walker 29:06Â
Yeah. And the two is a number, contract number two, right.
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 29:11Â
That's right. Contract2close.com, I subsequently found out there seems to be a lot of names like mine out there, but I'm trademarked in this contract2close.com and that's how you get me.
Richard Walker 29:25Â
Nice, awesome. Yeah, all right.
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 29:28Â
One more thing, by the way, we also just launched our site completely in Spanish, because people want to transact how it's easiest for them. And as is, I was observing. So it was important to me that we had a large Spanish-speaking user base. So we went in and had the whole site, both residential, commercial, all translated into Spanish. So there's Spanish-speaking agents out there. We Speak Spanish for you. So, yeah.
Richard Walker 30:02Â
That's another one of those things that I think is really critical to customer success. You got to work the way your customers work. You got to meet them where they are. That's a huge investment you made. That's incredible, right?
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 30:13Â
It was important, you know, again, for ease of everybody you know, and you just want to transact in the easiest manner possible. And so we did that. So I'm really pleased that we're able to do that.
Richard Walker 30:24Â
Awesome. All right, so here's my last question, Lauren, who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role?
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 30:31Â
I would have to say one of my managing brokers, Andy Siparsky, he has always been a mentor. He's always been in here. He's always just a great, great person who always cares about his agents, his brokers, his clients, and even when you don't work directly underneath him, he will still reach out, but his leadership style is very embracing and loving and mentoring so Andy Siparsky, who is now at Compass, if I can say that, he is just a great, great guy who I love dearly, so has always had a big impact on me.
Richard Walker 31:13Â
I love that. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. All right. I want to give a huge thank you to Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger, CEO and founder of Contract2Close for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out Lauren's website at contract2close.com and don't forget to check out Quik! at quikforms.com, where we make processing forms easier. I hope you've enjoyed this discussion, will click the Like button. Share this with someone and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Thanks for joining me today, Lauren.
Lauren Schreyer-Merdinger 31:41Â
Thanks so much Rich. It was really fun. I'm so glad we were able to meet in New York, and here we
Richard Walker 31:46Â
Yeah.
Outro 31:49Â
Thanks for listening to The Customer Wins podcast. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.
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