New Data, Old Habits, Same Results: Why Sales Tech Drops Off a Cliff

Most sales teams know the pattern. A company buys a new data platform, logins spike, and then usage quietly falls off. Results look the same as before, and the conversation turns to whether the tool was worth it.

Mike Simon knows that pattern from the vendor’s side. He is the founder and CEO of AgentBrief, a platform built for title, escrow, insurance, and home warranty professionals who grow their business through relationships with real estate agents. AgentBrief tracks real estate activity 24/7 and alerts users the moment an agent they follow has new business, along with an AI-crafted message they can edit and send.

In AgentBrief’s early days, Simon used to watch the drop-off play out with new customers. “You see massive interest. People get really excited. You see very, very high early engagement. And then it drops off a cliff,” he said. The product, modeled on familiar social media apps, was easy to learn. What people hadn’t done was change how they worked once they had it.

The habit behind the drop-off is common across sales technology: reps keep doing what they did before, only now inside a new interface. Simon compares it to buying a sports car and driving it like a family van. “Why would you buy this souped-up sports car and try and use it like a minivan?”

When results don’t change, the blame lands on the tool. “They blame the data, they blame the technology, and they make excuses that the data and the technology are wrong, that it doesn’t fit their needs,” Simon said. “And then they revert back to old habits.”

AgentBrief’s answer was to stop centering training on buttons and features. “This is why we decided to continually offer not how-to training, but why training,” Simon said. “Why are you using this? What do you have to be thinking differently when you’re using this product to make it successful for you?”

The why comes down to three things: timing, relevance, and relationship building. The alerts handle timing, so a rep hears about an opportunity as it happens. The message attached to each alert handles relevance, giving the rep a real reason to reach out instead of a cold call, which Simon said “is going to give you horrendous results.”

The third piece stays with the rep, by design. “You must not rely on technology to do the one thing that you are skilled as a human being, which is to develop a relationship with somebody else,” Simon said. “Technology will never do that for you.”

That is the new habit: reach out when an agent has a reason to hear from you, then do the part of the work only a person can do.

When a team stops seeing results, Simon separates two very different causes. Sometimes the data is the issue. “I make no representations that real estate data is perfect because it is an imperfect science,” he said. A feature called See Something, Say Something lets users flag a problem in one click, with a screenshot attached, so the team can fix it. That fix, Simon said, is “very different than getting somebody to adopt a new process to how they use it.”

To find out which problem a team has, he asks the manager: “What do you really want your salespeople to be doing? And why aren’t they doing it?” Then he pulls the usage report. “Numbers don’t lie,” he said. He reads it as three problems, each more costly than the last:

1. Reps aren’t logging in.

2. Reps log in but don’t follow enough agents for the platform to surface opportunities.

3. Reps receive alerts but don’t respond. Simon calls this “the worst problem of all,” because “that means all of these opportunities are going to waste.”

In Simon’s experience, the reps who respond to alerts most often tend to be the ones the manager already considers top producers. The report makes the habit gap visible.

The drop-off at the start of this article is what happens when a new tool gets used now and then while the old routine stays the default. A habit only changes when the new behavior is repeated until it becomes routine. That is why Simon treats consistency as the deciding factor. “It’s not just using it the right way; it’s using it the right way consistently,” he said.

It is also why customers who ask how many new orders AgentBrief will bring them sometimes get a surprising answer: without consistent action on the alerts, none, no matter how good the data is. “Your job is to sell your product,” Simon said. “My job is to tell you the people who want to buy it and when they want to buy it before anybody else.” That holds whether the product is title and escrow services, homeowners insurance, or a home warranty.

For any team about to buy its next platform, the question worth asking first isn’t what the tool can do. It’s what the team will do differently every day once it has it. New data on top of old habits brings the same results. New habits, practiced consistently, change them.

About AgentBrief: AgentBrief tracks real estate activity 24/7 and delivers real-time alerts, production data, and AI-crafted messages that help title, escrow, mortgage, insurance, and home warranty professionals reach real estate agents at the right moment, with the right context.

Disclaimer: This article is based on information provided by the expert source cited above. It is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or real estate advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals before making any real estate or financial decisions.

Disclosure: Individuals or companies mentioned may have a commercial relationship with KeyCrew.

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