The Association of Texas Appraisers Annual Meeting

We recently wrapped up an excellent week on the road. A good part of that trip was to sponsor and exhibit at one of our Community Partner’s events – the Association of Texas Appraisers Annual Meeting in Austin. And, wow – what an event it was! We take all events very seriously, whether it’s state or national. Software vendors that only attend the big national events suffer from a huge disconnect with appraisers (internally and externally) that causes their products and service to suffer too.

The ATA show began like many other appraiser events – really, really early in the morning. At least for us it did. We’re not just the early bird that gets the worm, we’re the early bird that works hard for the worm, whether we’re developing innovative products, on the phones for support, or planning our next appraiser advocacy programs. You’ll find no sense of entitlement that we deserve to have the majority of appraisers use our software – we work extremely hard for that distinction.

But the “worm” I’m talking about isn’t sales – it’s people. It’s you. We had an excellent time speaking to the ATA leadership and to many of its members as our booth remained busy the entire time. The camaraderie of the ATA is incredible, and the energy that everyone brought made the event a phenomenal one. We’ll definitely be back at ATA events in the future.

And boy did our customers kick some butt too. We had a long-time customer and beta tester win the ATA Appraiser of the Year award (congratulations again, Rick Neighbors)! Two ATA members and one board member won a total of three days to our almost-sold-out Austin Modern Appraiser Roadshow (congrats as well, Mike Langer, Clarence Lyons, and Anna DeMoss!) And Michael Braught won an Elite System.

Did I mention that our customers brought more ACI and Bradford users to switch to us? What a sincere sign of appreciation. We’re truly honored to provide products and services to such wonderful people. One of our customers, Jacob Valverde, not only brought two Bradford users over to switch to us, but he gave us a great testimonial too that you can watch here. He got 50% of the referral credited to his account through our Loyalty Rewards Program. So a huge thanks (and also a congratulations) are in order for you too, Jacob!

Lastly, we’d like to attend your organization’s events too. E-mail community@alamode.com to let us know when you’re holding one. We love being involved at state and national events – it’s part of our culture. Blame it on our roots of being appraiser advocates and supporting appraisers at all levels.