Greater Cleveland Real Estate Blog

Real Estate Agent's Tool Kit. How to efficiently keep in touch with your clients, prospects, sphere of influence and friends.

Keeping in touch is one of the most important and most challenging duties which Real Estate agents owe to themselves and to their clients.

I am talking about few categories of people with whom we, the agents, should keep in touch:

- Current sellers = communication is a-must. Lack of contacts after signing the Exclusive right to sell is the most common complaint by sellers. At least once a week communication is highly recommended. Report to the seller about your marketing efforts, pass on feed backs from the other agents, share the market updates (new competitors, sales, etc.)

- Current buyers = communication is the king. Skip few days, and you can lose the client to the other agent because buyer wants to buy the home, not to wait till agent finds time to keep in touch.

- Sellers after closing = communication may be tough, especially if your client is relocating far away from your place. Simple politeness and courtesy of sending Thank you, Happy birthday, Just thinking about you notes makes a good habit.

- Buyers after clolsing = don't abandon your clients! New homeowners need a lot of information which the agent as a local expert, can provide. Happy buyers are our best source of referrals. However, many agents tend to forget about keeping in touch with their former clients. Isn't it the reason why only 23% of all sellers and 17% of repeat buyers use the agent who worked with them before? Most of the sellers bought their current home or sold the previous one with the help of Real Estate agent. 63% of all sellers and 65% of all buyers were positive that they would definitely use  their agent again ofr recommend to others*. Not keeping in touch means loss of business and it costs too much to Real Estate agents!

* Data from the NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Home Selles, 2011

- People who ever mentioned that they are thinking about buying or selling Real Estate = you want to be the agent whom these people will call once they really need a help. You want to bring your name as a Real Estate professional in front of this people. You need to keep in touch.

- Your friends, business or leisure contacts and family who ever discussed Real Estate with you = Excellent potential source of business if you keep in touch!

I am positive that every Real Estate agent knows these basics. The problem is - HOW TO MAKE KEEPING IN TOUCH EASY AND CONSISTENT?

Let's look what is in the Real Estate agent's tool box.

Let me share with you one instrument which is a great helper to any agent who wants to keep in touch easily and consistently.

It's NewPanda - contact management system, specifically designed for Real Estate industry.

Just go to NewPanda.com. You get a FREE contact  management. Upload or input your contacts, set up the groups.

What can you do with NewPanda to keep in touch easily and consistently?

1. Subscribe your contacts to a monthly Real Estate Newsletter. Newsletter is pre-written for you , and it contains very interesting articles, videos, polls. You may easily cusomize it, change header, add your articles or images. Or just send the "canned" newsletter, which is not a bad idea, especially when you are real busy selling Real Estate.

2. Set up an auto-pilot e-cards. Let your contacts to get your nicely and professionaly designed e-cards every holiday, anniversary, birthday or any other date whch is significant to them.

3. Create e-listing and send information about it to those groups of your contacts who may be interested in it.

4. Track the results of your e-mail campaigns. See who opened your letter, what was the conversion rate, how many people opened it more than once, etc.

5. Create To-Do list. Remind yourself to make that important call or to arrange the lunch with your contact.

6. Print mailing labels when you need to mail the hand written or preprinted cards to your contacts.

7. Create custom messages using beautiful professionally designed templates.

KEEP IN TOUCH WITH YOU CONTACTS and help more people to buy or sell Real Estate.

More information about other usefull tools for Real Estate agents may be found at:

Real Estate Agent's Tool Kit: How Not To Miss Important Calls

Real Estate Agent's Tool Kit: How to Show the Houses To Home Buyers Circa 2010

Have a wonderful selling season!

Cleveland Real Estate : iPhone Home Search Application By Local-n-Global Realty

Local-n-Global Realty is proud to announce our new exciting services for Cleveland home buyers and home sellers. If you use an iPhone, you can see all current MLS information about the houses around the area where you are now, right on your iPhone screen!

Just do few very simple steps.

• Download MyAgent by IDX Broker application from your app store. It's free.

• Enter agent's code 7308

• Your iPhone's built-in GPS will define your location and you see the map of the area where you are now and all the active MLS listings in the area!

• Touch the home icon on your screen to find out more details about the house which you like 

• See all the pictures which listing agent put into the system

• If you want more information or if you are willing to see the home just touch the upper left corner of the screen where my phone is and I will answer all your questions immediately.
  

         Download MyAgent app from your App Store.                                               Enter code 7308

Enjoy your Real Estate Search  in convenience of your iPhone.

                                              Touch my phone number 216-548-4663

                                  if you like to see the house or want to get more information.

Have a happy and cool Real Estate search in Cleveland!

7308Have a happy and cool Real Estate serach in Cleveland!

Real Estate Agent's Tool Kit. Part 2.

How to Show the Houses To Home Buyers Circa 2010.

Showing the houses to home buyers is one of the most visible activities performed by Real Estate agents. Many people still perceive the Real Estate agent as the "Door Openers":). Even for simply opening the door for our buying clients we, the Real Estate agents do a lot of things behind the scene to make it happen.

Simple list of activities we do prior to showing appointment includes, but is not limited to:

• Buyer's initial consultation, qualification in order to understand buyer's motives, needs , desires and ability to meet these needs
• MLS data base search in order to find the best matches for our home buyers
• Coordination of appointment time with the buyer
• Creating a preliminary route for a showing tour
• Scheduling the appointments with the listing agents and getting the showing instructions
  
• Compiling the final route, printing out or e-mailing the map and driving direction to the buyer
• Printing out the flyers for each home
• Investigating the property history, checking out the current neighborhood marketing condition for each property 

Times changed, and the way we handle all these activities change, too. Not for everyone though. Thus, we are still in the transition between the 20th century way of doing business routine and the 21st century one.

Scheduling the showings and getting showing instructions is all about communication between Real Estate agents. Sometimes it's real time consuming, and even frustrating and exhausting. Listing agents can make the showings much easier for cooperating agents and buying clients.

I personally love one tool, which makes the whole process easier and a way more professional: Centralized Showing System. Our company Local-n-Global Realty uses this system for more than two years. Among the advantages the most important for me is a time savings. Besides saving a time, there are few more important benefits of using this or similar system vs. calling the listing office or listing agent:

• Accessibility to the services. It's  available by phone from 8 am to 8 pm every day. Sunday hours are 8 am to 6 pm. Listing offices may be closed, agents may not answer the phones nor return the calls timely.

• Internet access 24/7. We can manage our appointments at any time per our convenience. We do not have this privilege while using traditional approach to scheduling the showings.

• One easy phone number to remember and dial for multiple houses vs. many different phone numbers to dial if listings to show belong to different brokerages.

• Easy to identify yourself. If you call the office or agent who do not use this system, it's always a burden spelling first and last name, buyer's name, phone numbers, etc. Having 18 letters in my not-that-common first and last names, it's not fun to spell them at each attempt to set up an appointment for my clients.

• E-mail notification and e-mail instructions We do not have this privilege while using traditional approach to scheduling the showings.

• Easy to follow-up after showing. We can easily e-mail showing report to our buyers. System automatically generates a courtesy feedback request .We do not have this privilege while using traditional approach to scheduling the showings.

The other tool which listing agent can use is an electronic lock box - Supra box, IBox, whatever other names can be.

I personally feel that

it's much more safe for the sellers if their agents use electronic entry system for showing of the properties for sale.

Interesting, but here in Cleveland you can find the whole variety of different entry systems. If you show the houses in Solon, Pepper Pike, Twinsburg there is a very high probability that the listing agents use electronic IBoxes. Listing agents on West side of Greater Cleveland traditionally use electronic systems very rarely. You have a chance though to find numeric lock boxes, combination lock boxes with letter combo, even ancient camel key lock boxes!

I understand that purchasing and maintaining electronic entry system may be pretty costly for the agents but it's much more convenient and safe for our clients and for our fellow agents! Electronic entry systems provide a perfect tracking for each of our listings. Sophisticated system of registration, tracking , and notification does not leave any chance for unattended showings or for letting unauthorized showings be unnoticed.

Read our first post about Real Estate Agent's Tool Kit:

Real Estate Agent's Tool Kit: How Not To Miss Important Call

Real Estate Agent's Tool Kit .

I do my New Year's resolutions as many people do. Part of my 2010 resolution is to compile and share an easy-to-use Real Estate Agent's Tool Kit.

Let's start from the basics.

Real Estate Customer Services.

Answering Your Phone. Not Missing The Calls.

All clients and customers of Real Estate brokers are very important. We love your calls and we want you to call us about your Real Estate needs, hopes and desires! However, are all the Real Estate customers treated by average agents as Very Important Persons?

It was a good post by Michael Holmes featured today Calling All Agents, Answer Your Phone!

Michael mentioned that public perception of Real Estate agents is as being Lazy. Sad. Indeed, many agents do not answer the phone. Worse is that many agents do not timely return the calls from potential and actual clients and from the other agents.

I admit that there may be some business situations when Real Estate agent simply can not answer the phone. It's usually not appropriate to answer the phone when you are having a conversation with another client or when you are attending a meeting or class. In many communities it's illegal to use the phone while driving. Besides, Real Estate agents are human beings! We may have our personal time, we may be with our family, with our loved ones. We may be at the doctor's office. We may have a vacation.

However, in most cases we can not afford to miss any business calls.

Technologies may be a very efficient solution for a caring Real Estate professional. See what a good Real Estate agents can use in order to better serve our home sellers and home buyers.

• Call Capture System. We in Local-n-Global Realty successfully utilize 877-770-5551 Real Estate Hotline for spreading a listing information and for capturing all listing calls during more than three years. Beauty of this system is that there is no chance to miss any call, as all callers are identified by the system. Information about the call instantly comes to dedicated agent's cell phone and to e-mail box. Agent can chose to get all the calls forwarded to any phone number within particular hours. If call forwarding is chosen to be disabled, agent returns the call at the first convenience. This number also works as an electronic fax number.  This technology is offered by Freedom Voice Systems. It's a very smart approach, which allows us capture and promptly respond to everyone who is interested in our services and in our listings. We report to our selling clients about all activity on their listings. We can broadcast any information to any people from our database. We trace the calls from different marketing sources, and many more. Very reasonable pricing. That's one of the best  investment in technology, which we've ever done.
  
• Love Your Voicemail system. Thanks to YouMail.com, we can capture, share, store, visualize, customize, and manage all voicemails and calls coming to our cell phones. This sophisticated and fun system allows to securely store on-line all calls and voicemails received by the subscriber. Instant text messaging and e-mail notification make our calls accessible and easy to manage. Good news is that a basic level of this service is free!
  

I am a firm believer that Real estate customers deserve excellent customer services from their Real Estate agents and from the whole professional community. Few easy-to-use technologies can help Real Estate professionals to make their services exceptional!

Homebuyers and homesellers in Cleveland have a very good opportunity to get better services from local Real Estate professionals this year using advantages of new MLS system which combined listings and services of NORMLS and CRIS.  

Many Real estate agents serving Northeast Ohio are still exploring great opportunities offered by this tremendous system. Ability for each listing to appear at Realtor.com with up to 25 photos, possibilty to submit all our listings to tens of Real estate search portals - all these features are both exciting for practitioners and beneficial for our clients. 

Due to tremendous changes and complexity of this new data base, there are few problems which are inconvenient for our customers. I want to apologize to all of my Market Snapshot subscribers who used to receive reliable, full and up-to date information about market condition from www.Local-n-Global.com. This great service is temporarily not delivering usual results due to changes in MLS sysytem.

Dear valuable buyers and sellers of homes in Greater Cleveland who used to receive my Market Snapshots! Please do ot hesitate to contact me if your snapshot come back blank or with incomplete data. I will be happy to prepare for you and send you a customized complete CMA report for your area. I wish Market Snapshot services will recover soon.

Need to sell homes in Pepper Pike, Solon, Twinsburg? Have a good house in Mayfield and need to find a nice solid buyer for your home? Please call Svetlana Stolyarova 877-770-5551 or e-mail to: Realty@Local-n-Global.com.