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!
Thank you, Svetlana! What do you use for your mailing lists?
Good post, and agree totally! That one time someone is calling off your sign, and you MAY have just missed a sale!
Joan Cox
MB - House to Home, Inc.
www.JoanCox.com
Joan@JoanCox.com
Maria - thanks for reading and commenting! Mailing list is one of my biggest challenges, as I did not pick up yet the Perfect program to accomodate all my needs. I like more and more the complex solution offered by TheWiseAgent.com. I'll write about it in another post.
Joan - Can not agree more! And you can get a sale by simply calling back or answering your phone. I had one co-op agent who congratulated my sellers for working with the right agent who actually return the sign calls. That made that deal closed, and many more. Thanks for commenting!
Thanks for the reminder about youmail.com. I had heard about the system several times but never followed up on getting an account. Today it goes on my to-do list for this month.
Dave - I use it for few months already and I am very happy with it. Honestly, I didn't even try to get more advanced but even a basic level is serving my goals very well. Thanks for commenting!
Svetlana,
Jeez, more technology I must check out. Thanks for that. Happy new year.
I use youmail.com and other agents have signed up for it off my email. We used call capture 3 years ago and in about a year none of us had converted any of the leads so we quit using it. I loved it and may go back and try again. It was pretty amazing!
Terry - don't be scared by this technology LOL. The beauty of communication technologies is that it's not time consuming to set it up and it works happily ever after! Have a great produstive year!
Evelyn - that's an interesting feedback about call capture system. Maybe, it might worth to try more economical payment plan and create a good marketing plan for the use of this system before spending the whole bunch of money on the fully featured system.
We are thinking now about more extensive use of broadcasting feature and about implementing it for on-line podcasting. So far, simple lead capture and e-faxing works perfectly for us.
Lead conversion is usually a matter of finding a right approach to dealing with the callers. With this system, at least we know where this calls originated from:)
Have a Happy and prosperous New Year!
Lazy agents....surely you jest. Never met one.
Seriously, the consumer would often be better served if agents were salaried or even hourly employees. Then those lazy agents would have a boss to reckon with.
Jim - Isn't the Inner boss the best one in the world? You're right - many consumers would get more benefits from working with the salaried, broker-controlled agents. I'm afraid it would cost a bit more for consumers to pay for these salaried services. Maybe, it's simply better to chose the right agent to work with?
Sounds like some good tools. I have call capture and it seems to be working pretty good.
I am going to look into youmail.com. Thanks for the recommendation.
Gene - I think, Call capture is one of the best technologies for Real Estate industry.
Tigard - I'm sure, you will love it. Great for a business cell phone number!