Tag: technology

Using the right tech to get in front of more clients

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By Candy Miles-Crocker

Good real estate agents make the job look easy. That’s because excellent real estate agents always seat their clients in the restaurant and never in the kitchen.

If you have ever peeked into the kitchen of your favorite restaurant, you likely saw chaos. It may have been organized chaos, but it was chaos just the same. The chef is calling out orders and the staff is trying to keep up the pace to get the food prepared and out the door — while in the restaurant, it is elegant, peaceful and without the slightest hint of confusion.

The “kitchen” is where the magic happens.

Real estate agents are constantly in the kitchen, but if you use the right technology, you may get out of the kitchen and into the restaurant. Or at the very least, your kitchen will be organized chaos.

Technology makes it easier to manage and systematize various aspects of the business. Let’s take a look at a few incredible tools you may want to consider.

Organize your day and stay calm

Without organization and systems in place, it is super easy to feel frustrated and out of control. To get all of that clutter out of your head, there’s a wonderful app you can download called Todoist. Todoist is intuitive to use and gives you the confidence that you haven’t forgotten something. Sync this app with your email and calendar to get reminders, prioritize tasks, delegate tasks and so much more.

With Todoist, you can focus your energy on serving your clients and generating new business, instead of stressing about what you need to do. You can even set up daily or weekly goals to help you stay focused and motivated.

Todoist is an excellent way to get more time in your day and have a little peace of mind.

Stay in touch

To run a thriving referral-based business, you need to keep track of your sphere of influence: your past and present clients and prospective clients. You will also need a system in place to follow up with all of your contacts. Most agents are horrible at following up. If the prospect doesn’t respond immediately to a text, email or call, the agent promptly writes them off.

Research has shown that people need to be “touched” at least seven times before they even remember who you are. After seven times, they might give you their attention, but it might take more attempts than that.

With that in mind, it’s important to have a tool that tracks who you have contacted and when. Follow Up Boss is a CRM tool that allows you to keep in touch in record time. Follow Up Boss can be linked to your Gmail or Office 365 account to automatically sync and log all of your email communication in one place.

You can set up email drip campaigns for new prospects and to stay in touch with past clients, as well as your sphere of influence. Set up your campaign to deliver valuable information, and people will look forward to receiving your emails.

Here’s a tip: Don’t make all of your emails about real estate. Remember, you want people to see value in the information you are providing. Make your emails timely. In the summertime, you may have an email about staying safe in the sun. In the fall, your email may be about prepping your home for the winter.

The beauty of Follow Up Boss is that you can set up various lists depending on the type of information you want to deliver. You may have one list for a particular neighborhood and another list for first-time homebuyers. Remember, one size does not fit all. Be creative.

Use video to stand out

A tried-and-true tech favorite of mine is BombBomb.

Everywhere you look, you read that people love watching videos. If you don’t believe me, check your social media feed. Video viewership is king, so why aren’t you making better use of it in your marketing?

This is where BombBomb comes in. You can shoot a quick video on your phone and text or email it to one of your contacts in a matter of minutes.

Let’s say you are in the neighborhood of a past client and notice a cool restaurant. Take a quick video of yourself in front of the restaurant and ask your client if they have been there and perhaps invite them to discover it with you in the future.

Or maybe you are doing pop-bys and stopped by a client’s house only to discover they are not home. Pull out your phone and take a video in front of their home to let them know that you have left a little something for them. Instead of calling and leaving a voicemail, leave a video message. It’s a great way for you to stand out from the crowd. Think outside the box and have fun with it.

There is so much technology out there that can make you more efficient, but it’s easy to go overboard and get frustrated. Just know that you do not have to use every tool out there. After you have determined what type of technology tools you need, do your research to see which tools you are most likely to use and go for it.

For more on real estate tech, see our courses on technology for real estate agents and technology to manage your team.

Is technology helping or hurting us?

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Chris A. Studebaker, CEO, REALTOR® Association of the Fox Valley, Inc.

What would we do without technology? We as association executives have been trying to push our members to embrace technology in all areas for a very long time. Lost your SentriKey card? Use the app to get into that property. Have a buyer from out of state to whom you want to show a property? Hop on your phone and give them a virtual tour. Can’t make your committee meeting because of a listing appointment? Join the meeting via Zoom. Don’t have the time or means to attend the NAR national convention? Watch it online! And during this lockdown period due to the pandemic, technology has literally saved our business. Where would we be without Zoom, without Facebook Live and FaceTime, without webinars, virtual closings and apps on our phones that help us do what we once did with our clients in person? Technology has helped real estate to adapt to our lockdown world and to not only carry on, but thrive!

But, I often wonder, as I sit typing this article on my computer while checking emails on my phone, and watching my teenage son spend hours on his phone “talking” to friends — “Is technology really helping us, or is it hurting us?” When I was his age, I was getting together with friends to cruise the main drag, play football or “hang out” at each other’s houses. We were having lengthy phone conversations — I wasn’t sending three-word texts back and forth, never seeing one another. And I may be dating myself, but I can remember days when you took your college final exams in large lecture halls and you interviewed for your first job in person. Those are obviously things of the past. Now, I realize that much of this “new-normal” behavior is due to the pandemic restrictions, but I can’t help but wonder, “Will we ever go back to the way it was?”

The lack of in-person communication has affected all of us. We are all face-down in our phones reading our short text messages instead of having heads-up conversations where we can see expression, body language, emotion, feelings. As an industry, we’ve replaced much of our in-person interaction with virtual. Many offices are looking to downsize their space needs because in-person office meetings and classes are becoming a thing of the past.

Even though I miss our face-to-face interactions, I, for one, can appreciate the “push” that the pandemic gave to all of us in the area of technology. It forced those who were not embracing technology to give it a big bear hug and set a place at their business “table” for it. I’m also impressed with how tech-savvy our membership has been forced to become. The number of calls we receive from people having technical difficulties has dramatically decreased. People are more patient with technology hiccups, and they’re more committed to working out the problem themselves. They realize that technology is here to stay, and they may as well get used to it. They say that there is a silver lining in every cloud… even in a pandemic. The positive nuances of the technological push may be COVID’s.

Everyone can also agree that Zoom calls, virtual tours, texting, online MLS — all of these advances in technology have made us incredibly efficient, way more accessible and save us enormous amounts of time. Our embrace of technology also helps us in our diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Technology helps to make the homebuying process accessible and available to all people. Those who are physically challenged and cannot make an in-person listing appointment can now see their future home through the eyes of their Realtor giving them a virtual tour. Those who cannot take off work or get child care to meet with their Realtor to list their home can now do all that is necessary through email, text and electronic signatures. It has truly changed the rules of the game.

Technology is exciting, helpful, smart and slick. It makes all our lives easier and helps us all to strive to be better. And there are so many more advances to come. I am excited for what is on the horizon with technology. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I love the edge that technology is giving us in real estate by allowing us to work quicker, smarter and better. But at the same time, let’s all promise that we don’t totally lose our in-person connections. Because as Realtors, that’s what our business is all about… the people.