Real Estate and Technology

Through the years I have come to prefer computer tools that don’t involve buying a program and installing on a computer. Computers get old, they break or catch a virus. You might even use several different computers in a day - who can afford the time and expense of maintaining multiple computer programs?

The words ?to describe ?a computer tool that is not a program installed on your computer are “web based”. Our “Feedback Tool” is called “My Showing Log” and it is web based. It works from anywhere you can connect to the internet. With all of their web based products, google is a master of this approach. I consciously tried to copy a tiny part of their successful approach.

The buzz word on the internet today is “communities”. The big internet companies are racing to develop “communities” for everything, sharing video, personal profiles, music. Just like a village can help to raise a child, a community on the internet can give an idea life. My Showing Log allows you to work as an individual or form a community such as a sales team or office.

What I mean by community here is that with My Showing Log you can form a group of individual users. You have your own account and data, but you can allow other’s to access it. The old fashioned equivalent would be giving contact information to the floor person so they can set up showings or letting an assistant call for and record feedback. My showing log allows different levels of sharing that can be simply assigned or taken away.

The computer has a huge advantage over these old examples because you can access your information anywhere, any time. If you or anyone in your community makes a change everyone in the community sees it in real time. Click here for some examples.

In its simplest form, My showing log is a website that stores information about your listings and provides you with ?information ?to contact ?other Realtors. Its a lot like an electronic form of the little book you keep for the floor person or front desk person to refer to when setting up showings.

You can access My Showing Log from anywhere and you can keep it private, share it or un-share. When the floor person sets up a showing they can find all the information about the listing very quickly in My Showing log. They can quickly verify the showing agents office, phone number and email with the click of a mouse. My showing Log can send the showing agent a confirmation for the showing via email. It can send a copy to the listing agent and the seller if you wish. After the showing occurs my showing log can send an email to the showing agent with a simple feedback form for the agent to fill out.

When the showing agent submits the feedback form, feedback is stored for later use. My showing Log can also email the feedback results to the listing agent and the seller if you wish.

Since my showing log is web based, you can access it and set up a showing at any time and the information is available to your community in Real Time. If you don’t want to be in a group, you can be out of it with the click of a mouse. You can rejoin just as quickly.

Practical means using technology not just for the sake of technology but because the value delivered is greater than the cost. ?Cost includes the time spent by the real estate agent figuring out how to use the technology.

Realtors come from different backgrounds, different generations ? and varing levels of skill with regard to technology. Technology solutions that work the best are different depending on the Realtor. Each Realtor is succesful because of their unique, individual traits. ?

I started in the Real Estate business directly out of college. Sometimes I feel like if ?I were a fly, technology would be fly paper. Through the years I have spent a lot of time in the pursuit of technology, not always to my benifit.

It is interesting to me that my most productive and profitable times in Real Estate are when I concentrate on basic sales rather than working with new gadgets. When I adopt something new there is a learning period that slows me down.

It would be wrong to say that Real Estate Agents shouldn’t worry about new technology. When I started in Real Estate the most important technology was the real estate calculator. Still to come was the common use of computers, electronic forms such as zip forms, cell phones and the internet.

If I had not concentrated on technology, I would not be as comfortable with my world as I am now. You could say I payed for that comfort in advance by putting the time into technology as I went.

Many companies selling technology capitalize on fear of being left behind. There is some truth in that approach and a lot of hype. Some technology is sold more to show off than to be used. ?Many of us don’t mind flashing around the fancy new phone or bragging about our web site. The best technology though, ?is the stuff you use without even thinking about it.

Just when you think you are up on everything, something new comes around the corner. I wonder how much of it all we really need. ? Sales is still a person to person business.

To survive in Real Estate you have to be able to filter out the noise and the fads. Everyone has an angle that works for them. Marketing folks are constantly looking for common hot points that make sense to everyone in the industry. “Isn’t my product worth it if you can sell just one more house with it?” ? The answer is, “maybe”.

“I’m the guy who sells all of those pens to Realtors.” “you need your name on the bulletin board in the grocery store” ? or how about the front cover of the magazines at the clinic. You need a blackberry, you need a my space account, you need your own web page, each one of your listings needs its own web page. There are a million ways to spend your advertising dollar.

Yes you’ve got to advertise and keep up with the times, but none of it is worth a nickle if you don’t take care of what you already have. Most agents lose customers and leads because of weak follow up. Top producers know that organization and communication ?are as important as advertising. If you are organized you are in a position to capitalize on the more of the leads that already come across your desk.