What’s With All the Technology in Real Estate
So what’s up with all the technology companies breaking into real estate and looking of ways to disrupt the business. It seems like yesterday when we had all the information for the client. They couldn’t really access any homes for sale unless they contacted a real estate agent. That made us the gatekeepers of the MLS. It also made some complacent and others lazy.
With all the technology that’s coming at us every day with he next best solution so you can work less it’s hard to figure out what’s fake or lame and what would actually work for your business. From lead generating companies to contact relationship managers. All sorts of crazy stuff is coming out o fast that it’s hard to keep up with any of it. Sometimes we wonder if we should keep up with it or should we wait for the company to make a presence and prove itself before going all in on it. Well there’s pros and cons to it all. If you wait too long it gets expensive because everyone has adopted the tool and if you do not adopt it you risk your company staying behind and becoming stagnant. So what’s the right answer?
As a real estate broker in San Bernardino, Ca. I’m constantly looking for new ideas that are coming out and some I decide to test others I don’t. We try not to confuse the agents with all these tools because it distracts them from their core job which is serving the client. We attend many sales and technology workshops just to inform ourselves of what’s happening and what new things and old things are still working. After a whole year of doing some research what I found out i that the technology companies are just trying to figure it out just like us. Everyone seems to have the same goal. Which is how to provide a more simple process for the homebuyer, homeowner, and even the real estate agents. I’ll tell you it’s not easy to shut out all the noise and focus on what works and what doesn’t. Even though when we do find something that can benefit the process it’s still a test because we haven’t tested it with our business model.
As a real estate agent yous should be adopting new tools to help you simplify the business to your client without sacrificing customer. As yourself “ Does this make it easier for you, your customer or both?” A great broker should be researching new products and services and testing them before bringing them aboard to their agents. There is a such thing as too many tools or technology where it begins to make everyone’s job difficult.
Here’s some basic tools we have adopted at Ponce & Ponce Realty to help us make the process a bit easier. Currently our sales training revolves around the Mike Ferry Organization sales system. The system is the most complete sales training system around. It includes scripts and dialogues for lead generating, following up, presentation skills, handling objections and closing skills as well. A good real estate agent needs these basics skills to become a successful real estate. Find a company that can provide these skills to you and your team.
If you are like me and you are constantly generating leads everyday then you can become overwhelmed by the amount of leads you generate. One way to stay on track and not loose any possible buyers and sellers is by adopting a contact relationship manager (CRM). There’s a ton of them out there. From basic systems to some that put all your lead generating and marketing efforts on one platform. If you are just getting started keep it simple. Find a system that automates your online leads but also allows for manual input. Its should have a calendar preferably that syncs with google calendar. It should allow you to create tasks and track your leads, appointments, contracts, and closings. The tracking part is important. Find out if it tracks the basics like the source the lead came from, ages, birthday, current address and where they moved too. I can confuse you with all these tools out there, but i’m not going too.
Here in California C.A.R provides us brokers with an a option to use this new zipform platform that has been revamped. Many tech companies are looking to create a all in one solution. There’s many great ones out there and many not so great. Others just have to many things going on. In my experience researching I haven’t found one platform that I feel has it all. Since the race is on to create a end to end platform right now for real estate these tech companies are creating some very complicated systems will get simplified in the end. Someone will one but for now i’m not sure who is winning. What I do know is that zipform has created a great platform for real estate brokerages and it has all the basics. If you have a team they also created a similar platform for teams where the whole team can have access to every transaction and everything seems to work seamless. I’ll be quite honest for all while I thought Zip Forms wasn’t going to keep up but they proved me wrong.
All i’m saying is there’s no right or wrong way to conduct your business. The easier you keep it the easier it is for others to adopt it.Maybe 10 years from now the majority of the real estate agents will be tech savvy and right now in my opinion that’s not the case. Remember too much technology or over complicated can paralyze your team and your customer service.