As an agent, I’m a big advocate of not getting distracted by shiny objects. Think of all the things presented to us real estate agents that we could easily go after and spend our money on. With that in mind, here are five critical technologies to grow your business that are tried and tested for solo agents, small teams, and teams with as many as 30 agents handling 1,000 transactions:
1. Google Apps for Work. The Google suite provides a collaborative office suite with Gmail, Google Calendars, and shared calendars with all sorts of notifications settings and appointment tracking for your team members. Also included is Google Docs, which offers sharing settings, storage, and collaboration within Google Sheets and Google Docs. There’s a whole other suite of applications within the Google Apps for Work suite. It’s a great piece of technology that’s essential for any team in the real estate world.
2. Top Producer. Top Producer has a reputation for being clunky, but the truth is that it’s great to use as a CRM as well as for listing and closing plans. There is no better way to ensure that all your clients are treated the exact same way and they’re treated up to the service standard they have come to expect from you.
3. Buyer side CRM. In a world of Internet technology and website leads, it’s important you’re able to both create a funnel for prospects coming into your world and organize those prospects so a system can prompt you to follow up with them.
4. A call recording and tracking system. It’s important that you track your business as you grow it so you can decide what’s worth spending money on and what’s not. A call recording and tracking system can help you improve quality control for training purposes and ensure that your team members treat your clients in the most effective and personable way possible. It can also track where you’re getting your leads from.
5. A business tracking system. There are all kinds of business tracking systems out there in the real estate world, but something on an Excel spreadsheet works as well as anything. Make sure that every lead source that brings a prospect into your world has a tracking code on it and every appointment that’s set contains that tracking code. At the end of that month, do a reconciliation to figure out where your business is coming from and what the return on each of those advertising investments has been.
“These five technologies will help your business immensely.”
If you have any questions about any of these technologies, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d be happy to help you.
