Blueprint for 100 Deals
or More Than $1 Million
Per Year in Income
The exact systems and technology
to sell 100+ homes, every year ~
no matter the market
By
Alan Shafran and Rick Bengson
Blueprint for 100 Deals or More Than $1 Million Per Year in Income
Alan Shafran & Rick Bengson
Copyright 2011 by Showing Suite
Smashwords Edition
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“If you have a desire to build a big business in the real estate industry, Alan is revealing his step by step guide on how to do it.”
- Tom Ferry
“North America’s Top Real Estate Coach”
“Alan has been one of our company’s top brokers in Southern California for years, producing millions of dollars in volume through the incredible use of networking, relationship building, technology, systems and a relentless discipline around training. Any sales professional striving to reach the next level should read this book... and if needed read it more than once!”
- Mark Johnson
Vice President Marketing and Sales Technology
Prudential California Realty a HomeServices of America and Berkshire Hathaway Affiliate
Chapter 1 – The Cardinal Rules of Real Estate
Chapter 4 – Communication/Bandwidth
Chapter 5 – Social (& Not So Social) Marketing
Chapter 6 – Office Systems: Systemize to Maximize
Chapter 7 – Negotiations: Check, Checkmate
Chapter 8 – Listings: There’s No Second Place
Chapter 9 – Buyer Presentations
100 vs.1
You probably bought this book because you want to know, “How can I sell one hundred homes per year every single year?” The answer follows the same equation for anyone entering the real estate business and it’s better posed as: would you rather be an individual agent, going it alone, or be part of a team?
One is the loneliest number. This simple correlation is key throughout our Blueprint for 100 Deals – the systems, tools, and technologies of us, the authors of this book, Alan Shafran and Rick Bengson.
Whether you’re a complete novice to the industry or you’re a REALTOR® looking to ascend the ladder, our 100 Deals system and the expertise behind it can help you build your business, as well as make more money, please more customers, and improve your overall quality of life!
Based on a team building philosophy, this book will change the way you think about being a team player, your role in an existing team or the value of being part of a team. In addition, we explore the role of an effective team leader, how to get better results from your team members, and how to excel in your goal of reaching 100 deals a year, no matter the market conditions.
How? The first step is checking your ego at the door. Your family probably wants it checked, your spouse definitely wants it checked, and in your business, you cannot let it blind you from becoming successful. It’s time to get real about real estate, and that means focusing on building a team, making a million dollars a year by doing 100 deals, utilizing the technology available so you can succeed, and still having a life. One typically cannot do 100 deals year after year without building a functional team – not a dysfunctional team, but a functional one; a team with a leader and team members who know and perform their roles. Think of how exciting this will be if you come from a dysfunctional family team and now, by following a book, you can be part of a functional family team. Because as teams become successful and the work is enjoyed, it soon becomes a second family.
Early in our careers, we realized that without balancing work and home life, the rewards are gained at the expense of one over the other. Unless you can establish a functional team environment – one that supports you, fosters a solid working relationship with your team-mates, and gives your clients the speedy and reliable service they deserve – you’ll be carrying the burden of everything on your shoulders solely, when the weight could be shared, along with the joys of success. Yes, there are those rare few REALTORS® that have earned $1 million in real estate themselves, but typically it was very short lived and/or was due to a lucky year. This individual format generally cannot sustain high performance, leads to major swings in production, burn out, and eventual loss of income and market share.
The reward of working together as a cohesive unit can be greater than any profit gained while striving to be a solitary real estate agent on your own island. Even doctors work with medical clerks, nurses and anesthesiologists, while lawyer’s teams consist of paralegals, junior attorneys and senior attorneys in today’s society. Why would a customer work with an individual, sole practitioner agent when, for the same price, he can benefit from the advantages of hiring the whole team?
That’s why we want to tell you about our 100 Deals system. Discover the real estate secrets for an easier, more enjoyable and more productive business, with time left over to enjoy your private life.
You’re probably wondering, “Who the hell are these guys?” As real estate veterans, let us introduce ourselves.
I’m Rick Bengson, CEO and Co-Founder of ShowingSuite Inc. and Co-Creator of HomeFeedback.com.
I graduated from Northern Illinois University, went on to law school, and started in real estate in 1985 fresh out of college, working for one of the ten largest home building companies in the country. I began as a construction manager, moved into customer service, then into new home sales – I’ve built homes, I’ve serviced homes and I’ve sold hundreds of homes.
I started my love of technology as a member of the computer club in high school and began my major in 1981 in computer science. Back then Pong was big and we programmed on teletype machines without monitors. Although they were the only classes in which I received a rare “A,” in my infinite wisdom I decided being a programmer was the only job in computers and that wasn’t for me.
While working at my father’s gas station, I read Tom Hopkins “How to Master the Art of Selling,” and decided that selling was for me. I quit the family summer job and started on my sales path with Kirby vacuum cleaners. In my new summer job, I regularly was the top salesperson of the month at the age of 19 and 20. My boss said, “Son, you have to be dumb enough to listen and smart enough to follow.” I did exactly what they said, where I saw the other sales people didn’t.
After college, my first job was for a top 10 nationwide home builder in Phoenix. They hired educated people at a great pay with zero experience. I wanted to sell homes like Tom Hopkins, but their program was to teach you the entire home building business to run your own tract. My first position was as a construction manager building tract homes in Phoenix.
My first day on the job, I showed up in my required khaki pants, white shirt with company patch sewn on, and green hard hat. That morning, I arrived at the construction office, a converted office in the 30 plan model. I found my new boss Richard and asked him what I should do. He said, “Go down to the cul-de-sac and find the other guys that look like you and they will get you started.” I answered, “Ok thanks, I guess I will see you later.” I got back into my car and, being from a rural Illinois town, thought to myself, “What’s a cul-de-sac?” I drove around the subdivision and eventually found the guys. I learned my first real estate term! One of the guys I found is now a bank president, whom I recently helped get on the board to open the bank. That first day they gave me ten homes under construction to build. Having never even built a tree house, this was quite an overwhelming task for this 21 year old. I persevered and figured it out. I remember finishing my first house and when the family moved in, I told my co-construction managers that I wanted to ring the doorbell and ask them, “How do you like the house? It’s my first one.” I never did and kept my job.
Needless to say you learn a lot when you are thrown into the fire feet first. I subsequently opened my own custom home building company a few years later. I sold my own spec homes and used technology to do so. I bought the first cell phone that wasn’t installed in a car or in a bag to carry. It was a “brick” and I paid $1175 for it, but justified that if I could sell my houses faster, it more than paid for itself. I then moved from Scottsdale, Arizona to San Diego to live the California dream in real estate, where I now reside.
Since my beginning in real estate, I’ve been through three bad markets – the RTC crisis in Arizona, the military closures in San Diego in 1989 and the recent market. I still believe the San Diego market headed south the day I moved here that December day in 1989. I have experienced one good market starting in the late 1990’s to 2007. I built dozens of custom homes in Scottsdale, completed numerous real estate projects in San Diego, and I have owned my current real estate brokerage for over the past ten years; therefore, I know how hard it can be. I’ve seen bust and boom, and right now the market is flat and expected to remain so for quite a while. Which is why we are sharing the system that works for closing 100 deals annually, no matter what. Bust, boom, or flat market conditions.
Of course, as a REALTOR®, a general rule is that you’re getting paid a percentage of a sale, so when the prices are halved, you’re making less money. But whatever the market, you should be able to live comfortably on 100 deals and that’s why we’ve chosen this number as an achievable goal. Many teams achieve this goal – some even double it, triple it or more.
The reality is, when the market is better, you will do better. It’s never going to stay the same condition forever. Regardless, 97%+ of all agents are never going to do 100 deals or $1 million a year in commissions. Some won’t do 100 deals in their entire career, let alone every year. In fact, many REALTORS® will be asking, “How the heck can an agent do 100 deals a year? I’m doing five a year.” That’s what Alan brings to the table – he will explain the “real estate team concept” – how to build and maintain a team, and use technology to automate the processes of buying and selling homes.
Together, Alan and I developed Showing Suite, a real estate productivity software – it saves you time, helps you win listings over your competitors, and enables you to sell houses faster if you use the software. Originally entitled HomeFeedback.com Inc., we invented the concept of gathering feedback for real estate over the internet in 2000!
Previously, there was nothing available to provide the much-needed showing feedback from potential buyers to the REALTOR® and seller. So, Alan and I launched our first software product and sold the software now used by tens of thousands of agents in virtually every market in North America.
The technology that we created was a perfect fit with the expectations and revolutions happening throughout the rest of society. Although social networking sites and wireless devices are now the norm, back in the day, the majority of agents didn’t even have email – at that time, the biggest seminar at the National Association of REALTORS® in 2000 when we launched was “how to use email.” We constantly build onto the Showing Suite software as the business changes, so it will remain a much needed tool that agents can use throughout their career. We needed to keep up with the changing face of business and Alan had an idea how we could do this…
Licensed and selling homes since 1988, I’m Alan Shafran and I grew up in the industry.
My company, The Alan Shafran Group, sells 120-175 homes per year – averaging a sale every three days… in a market where the average agent sells fewer than 5 homes per year. I moved to Carlsbad, CA in 1999 and was among the top REALTORS® in the North County San Diego within 2 years. My license has been hanging with Prudential CA Realty for the majority of my career here in San Diego. I have been fortunate enough to be ranked their #1 highest producing REALTOR® in San Diego & North San Diego County for over 10 years and within the top 10 in North America for all of Prudential among over 60,000 other agents.
I have been privileged to speak across the country for different companies about what it takes to be successful and reach new heights in our industry. I have been honored to be included in different advisory boards including meetings at MIT for Prudential Corporate regarding technology direction. I also attribute much of my success to the wonderful people in this industry that helped me find the solutions to different pieces of the puzzle. Please realize this is a tough industry to attack on your own and I chose not to reinvent the wheel in many areas. Instead, I simply chose to surround myself with as much greatness as I could find.
Last, but certainly not least, my team is to whom I owe the most gratitude and respect. From a few of my agents who have been with me from near the start, to my office VP, to my admin, I will always be thankful. We continue to sell like clockwork, even though we’ve just been through what I think is a very rare time in real estate, and in the world in general. This recent economic crisis has indelibly impacted our future.
Over the past 22 years, I’ve been involved in three different geographical areas: Ventura County of Southern California (outside of L.A.); Denver, Colorado; and finally Carlsbad in San Diego County – very competitive markets, where I’ve had and maintained a very high level of success in a short period of time.
Certainly, this success is related to my team, but also to my economic background of managing money for PaineWebber, and my awareness of technological advances that can be used to automate and streamline our business today; they are leaps and bounds from what I started with.
For instance, in my first year in the business, nobody even had personal computers yet. We walked around with printed MLS books the size of The Yellow Pages Books – that’s how much of a revolution I’ve been fortunate to be part of. I worked in an office with a hundred other agents and one modem-type terminal with a built-in dot matrix printer. When we needed to make a change to a home listing, we needed to fill out a printed sheet of paper and drive it over to the Multiple Listings Service; a week later, they would print the book with the changes in it.
Nowadays, of course, we have the internet, email, tablets like Apple’s iPad and Motorola’s Xoom, mobile devices and cell phones… Back then however, a REALTOR® was considered very forward thinking if they had an assistant and a pager.
Showing Suite was born out of my infatuation with technology. In the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, I would stay up until 2am, customizing databases for real estate. I was keen to use these early computer applications in the context of my business, so I was one of the first adopters of Windows – we went from DOS to Windows Networking, which was quite the challenge, but quite exciting to the geeky side of me.
I loved the latest gadgets and one day, I felt like I really understood this new world called the internet. So I wanted to build something to make my business better – as a result, we created what would become ShowingSuite.com which streamlined the whole process by saving us time and making everyone’s lives better. Again, I chose to surround myself with great people and was fortunate enough run into Rick Bengson.
We are proud of ShowingSuite.com and the hundreds of thousands of agents that it has serviced over the years. Of course, we will always be gracious and thankful to our supporters and our clients within the industry. You will see us reference ShowingSuite.com and HomeFeedback.com throughout this book as an example of how technology can aid your mission in achieving your goals, both financially and personally for the quality of your life.
For over a decade, we have seen technology companies come and go, so we urge you to be careful when subscribing and putting your business into a company’s hands. Do your research and make sure the company is the best option you have for now and the future. By understanding how ShowingSuite.com operates, we feel that you will be better educated in interviewing and identifying other fantastic technologies to help you with other areas of your business.
Nevertheless, I remember what it was like to do business with a customer ‘pre-technology.’ Sometimes we get lost in the fact that technology does everything for us and we forget about the customer. Truthfully, technology is helpful if it can solidify and make more efficient the relationship between the customer and us, their agents. It can also be helpful if it saves time automating tasks that would otherwise need to be done manually or could not be provided as a service without technology.
Through a team-based system, you can embrace the latest technology in order to facilitate communication in these important relationships – and not eliminate the relationships, which seems to be an unwelcome, yet typical side effect of impersonal emails and time-saving gadgets. We even built a specific team version in Showing Suite based on the needs of my business.
That’s why this technology needs to be part of a broader system – one that supports the tech and is in turn, supported by it. Personally, I’ve been selling over 100 homes a year now for several years, through the different technologies and different markets. This amounts to roughly $17 million in income in the last 5-10 years.
I attribute this long-term success to insights – the tried and tested little secrets that can save you hundreds and thousands of dollars of expense and frustration – and my knowledge of the intricacies of team building and team relationships.
If you choose to listen to our advice, it is possible for you to rise up to the next level faster. But it’s imperative that you keep your ego in check. I offer my time as a coach to fellow REALTORS® and you would be shocked by the things that I hear. For example, my coaching fees run between $2,000 and $3,000 per month for 30 minutes per week. One would think that for that price, a few things should naturally take place. The first few would be that the client should be asking questions, listening intently, and then implementing what they’ve learned. What actually happens would shock you. Most clients just want to talk and when they do ask a question and receive the answer, they would prefer to tell me why it can’t be done. The egos are tremendous. For instance, a team leader who behaves like he’s the big boss of GM, when he’s actually running a small business or a family business; or a team member who sells a couple of houses and thinks he is God’s gift to real estate.
Now, I love the concept of “thinking big,” but one might steer themselves right out of business, making decisions like the CEO of GM when they are working out of their home office. Thinking big and dreaming big are fantastic and encouraged… let’s combine it with a plan of action that includes solid decisions at correct growth intervals. I have found a tremendous inversive relationship between the team leader’s ego and annual production. The production will not go up unless the ego gets out of the way.
Instead, always, always, and again, always put the customer first, and think about how you’re being perceived. Not just public perception, but the perception of each other, is integral to building a team that works together dynamically and cooperatively.
You
can think you are Superman when you do 20 deals a year, but ego could
be your Kryptonite to reaching 100 deals if it is not kept in check.
By following a Blueprint for 100 Deals, my real estate firm has had very little staff turnover in several years. Some of you will already know that it’s not uncommon to hire and fire employees every six months because of market volatility. You may sell three homes and hire a new team member, then it goes quiet for a while and you need to fire a person. However, I’ve learned how to develop a team, despite the troughs and peaks of this marketplace. By following and adhering to a system, you can effectively eliminate the volatility and benefit from the advantages of having a strong team on your side.
Just like I was an early trailblazer, you can adopt this Blueprint that Rick and I have created to blaze a trail of your own and grow your real estate business. My achievements speak for themselves and serve as perfect reasons for adopting a team philosophy in your real estate business, too.
Whether you’re reading our book from the perspective of starting a team or becoming part of a team, it’s imperative that you act now, because everything in the middle is going to get squeezed. Of course, not everyone wants to be a team leader (there are many hardships with the role, as well as benefits), and that’s why we want to help you find the right direction and the best role for you on a team.
It’s vital that the team fits together, works together, so they will inevitably succeed together!
There’s more longevity to a team than the individual. So consider this: how do you want to grow your career? Do you want to be by yourself – where the tough days are tougher and the good days are solitary? Or do you want to be part of a team, working in unison to make a system work? There’s support on the tough days, and celebrations on the good days with a team. Which situation do you think will have you suffering from burn-out more?
Throughout
the book you will see certain paragraphs or sentences designated with
a key icon
; these are the “KEY 100.” Think of them as the KEYS to your 100
deals – categories you will need to focus on to reach your goal.
At the back of the book, these KEYS are copied or paraphrased for you
to bookmark and refer to daily in order to stay on target towards
your 100 deal goal.
We’ve done 100+ deals. Now you can, too. Grow as an individual, grow as a team, and grow as a business – it doesn’t need to be lonely at the top, or a lonely ride to the top either!
Discover the Blueprint for 100 Deals…
Chapter 1
The Cardinal Rules of Real Estate
Real Estate Cheat Sheet
We’re starting with the basics to give you a lay of the land – whether you’re an experienced REALTOR® or relatively new to the real estate business. Either way, the priority for any agent or broker will be getting to know the critical marketing, communications and technology insights that enable you to sell houses faster and at the highest prices.
Markets go up and markets go down. That’s why it’s important to have a system that you can build for a long career in the business, providing you an abundance of business no matter the market. We rode an extremely hot market in most areas of the country from 2000-2007 and now we have new economic challenges, as we have faced an economic downturn that is the worse we have seen in 80 years.
It
has widely been referred to as this generation’s Great Depression.
Economic fears were embedded in all buyers and sellers, which equates
to a particularly difficult time for real estate agents.
Hence, the great need for a system that works, whatever the condition
of the economy; it’s imperative to your long term success.
Knowing the Market
We, as agents, don’t work on a nation-wide, state or regional basis. We work in our local markets where we service our clients. Although it’s useful to know the real estate economic news on a more global basis, it is most important that you are well versed in your own market. Many markets, even through the recent crisis, did not experience a downturn, while others were devastated with as much as 60% depreciation.
Knowing
your market may mean knowing that advertising in the local paper is a
great bang for your buck, but in another market you could be burning
hundred-dollar bills and need a different marketing avenue. Focus
your business to meet the needs of your specific market. That may
mean switching from representing a majority of buyers to representing
‘short sale’ sellers; it’s always pretty obvious where the
business is, and you need to adapt accordingly.
In down markets, the number of sales per agent quickly drops, until sales increase and/or agents drop out of the market. And, of course, as the number of sales drop so do housing prices due to the additional inventory this creates. Since we are mainly paid upon a percentage of the sales price of the homes that we sell; lower home prices mean lower commissions for agents like us. However, this also necessitates selling more homes in order to maintain our total compensation.
You may decide 50 is your magic comfort number or some may even build a team doing over 200 deals a year. Though, if you set a goal like 100 Deals per year in your mindset, this could be the answer to your quest for a steady revenue stream, where your company can truly flourish into a year-after-year business that you can count on.
More Houses, Less REALTORS®?
As stated previously, the number of real estate agents declines as they are forced out of the business due to a housing slump. Naturally, every market cycle provides a cleansing of weaker real estate agents, making those who remain in the business poised to obtain more sales when the market recovers.
Other agents have had to change their focus, leaving the residential sales business and getting into property management, loan modifications or helping people find rentals. Yet, nothing can squelch the American dream of home ownership. And this growing inventory of homes won’t sell themselves. Is this a time to panic? Or could it be a time for growth?
No
matter the economy, some people buy. Of course, many consumers pull
in their belts during uncertain economic times, although there are
those who aren’t impacted negatively by these downturns. While
some people cut coupons, others buy mansions. Are
they buying from you? That’s
the real question you need to be asking yourself.
Disaster or Opportunity?
For those who see the opportunities in life’s twists and turns, a bad economy can lead to creating wealth – if you know what to do. Back during the Great Depression, there were savvy entrepreneurs and business people who made fortunes, simply by investing in real estate and waiting for boom times.
Those buyers are still out there, as well as those who will always want a home in which to raise their families. That’s just the nature of life. And this is why now is a golden time of opportunity.
Still, in slow markets buyers are scarce and you must act with precision. Therefore, as your competition runs scattered and confused in the face of a changing landscape; you have the chance to make the right moves that will enable you to own your market for years to come – literally investing in your future.
Define Yourself by Success
In the words of Winston Churchill, “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”
This
is an ongoing tide of change, as we can never be 100% certain of
market conditions, which is precisely why we need a system that isn’t
reliant on any particular economic landscape. Thus, throughout the
economic highs and lows of tomorrow, there are ultimately only two
options: Stagnate
or Grow.
It’s a no-brainer that if you are stagnating, you are no longer developing or progressing in your field; whereas, by growing, you are increasing in size and productivity. What makes better sense to you? Brokers can throw up their hands when faced with challenging external forces, or they can take action to maximize results – and profits.
Maximizing Your Business
For
your practice to work, you must attract clients and provide value.
Once again, this is true in any economy, up or down, you need to
consistently grow your business and make it as successful as
possible, in order to survive – and thrive!
You must:
Acquire more clients
Keep in touch with existing clients so they call you when they need real estate services again
When selling to new clients, you must let them know who you are and what value and benefits you can provide to them
To be sure old clients return, you must make them both remember you and associate you with positive feelings through marketing and branding
The secret to achieving these goals and growing your real estate business, no matter the economy, is adjusting your mindset and setting up efficient sustainable systems, which can be executed quickly and conveniently.
If you can focus your mindset on Forward-Thinking then you can move with the changes that are necessary, and which need to be applied to every area of your business – Client Growth, Customer Service, Marketing, etc.
Naturally, this is a challenge. Yet, by using the technological advances that are specifically developed for the real estate vertical market, it’s possible to put in place, gain support from, and maintain a competitive edge, via the systems and processes that will put you far ahead of your competition.
Technology
We have seen that real estate agents spend an inordinate amount of time in administrative tasks that have little to do with selling. However, by putting efficient technology into place, you can drastically increase your productivity and achieve 100 Deals each and every year.
National Association of REALTORS® past President, Thomas M. Stevens says, “The real estate industry today bears little resemblance to the way we did business 10 years ago. It is hard to find another industry that has adopted technology so readily to its customers.”
You
don’t need to be a “Techie” to use technology. If you are not
comfortable using technology and are more of a face time person than
a Facebook person, this does not have to be a barrier for you to
provide tech for your clients that require it. Know this is a blind
spot of yours and seek help. Align yourself with a brokerage that is
tech savvy, has automated systems in place and does this for you, or
perhaps your first hire is a tech savvy team administrator or intern
to help you. Others can do all of this for you and you can list and
sell homes.
Here
are the top 5 benefits of technology under our Blueprint for 100
Deals system:
1. Streamlining
Today, online technology can streamline and in many cases completely perform real estate agents’ necessary but repetitive and thankless tasks, enabling agents to focus on what they do best – dealing with the actual customers and selling homes!
It’s not about working harder to increase your profits – it’s about working smarter. And this is where automation can take you one step ahead (or at least level the playing field and bring you up to speed with your competitors).
For example, emails seeking feedback that are sent automatically to showing agents raise response rates from 20% to at least 70%. When showing agents don’t respond, follow-up emails can be sent automatically.
Moreover, it is critical to capture leads and nurture them. All this can be done automatically while the contact appears personalized.
Other Automation Tips:
A calendaring system that is easy to use and automatically informs sellers of showings via email saves on time and mistakes. Integrate your software whenever possible to avoid re-keying data and to expedite automating tasks. Companies report that providing the integrated software to their workers boosts productivity by 20%.
Look for what we call “one touch” systems and tools. Essentially, it is exactly what it sounds like. You take all the tasks that your job is composed of, and systemize them with both technology and staff into a system that only requires you to touch it one time. Obviously, it’s not possible with every aspect of our industry… but it certainly is our goal!
Many technology tips will follow in the Chapters ahead…
2. Real Time
Thanks to technology, it’s possible for you and sellers to have 24/7 access to critical information. An agent who has their operation set up so that a seller can go to a website at any time and review the latest showings and feedback has a huge edge over their competition – not to mention, they will have access to a wealth of real-time data to help them react quickly and do their jobs better, and sell more homes!
For instance, if you’ve ever had to ask a seller to lower the price of an overpriced home, you know how difficult it can be. It’s hard to get sellers to be realistic, or even get them to repaint that fuchsia living room.
Usually, when you tell them to lower the price or repaint to a neutral color, they look at you skeptically and wonder if they should have hired another agent. That is until you can show them actual quantitative, current, and objective feedback from the prospective buyers who are turned off by the price, smell or color. This allows for real time reactions/solutions to real time issues.
You can also use real time systems for prospects to search listings, obtain home valuations, receive neighborhood data, etc.
3. Flexibility
Being nimble is critical in this environment, and technology is the key to keeping your finger on the pulse of your customers. Not to mention that a business should be able to change directions as fast as a speedboat; this flexibility is crucial as a slow-turning cruise ship will be left behind.
Whether you’re dealing with short sales and foreclosures, or trying to win-out on multiple offers, in every market speed matters. You need to constantly update along with the technology to stay quick, nimble and flexible, to get as many sellers as you can in a fast market, and as many buyers as you can in a slow market.
4. High Profile
Technology can help you to maintain a profile. Through your website, social media websites and applications that presently exist, from blogs to Facebook, to Twitter and mobile solutions you can keep clients in the loop on your achievements, raise your public image on the ‘web’, and remain in their mind’s eye as a leader in your market.
This constantly updating ‘image’ of you and your business leads into the next point, which is…
5. Transparency
Part of moving forward is transparency – Technology that is easy to use and makes the real estate process more transparent impresses buyers, sellers and asset managers.
In a business where previously the norm was zero transparency when we actually held printed MLS listing books that were specifically kept from the public, we’re now expected to be 100% transparent and provide access to all information, from listings to feedback, to escrow fees.
In the present and future, transparency encourages REALTORS® to be completely forthcoming about what showings have happened on a house, not to mention disclosing every marketing aspect that you’ve attempted to help sell the property.
Ultimately, agents have lost a lot of control and privacy, and they’re under more scrutiny than before. But, this aspect is also good for consumer trust, as they know that we’re accountable and they appreciate this open business approach.
Another offshoot of this transparency is websites like Yelp, where customers can review your business and post their comments. It’s a trend of the times that everyone will know, and want to know, how many deals you’ve done, what size, etc. Prospective buyers and sellers will be able to see every transaction you’ve ever completed, and even rate your performance online. You should be ready for that and even start conducting your business with a forward-thinking, transparent style.