Realtor and Agent Efficiency

Just like any business, managing your real estate or mortgage company is a matter of understanding objectives, defining a plan, setting priorities and then executing on your plan.

Here are some suggestions for using technology to follow through on your business opportunities.

1) Learn to use the technology you have and determine what works for you and what does not. Just because you have or buy all of the tech "toys" doesn't mean they are helping you improve your effectiveness. If you get a new PDA or phone with all kinds of management features use it for a month and see if it is helping your income or wasting a lot of your time mastering Tetris.

2) Learn Outlook - even if you're not a huge email user, Microsoft Outlook has a LOT of business management features that can really help you run your business, you should take the time to utilize the features;
a) email - if you're not a heavy email user, learn to be...if you are, use Outlook to build up your contact database and then use the mail merge feature to send custom e-mail notices to your contacts.
b) calendar - time management is extremely important, especially if business is going well. You can loose far more money when things are going well and you miss an apt. than when things are average and you miss something. Use the calendar feature to stay on top of things and now you can usually synchronize it up with most PDA's, some phones and even run it web-based through some hosting companies.
c) contacts - your contacts are dollars, save every single one of them. You're contacts database is probably your most important asset. Use Outlook to build up your contact database and segment it out by right clicking on your "Contacts" icon in the left navigation area...create a sub-category and save your friends, your farm contacts, potential clients, past clients, sold, in-process and other categories as refined as you please. Remember each sub-category can easily become a mail merge and you can send out e-mail, mail or use myAgentPHONE’s VoiceCast system to send a pre recorded message to a group or several groups. Need to make a conference call? myAgentPHONE also makes it very easy for you to set one up. You can patch in your clients with your lenders, escrow and title officers or any other associate that you may need to connect on a single call with just a few clicks of your mouse.

3) Put EVERYTHING in your "system." Whether you use a planner, PDA or your computer (Outlook) just get in the habit of entering everything. If you speak to someone, drive somewhere, set an appointment or learn about a new opportunity...make a note of it in your "system." You never know when you're going to have to reference the information.

4) Take 30-60 min. EVERY DAY to organize your time, thoughts, notes, plans and objectives.

Chances are you probably already do most, if not all of these. If you do, fantastic, you're probably a top producer in your region or company. If you don't, or do most of these...take the time to hit each one and don't forget #4, organization is the easiest to neglect but the most important to your success.

Keep up the good work,

Damien Zamora
CEO/President
myAgentPHONE
dzamora@myagentphone.com

Data is King (continued)

Hello readers,

I have to apologize for taking so long to get part 2 of this blog to you. I've been on some RR for the summer with my kids and refused to use my computer for work. So here it is and I hope you find this information useful.


Last blog I talked about the importance of data and backing up your data, as well as knowing how to format and get access to your data.

So, what do you do with it now that you have it in a format you can use?

Use some standard marketing and advertising tools...

1) Learn to Mail Merge - MS Outlook, Eudora and most other email programs, along with almost all sales contact managers have a feature called "Mail Merge." This tool lets you use your existing contacts in the program, or import new contacts and then create a mailing list, print it out onto letter head, envelops and whatever else you need. Learning to mail merge is extremely important because you get to know how good or bad your data really is and what formatting your data guys (or marketing team) need to do for each major mailing. If you haven't done this before...create a CSV file from your data and then go to your contact management program and use the HELP feature (or hit F1, usually that will work) and search for "mail merge"

2) Email - You can do emails almost daily with your new mail merge tool, I wouldn't recommend it but if you have customers/clients that want to hear about the latest and greatest properties/offers then mail merge and email are a Godsend. You can use your mail merge feature and actually set up your contacts into groups i.e. your farm and send out specific weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual emails to the groups. Holiday greetings are also a great way to keep yourself in front of the contacts in your farm. Make sure your clients/customers are OK with you sending them email; if they asked to be removed from your list, be sure to do it...getting "black listed" can hinder you from contacting hundreds if not thousands of your clients/customers...all because of one email.

3) Direct Mail - Now that you know how to mail merge...start doing it. Using good-old-fashion direct mail (post cards, media kits, newsletters, Birthday/Thank You cards, etc.) is a great way to brand yourself as a Realtor and build your client relationships. You can use inexpensive online sites to get full 4-color mail pieces, or go with a traditional printer which will charge you several hundred dollars more. I'd look into these two sites, they have the best rep for online printing: http://www.vistaprint.com or http://www.overnightprints.com . Now if you’re budget would allow, you should look into a company called Hobbs Herder Advertising. They are one of the top advertising agencies for Realtors. Run by founders Don Hobbs and Greg Herder, this organization really knows customer service and goes far beyond excellent personal advertising and will also teach you how to master marketing overall.

4) Voicecast - use our myAgentPHONE system to send your new mail merge an automated, recorded voice message about your latest properties or about an upcoming event by calling every phone number at once. Imagine how much effort it would take to call 200 people to tell them the same thing. With myAgentPHONE’s Voicecast You can also use the system to call purchased voice-casting lists to introduce yourself to potential clients. The great thing about voice casting is that it's "instant," and can produce tremendous results. Stay tuned for more great ways to use Voicecast.

5) Targeted product offerings - once you master the mail merge you'll realize how easy it is to reach out to your customers/clients or potential customers/clients. You can start to focus on your customers/clients needs and find products/offerings that match your clients specifically and if you have enough contact you can start to create all of the above marketing/advertising material around specific customers. Give them exactly what they want and design products/offerings that fit the exact needs of specific groups you have created. Knowing your customer and then specifically targeting your advertising can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars every month.

6) List sales - I wouldn't recommend this, unless you have a relationship with your clients that permits you to do this but some people go after new customers/clients in order to build a database of contacts and then they turn around and sell those "contact"/leads to associated vendors (movers, storage companies, etc.). If you have a close relationship with your customers, I wouldn't suggest selling their data. For the most part I believe this is a bad idea but it’s common so I figured I would list it.


I'm sure you have your own ways of marketing, networking and branding but some of these can help supplement some of your existing efforts. Especially the voice casting services, if you haven't tried it before, you really need to. We (myAgentPHONE) have seen companies generate thousands of dollars of revenue in a matter of minutes by using the system. It's fast, easy and can easily be done in a professionally and tasteful fashion.

Until next time,


Damien Zamora
CEO/President
myAgentPHONE
dzamora@myagentphone.com

Data Is King Part 1

Hello friends,

This is a two part blog since there's a lot to managing your data and then using it to make a successful business.

If you've been in business for more than about 5 years, I'm sure you've had your share of experience in losing data. Whether it was something small like a customer's contact information or a whole database containing customer, financial or sales information...it's almost a given for anyone who's been around for a while. Having been through several instances of data-loss the one thing I've learned is that there is nothing that can replace a good data management process.

Real Estate, Mortgage and sales businesses especially need to have a way of managing their data BEFORE they start doing business otherwise one day they will end up having a business-ending event that they may or may not be able to recover from. I can almost describe to a T the sinking feeling you get when your IT guy comes in your office first thing in the morning and says "the database crashed" or getting paged at 2am "your site is down." To this day, it's still a dreaded feeling, even though I've done a lot to ensure I don't have the problems of the past. So if you're just getting your business started or have been in business for a while and haven't had any data loss experience (yet) then here are some things to consider now before you do experience the dreaded data loss.

1st - What data are you going to store? It's always smart to save more data than less, try to find a database or software program that lets you manage your whole business in one place. This will centralize all of your data and let you manage everything from one program instead of having to open a program for sales, marketing, advertising or property management. If you don't have the luxury of one central program make sure that ALL of the programs you use are storing as much data as you can input.

2nd - How is the data stored? Make sure that you can ALWAYS export or backup your data. If a program doesn't have an export or backup feature...then move on, it's not worth investing in. Look for things like CSV or Tab Delimited File export. These are data standards and if you decide to move to another program later or if you loose all of your data for some reason, you always have a lowest common denominator to go back to (like the CSV/Tab Delimited File).

3rd - How to save the data? Hopefully the system(s) you are using saves all of your information and does a good job at it. If you find that information isn't there the next day or "disappears" often, then it's time to look for a better program. Besides the program doing it's job, you REALLY need to get in the habit (or have a daily process setup or programmed to do it for you) of a daily backup. Make sure that every day an ADDITIONAL copy of your data is being backed up, preferably NOT in the same place as your live data. Try to save on a separate hard drive, DVD, CD-ROM, remote drive, USB drive or whatever you have access to, just DON'T save to the same hard drive as your primary data. Do it daily and check it weekly to make sure it's usable and save yourself the dread of the IT guy.

4th - Be ridiculous about your data. This is your business, don't just save your data before you close the program and don't just save a backup...be ridiculous about it and take a backup home with you on CD or in a USB Hard Drive at least once a week. Yea, it's not necessary but you'll find it lets you sleep easy at night.

Finally, know what kind of data you have at any moment and know how it can be used. I'm not an IT guy, and don't want to be but I know what data I have and how I can get it and use it at any moment because you NEVER know when or how you will need your information. We sign up new customers for myAgentPHONE every day and some of these people don't realize that their WHOLE customer or FARM list can be called with a professional and classy dialer product called Voicecast in just a matter of minutes but if and only if they have data in a usable format.
You'll find that your business is more nimble and your ability to make money is far greater when you know your data. Your data may be contact info for potential clients in your FARM or vendors such as lenders. Or may just be notes on past and future clients. Whatever your data is for you remember, DATA IS KING! Don’t put yourself or keep yourself in a position to lose it!

Next week I'm going to continue the data blog and discuss how you can use your data to make money without selling your customer data. Because data is all about being more efficient in your sales, marketing, advertising, promotions and customer retention.

Until next time,

Damien Zamora
CEO/President
myAgentPHONE
dzamora@myagentphone.com