The Effortless Showing – Easy as 1-2-3

So we see that tablets have made their way into everything – offices, schools, law enforcement… You can’t even go through a fast food drive-thru without seeing employees completely rigged up with technology – walking with their iPads while processing orders.

It should be no surprise that tablets have also found their way into many real estate sales professionals’ workflows as well. How does a client’s perception of you fare when you are attending showings with paper copies of your feature sheets whereas your competition is dazzling customers with the latest technology and information at their fingertips? Probably not so well.

You have to re-tool and ensure that you are competitive and able to provide similar experiences to those who have dealt with a real estate sales professional who is more technologically connected. This brings us to the effortless showing.

The showing of yesterday (and sometimes even today) generally involves a real estate sales professional taking a client through a home with feature sheets in hand.

The effortless showing of tomorrow (and for the most competitive, today) involves walking through a property with your tablet in hand, instantly answering the client’s questions about the property – whether they want to know about the neighbourhood, where the local schools are, or specifics about the property like the sales history and comps in the area.

The effortless showing involves taking tons of photos and leveraging apps like Penultimate to drop in photos and comment on your customer’s likes and dislikes.

The effortless showing should cut down on call-backs and questions to be answered later, post research. More should occur at the showing. All customer questions should be answered at the effortless showing - not to mention if the client wants to make an offer at the effortless showing. This can absolutely happen!

The client should not have to wait for you to go to your office to prepare the offer of purchase and sale. You should be able to do so instantly. Not because you pre-prepared a paper offer, but because you have leveraged electronic signing to be able to prepare and for your client to sign the offer right on the spot, should your client want to.

The effortless showing should be just that, effortless, for both you and the client. Simply using a tablet will not lead to the effortless showing. You must investigate different mobile apps and practice on them or you could risk ending up in front of your client looking like you don’t know how to use your iPad. If you are still feeling challenged using your iPad there are many great training programs available to help you get up to speed, so make use of them!

For more about how to make the effortless showing a reality, please visit www.myvimo.ca today. 

Social Media Marketing – Here to Stay… Get Used to It!!!

Like any other profession, real estate sales professionals can be grouped according to the law of diffusion of innovation: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and then the people completely behind the times. The law of diffusion of innovation is used by businesses to identify their sweet spot in the marketplace – we are simply stealing the group names as it relates to use of technology and digital media.

Social media marketing is here to stay! There are no two ways about it. In your personal life, if you choose to wait to embrace new technology and communication mediums, it is far less detrimental to you than if you choose this approach in your professional life.

Maclean’s recently released this great study on Canadians’ use of social media: http://www.webfuel.ca/canadian-social-media-statistics-2013/.  In it, Canadians are identified as the early adopters of the internet and according to Socialnomics, 40% of the population had a Twitter or Facebook account by 2010 – and that was 4 years ago!! Your customers use social media!!   

Whether you were the first person you know with a LinkedIn account, making you an innovator, or you are someone who is still really struggling with the concept of social media, you should be taking advantage and learning how social media can be leveraged to be profitable.

When people think of social media they often think of the big six: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube and Pinterest – but in many industries, especially real estate, there are other social platforms that real estate sales professionals are using to market. This has been accelerated by what we call social apps, which are apps that offer a social component. Apps like Instagram, WhatsApp and Viber have made it almost free to communicate, even at long distances, and makes sharing images and other information easy.

Real estate specific apps like ViMO offer a social component. How? At any time you are able to create a profile and connect and create profiles for clients, colleagues, suppliers and prospects, to electronically engage, communicate and transmit documents and other information back and forth. Because ViMO is specific to real estate, it is a highly targeted social network when used to its full potential.

Is social media just a sales vehicle? No. Social media is an everything vehicle, with nitro in the engine. Social media caters to every stage in the marketing process, from attracting, to closing, to delighting your customers.

Now – if you are behind the ball jumping on the social bandwagon, don’t feel overwhelmed - you can make the leap. 

Not getting social will have devastating consequences to your business in the long run because you simply will find it increasingly challenging to remain competitive – those who are active on social media. If you want to get your feet wet, you don’t have to use every single social presence all at once. You can start with one and begin by using is personally. Once you gain a level of comfort you can begin to explore the same site for business pages, focusing there on establishing a presence first.

Don’t fall farther behind, or assume that social media for business is just a fad. Make the most of every marketing opportunity available to you. For more information visit www.myvimo.ca today

Game Time – New Year’s Resolutions

This New Year’s 4 pics game deals with a New Year solution that will lead to a cleaner office and more organization. This word is 9 characters in length.

Let us know what you think that answer is.

When you are ready to take advantage of everything ViMO has to offer, visit us online at www.myvimo.ca. 

Paperless Real Estate Professional Series – Representing a Buyer Digitally

Next in our Paperless Real Estate Professional Series we are going to discuss how technology can be leveraged when representing a buyer and seller in a real estate transaction – without any paper! We will also look at how light CRM solutions can enable you to manage your relationships, paper free!

Technology has afforded real estate sales professionals the ability to do that much more electronically, which leads to increased agility and speed. And that equals more business!

This blog will take you through how you can leverage the most current technology to navigate the entire buyer process, reducing paper and being more efficient. This relies on you having access to the ViMO mobile app.

Step one is making sure that you have imported your iPad contacts and made sure you have created profiles for your clients, colleagues and other important contacts. Now you are set to go!

Your app alerts you when a client is having a birthday and then sends out a digital birthday greeting. Your client messages you thanking you and then indicates that they are in the market to buy a second home. You message the client back, inquiring about budget, desired location and home features.

Now you are positioned to research properties to present which you can do right on your tablet from within the app. You message your client to meet. You have some really great properties to show.

You visit the client’s home, pull out your tablet to first get the Buyer Representation Agreement out of the way. Fortunately your client is already in your contacts so you are able to generate the Buyer Representation Agreement in moments. Now your client can simply sign electronically on your tablet with the swipe of a finger.

Now that that is out of the way, it is show time. You show your clients the properties of interest and property reports highlighting the different neighbourhoods and you decide to go out on the road to see some of them. Two of them are listed by colleagues in your contact list – you message them to set up a showing.

On your way to the first property you see a property with a FSBO sign in front that your client just loves. You stand in front of the home, take a photo on your tablet and in an instant a report is generated on the property, thereby allowing you to provide your client with everything they need to know. You and your client decide to mark that property for later.

You manage to connect with one of the colleagues you messaged on ViMO and set up the showing. What do you know - the client falls in love with the house, but now they want to know the details – neighbourhood information, how far away the schools are, where is transportation? No problem! You break out your tablet and generate some instant demographics data. Sold! Your client wants to make an offer.

Now you can sit down with your client, prepare their offer on your tablet, have them sign electronically and then transmit electronically to the other side to consider.

What happens once the deal closes? Well let’s look at how the story began – now your client will remain a contact with a profile in ViMO for you to continue to market to electronically for future opportunities and even referrals.

Does this seem like the ideal paperless buyer process? You tell us!

ViMO makes the entire buying process easy. For more about going paperless with ViMO, please visit myvimo.ca.