Paperless Real Estate: Meeting with a Buyer

Gone are the days in real estate when every meeting required a folder full of paperwork! With the ViMO app from Teranet, you can do everything from initial client organization, budget creation, and populating and signing electronic forms, all from your iPad. And, not only is “paperwork” a breeze, but so is research; obtaining neighbourhood demographics information and researching homes on the spot make finding your client the perfect home easy. Stay competitive and paperless with the ViMO app from Teranet!

Click here to check out this cool infographic!

ViMO is a Real Estate App and Social Network All-in-One

So I don’t think anyone can deny that social media has forever changed the way we sell, network and communicate. Sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn provide us with an almost limitless platform to connect and engage with prospects, clients and colleagues. The social media boom has led to so many options that it can be difficult to determine which is worth spending your time on. This is extra difficult because almost all social platforms can actually lead to new business. 

Well, there is a new social media platform available through your iPad which serves as not only a social network but also offers CMS capability and can be used to:

·        Promote/market listings

·        Connect and market to prospects, clients and colleagues

·        Research properties – e.g. property information, sales history, comparable sales, neighbourhood demographics, sign electronic forms and more…

Wondering what this awesome new app is?

ViMO (Virtual Mobile Office)

This app is offered through Teranet and is the must-have real estate app for 2014. For more information about how you can get ViMO please visit www.myvimo.ca or contact sales at 1 855 999 8466.

Going Paperless: ViMO’s Guide to Paperless Real Estate

With the amazing tech changes over the past few years, paperless real estate has become a reality – and we could not be more excited! Check out this guide to see just how much you can do by leveraging technology to market new listings, research properties and prepare for client meetings. With ViMO, you can develop a client profile that helps you track client wants/needs, and helps you to find the house that best meets those wants/needs: demographic information, comparables, property images, etc. And once that dream house is found, electronic signing makes the entire process a breeze. Paperless real estate is the wave of the future – are you ready? Visit www.myvimo.ca for more details.

http://myvimo.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/seller-flow.pdf

Leveraging a Mobile App with CMS functionality to Say Happy Birthday Goes a Really Long Way!

Real estate is a competitive industry. For this reason conventional marketing like print, television and radio can be very expensive, causing many real estate sales professionals to embrace other methods to market their listings. Internet, pay-per-click advertising, social media, mobile apps, promoting listings through real estate applications and more…  

Any way you slice it, the cost of acquisition in real estate can get pricy, so real estate sales professionals benefit from looking at ways to differentiate themselves and create a channel to stay connected to leads that are acquired through marketing. This helps to ensure that:

 

·        Leads you acquired through marketing can continue to be marketed to so that when they are ready they will know who to call.

·        Those who have dealt with you will remember you in the future when the time comes to list their home for sale or buy another.

Something as simple as remembering to say happy birthday goes a long way and could mean the difference between a prospect thinking that you care about them or thinking that you don’t.

Leveraging a really great mobile app with CMS functionality makes it a snap to not only organize leads and customers but also ensure that they are continually marketed to.

There is so much available these days that it is really important, as a real estate sales professional, to choose technology that can do the most. Why? Because if you break apart the different aspects of your job and the apps available, and then select different apps for each thing, you will end up with a ton of apps on your device, with information segregated and apps that may not integrate with one another.

It is best to choose 2-3 apps that do the most.

For example, look for an app that:

·        Is not generic but offers real estate specific functionality such as the ability to perform tasks essential to your job.

·        Enables you to market your listings, connect to customers and colleagues, market to contacts and offers CMS capabilities, etc…

·        Is offered by a large and reliable company. This will increase the chances that the app will be improved moving forward, will possess reliable data, will be easier to use and could possibly be integrated with other tools in the future.

Leveraging a mobile app with CMS functionality is one way to provide better service and also do more business. Remembering the small stuff like birthdays really does go a long way to building life-long relationships with your clients and prospects. 

For more information about mobile apps for real estate please visit www.myvimo.ca.

Service, Service, Service – The Key to Building Loyalty

Service, service, service in real estate is one of the keys to longevity, don’t you agree? We do. The fact is, the more you service your customers, the better the customer experience they will have when dealing with you, and the more likely they will be to deal with you again and become a promoter (referring their friends and family to you).

These benefits come from going out of your way, every time, with every customer. Offering   the best service, turning your customers into promoters and building loyalty; that at the end, will result in an overall lower cost of acquisition because your happy customers are out there selling for you.

Great service involves:

·        Knowledge and professionalism

·        Communication – both speaking, and more importantly, listening

·        Technology – using cutting edge tools to expedite the service you provide, more efficiently

·        Speed – getting the job done quickly

·        Measurement – taking the steps to truly understand the service levels you are offering and making a commitment to constantly make them better

Many companies track and measure their customer loyalty using a Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS can be derived by asking your customers a simple question: on a scale of 1-10, how likely would they be to recommend your services to someone else? 1-6 are your detractors, 7s and 8s are passive, and 9s and 10s are your promoters.

The numbers are clear:

·        Promoters account for 80% of referral business – MIT Sloan Management Review – Micro Economics of Customer Relationships

·        Detractors account for 80% of negative word of mouth – MIT Sloan Management Review – Micro Economics of Customer Relationships

·        On average, a 12 point increase in NPS resulted in the doubling of a company’s growth – Bain and Company

This is an inexpensive model that you, as a real estate sales professional, can adopt to measure your own individual performance. If you gather your clients’ email addresses you can use economical online tools such as Survey Monkey to learn your personal NPS. Also, this sets the stage for you to discover the things that your customers enjoyed about their experience with you and also uncover areas that you can improve in. It is valuable to poll both those customers whose homes you sold or who purchased another through your services, as well as those who were unable to achieve what they wanted.

 

Measuring how your customers felt about their experiences with you is one of the many ways to provide even better service. Another thing that you can do to service, service, service your clients is to look for ways to make the service you provide currently even better.

When looking at ways to make your service that much better, one of the easiest ways to do this is to leverage the tools and technology available to you and also to learn more about new tools and technology available to real estate sales professionals in Ontario. There is essentially an app for every function you can imagine these days. Social media is also a great way to listen in and learn more about what your customers value in a real estate sales professional. The same apps and social tools that you can use to make your services that much better can also be used to market yourself.

For more information about tools that you can use to service, service, service your clients and do more, faster, please check out www.myvimo.ca.

Real Estate Game for Real Estate Sales Professionals – 4 Pics, Same Significance

Time for some more fun! As you may know, we have been running some contests lately and one relates to our games. Similar to 4 pics one word – these 4 pics have the same significance. Post the correct answer to:

·        Facebook: www.facebook.com/myvimo

·        Twitter: www.twitter.com/myvimo

·        LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/vimo---virtual-mobile-office

·        Google+: https://plus.google.com/+MyvimoCa

Those who post correct answers will be entered to win a prize!

 

 

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _     S _ _ _ _

Hint: you have to research this on every listing!

If you would like more information about how you can access comparable sales when on the go, please visit www.myvimo.ca for more information about our new app for real estate sales professionals.

Real Estate Sales Professional Branding - How to Establish the Brand that is YOU!

You are more than your brokerage brand. How do you want to be perceived by the public? Who are your buyer personas of today and tomorrow and is your brand in line with these personas?

The real estate sales profession in itself has a brand. You are a regulated professional that can be trusted to assist the public in what is for most the biggest purchase of their life. If you work for a brokerage you also benefit from their branding and people will identify with this when meeting you. The types of communities the brokerage serves, the types of property they specialize in, their brand identity should be easily identifiable, but it largely depends on the investment that your brokerage has made in their own branding.

Then there is the brand that is you? The ‘Me Inc.’ brand as was wittingly referred to in a recent Fast Company article http://www.fastcompany.com/28905/brand-called-you on the topic.

The brand that is you is important and could make or break your success in real estate. What is unique about you? What makes you competitive? Why should a prospect deal with you over someone else? Sure, you may know who you are: professional, honest, hardworking – but how do you show everyone else this?

When thinking about developing the brand that is you and breathing your brand into all of your marketing communications and daily endeavours, you may first want to think about who your target is. Many real estate sales professionals go after the masses – but honing in on target markets and ensuring that your brand is consistent with those you are targeting will make you much more successful.

When thinking about the brand that is you and narrowing down which types of customers present the most opportunity to you, consider using a method widely published by HubSpot which is to develop your buyer personas. This is an exercise where you can eventually categorize your prospects into personas, segment them and then determine what aspects of the brand that is you will speak to your buyer personas.

A good starting point to develop buyer personas, would be looking at your business (clients) from the previous year. Make a column for each persona and then ask yourself:

1.      What is their demographic information?

2.      What is their job and level of seniority?

3.      What does a day in their life look like?

4.      What are their pain points?

5.      What problem do you help them to solve?

6.      What do they value most? What are their goals?

7.      Where do they go for information?

8.      What customer experience are they looking for when seeking out your products or services?

9.      What are their most common objections to your product or service?

The answers to these questions will help you to craft your messaging to appeal to the segments of the market that you want to penetrate most. Just like the brand that is you, everything from your website to your marketing materials to the way you serve clients should speak to your targeted buyer personas. The two are quite intertwined - nailing down your branding and your buyer personas is crucial.

Just remember that the brand that is you is not just the logo on your business card - it is the type of properties you specialize in, the area you serve, your social presence. It is your online presence, it is the car you drive, the clothes you wear, who is in your network, where you like to have lunch, the technology you use and more. The brand that is you requires thought because it is how you will be reputed and largely determines how you are perceived by the public.

For more information about a new mobile app for real estate sales professionals that can help you get more brand exposure please visit www.myvimo.ca.