2.
Where is the Technology in Commercial
Brokerage? There
is so much great technology being
utilized nowadays to generate solid new
business for real estate agents. What
amazes me, though, is that most all of
this technology is being put into play
on the residential side of the business
with very little of it making its way
into the commercial side of the
business.
In
a recent discussion I had with a
nationally known commercial real estate
technology expert, we both agreed that
the commercial real estate brokerage
business is about 5-7 years behind the
residential side of the business in
employing new technology at the agent
level. As a result of this, commercial
agents are working so much harder than
they need to be.
On
the residential side of the business
agents are utilizing their own agent Web
sites to generate millions of dollars of
additional sales each and every year for
themselves. Some of the top level
residential agents even generate tens of
millions of dollars in additional sales
each year through their own personal Web
sites.
On
the commercial side of the business it
is almost non-existent to find an agent
who has his or her own personal Web
site. At most, and still not very often,
an agent might have their own individual
Web page somewhere inside of the Web
site of the company that they work for.
Residential
agents utilize E-mail autoresponders to
follow-up with their clients and
prospects. When a prospect visits an
agent's Web site and enters their name
and E-mail information, a series of
custom messages are then sent over time
to the prospect mail-merged with a
salutation to the prospect personally by
name. This then builds credibility and a
relationship with each prospect to help
ensure that the prospect selects the
agent as the real estate expert they
will do business with. Other
autoresponder campaigns are also
utilized by residential agents to
follow-up with potential buyers,
sellers, past clients, and, in some
cases, almost anyone who lives in the
territory that they serve. This really
puts an agent's prospecting and
follow-up communications on auto pilot.
On
the commercial side of the business, I
do not know of any one agent who
utilizes autoresponders in their real
estate brokerage business.
Continuing
on, a good number of residential agents
send E-mail newsletters to their clients
and prospects regularly. They recognize
both the ease and incredible cost
savings in doing this when compared to
utilizing traditional mail. They also
recognize that the agent who dominates
their territory first with a good E-mail
newsletter will be shutting-out their
competitors as other agents who try to
follow this approach will have much
greater difficulty gathering the E-mail
addresses of the people in their
territory. No one wants to receive two,
three, or four E-mail newsletters
discussing what's happening with real
estate in their area.
The
only commercial agents I know of who
send out regular E-mail newsletters to
their territory are the ones I've
coached and personally taught how to do
this.
Even
when it comes to a technology as simple
as mailing to one's prospects on a
regular basis, residential agents
traditionally do this day-in and
day-out. Commercial agents, on the other
hand, rarely mail to their prospects at
all. Any commercial agent who implements
a regular mailing campaign, similar to
what they receive in the mail at home
from residential agents, will gain an
unbelievable increase in business in
their territory in a very short period
of time. There is virtually no
competition in this arena for the
commercial agent who decides to send out
quality mailers to his or her territory
once or twice a month. You simply can't
prospect thousands of people every
single month by phone or in person, but
you certainly can reach them effectively
and build your image as an agent with
them every month through the mail.
And
finally, when it comes to education and
training, both residential real estate
companies and their agents have been
utilizing telephone seminars for many
years. The ability to have people
calling in from all over the world,
listening to one or more real estate
experts talk about what it is that has
them be so successful, is a phenomenal
training opportunity. With today's
vanishing training budgets it is also
tremendously cost effective, too.
Although I'm currently talking with one
major commercial real estate company and
one national network about hosting a
series of telephone seminars for all of
their agents, I know of no commercial
real estate company that has ever
utilized this technology to date for
their own training.
With
all of this great technology available
it's time for both the commercial
brokerage companies and their agents to
embrace the technology and implement it
into their own real estate businesses.
The ones who do so now will easily find
themselves leaving their competitors way
behind them.
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