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2. Consider Working with Your Prospects on the Fly

There's a revolution in progress in our industry. It began on the residential side of the business a few years ago, and it's now beginning to find it's way into the commercial side of the business as well. I'm talking about the revolution of using transaction platform software for your real estate sales transactions.

Your time as a real estate agent is extremely valuable. And your time is best spent both on the telephone and in face-to-face situations with clients and prospects negotiating transactions and developing new business. But once you've successfully negotiated a sale, getting caught up in the follow-up of closing the transaction can really cut into the time you could be utilizing instead to successfully develop new business. That's where transaction platform software comes in.

Transaction platform software allows you to do all the follow-up on your sales transactions through a Web-based software program. On the residential side of the business, Settlement Room (www.settlementroom.com) is generally looked upon as the leader in this technology. What this technology allows you to do is have all of the parties to a transaction login to the Web site, view all the relevant documentation, know what the next step is they need to complete to move the transaction forward, and get notified by E-mail whenever progress has been made on the transaction.

For example, on any given sale transaction you would have a buyer and seller along with their respective agents logging into the system for transaction follow-up. In addition, you might have an escrow company, a lender, a title insurance company, and the attorneys for both parties logging into the system also. Each party would be notified by the system about what they need to do on their end to move the transaction forward to the next level. E-mail messages could also be sent along with "CC" copies to any parties involved in the transaction, and the system itself would keep records of all communications between the parties throughout the transaction, too.

As an agent, this represents a huge improvement in your life. You now have more free time as the parties to the transaction know where to go to find out the status of the transaction at any moment in time. They also know what they need to do at each moment throughout the transaction, too. This saves you a ton of phone calls from people continually asking you what's going on and what needs to be done. And this translates into more time for you to develop new business, and more time for you to generate more income for yourself.

On the commercial side of the business, this type of program has been slow in making its way into the industry. But there are now three companies that will be launching their own versions of this technology for commercial agents over the next several months. These companies are RE3W, Peracon, and MindMatrix. Two of these three companies already offer online transaction-related services that are right now being utilized by commercial real estate agents.

RE3W is launching a program that will allow its members access to information on over 85 million properties in the USA. They are also gearing their program directly towards transaction management for the commercial real estate side of the industry. For more information you can visit:

http://www.RE3W.com 

I recommend that you take a look at both of the videos available to you when you visit their Web site, including their product demo. Also, if you enter the code RE3WJIM1 in the "Promotional Code" area, you'll receive a 30% discount when you subscribe to their service after it's available in the next 30-60 days. The people behind this venture include GMAC Commercial Mortgage, Grubb & Ellis, and The First American Corporation.

Another of these three companies, Peracon, is the leading provider of global transaction management solutions for investment real estate, connecting transaction processes and streamlining the flow of information among participants. I've actually taken an online test drive of their product and find it to be very impressive. More than 2,500 projects totaling over $34 billion have already been completed utilizing their platform. For more information you can visit their Web site at:

http://www.Peracon.com 

To experience a demo of the Peracon product click on the red "Try It" button at the top of the screen on their home page. If you mention my name, "Jim Gillespie" in the "Questions or Comments?" field on the next Web page, you'll receive a 50% discount on the first property you place on their system.

The third company, MindMatrix, has a product called Vision 3.0 that unifies all marketing activities required to sell and lease commercial real estate from one platform. The product offers tools to update and organize property information, it creates e-marketing campaigns to track prospect interest, creates high impact marketing materials/websites, generates property activity reports for management, creates a property listing section, generates leads, updates information to third party listing services, and integrates with other contact relationship management packages. I've also taken a test drive of this product and I recommend that you do, too. You can visit their Web site at:

http://www.MindMatrix.net 

They also offer a version of this same product for the residential real estate industry.

If you contact their Director of Sales, Mike Colby, and mention my name, you can place one of your listings on their system for free for six months. You can contact Mike at (412) 683-0222 ext. 1101, or you can E-mail him at mike.colby@mindmatrix.net.

There are a lot of great changes going on in our industry and transaction platform software is definitely one of them. Take the time to familiarize yourself with the available products in this arena, because they will save you a ton of time and make you much more money in your real estate brokerage business when you utilize them.

Click here for live audio interviews with top-producing real estate agents. These are interviews with industry experts who show you exactly what they do to continually be top producers.

2. Consider Working with Your Prospects on the Fly

As a real estate agent you probably already know how important your image is when enrolling your prospects in working with you exclusively. The sum total of everything you present to your prospects will have them decide to hire you, or one of your competitors instead.

One of the areas where you can make a great impression on your prospects is when they are located in a different city than you. If someone has a property they're going to sell in your area, and if they live in a different city, you may want to consider flying to meet them face-to-face to discuss listing the property with them.

Depending on the distance involved, your airfare will cost maybe $100.00-$400.00, and your hotel room for one night will cost you somewhere between $79.00 and $250.00. And since this is a business expense, it's all deductible for you, too.

So for maybe around $500.00, you now have an opportunity to meet face-to-face with the owners of the property you want to list, and impress them with your willingness to do what it takes to meet with them personally. And if you like the city you'll be traveling to, you may even want to stay an extra day or two and make a mini-vacation out of it. (That part of your trip, however, will not be deductible!)

When you fly to meet people whose property you'd like to list, this can be very impressive to them as owners. They'll really appreciate the fact that you're willing to invest your time and your money to travel and meet with them personally. And most of the time you'll completely leave your competition behind when you do this, too. This is because very few of your competitors would ever consider doing this themselves.

If you're not in the running as a candidate to obtain the listing, the owners will often let you know this by discouraging you from flying out to meet with them. But just to be safe, you'll want to establish with the owners in advance that you're someone they're interested in listing their property with before you make the trip. And if you make the trip and your competitors don't, you have a great opportunity to be chosen as the listing agent for the property. This of course assumes that you make a good impression on the owners during your face-to-face meeting with them.

Being successful in real estate sales and leasing means presenting an image of yourself that convinces people you're the best choice they could ever make in a real estate agent. When you fly out to meet people personally to discuss listing their property, you've just taken a huge step towards convincing them that you're exactly the kind of agent they want to be doing business with.

Click here if you'd like more information on my one-on-one real estate coaching program. One-on-one coaching is available for both real estate agents and company management.

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