Friday, December 20, 2024

business tools

    Artificial intelligence, or AI, has been the hot topic of news coverage lately. It seems like we can’t get away from it.

    While some experts provide scary future scenarios, others are hailing AI as akin to a wonder drug.

    Data analysis and insights 

    The truth is, right now, AI can provide significant benefits to real estate agents. Here are some ways in which it can enhance your work.

    AI can analyze vast amounts of real estate data, including property listings, sales data, market trends, and demographics. 

    This helps agents make informed decisions, such as determining the right pricing strategy, identifying profitable investment opportunities, and understanding market demand.

    Lead generation and management 

    AI-powered tools can automate lead generation by analyzing online user behavior, social media data, and other sources to identify potential buyers and sellers. 

    AI can also assist in lead management by categorizing and prioritizing leads based on their likelihood of conversion, allowing agents to focus their efforts on the most promising leads.

    Property recommendations

    AI algorithms can analyze buyers’ preferences, budgets, and other factors to provide personalized property recommendations. This saves time for real estate agents by narrowing down the options and presenting clients with properties that best match their requirements.

    Virtual property tours

    AI technologies like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) enable brilliant immersive virtual property tours. Real estate agents can provide clients with more realistic virtual walkthroughs of properties, allowing them to explore and evaluate properties remotely. This saves time for both agents and clients by minimizing unnecessary in-person tours.

    Natural language processing and chatbots

    AI-powered chatbots can handle basic customer inquiries, provide property information, and schedule appointments. Natural language processing enables these chatbots to understand and respond to user queries effectively. 

    This automation will free up a lot of time, allowing you to focus on more complex tasks and personal interactions.

    Market predictions 

    Here’s where it gets super exciting.

    AI algorithms can analyze historical data and market trends to predict future real estate market conditions. Real estate agents can leverage these insights to anticipate changes, make proactive decisions, and develop effective marketing strategies.

    AI is poised to be a valuable tool to augment the real estate agent’s skills and efficiency, ultimately enhancing the overall client experience.


    PLUS: When you have time…below are some marketing tools to help support your success.

    1. Put Your Real Estate Business a Step Above with Your Own Branded Magazine

    Homes & Life Magazine is a customizable magazine with rich, full-color content and a sharp, professional aesthetic. It includes compelling, direct response-driven articles written by real estate industry experts and engaging lifestyle content. Send out Homes & Life Magazine in Just Minutes – No Minimums Required. Or we’ll ship it to you. Homes & Life Magazine is the ultimate “Coffee Table Lingerer”! …and it costs less than sending a greeting card!Click Here

    2. The Free 6-Month Done-For-You Strategic Marketing Plan

    The Real Estate Marketing Planner is a powerful 6-Month Guide that strategically defines what marketing to do and when. Four key market segments include niche Markets, geographic farming, sphere of influence, and past clients. – Click Here

    3. The Free Interactive 6-Month Real Estate Business Review

    The Free Interactive 6-Month Real Estate Business Review allows you to enter your business goals for the remainder of the year and get a breakdown of how many prospects, listings, closing, and so on are needed to reach your goals.   – Click Here

    4. The Become a Listing Legend Free eBook 

    This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Become-A-Listing-Legend-3D-Book-White-274x300.jpg

    Ready to take a vertical leap in your real estate career? If you’re looking for inspiration…and the tools and methods to dominate a market and go to the top in real estate…you’ll find them in this free book. – Click Here


      Summer and books – why reading has its own season is a mystery. Perhaps it’s because we supposedly have more leisure time in the summer. You know, lounging by the pool, sunning ourselves on golden sands next to the sea, or lazing away the day in a hammock at home.

      We know that although real estate agents love to keep up with the latest book trends, and crave ways to improve their work-life balance and lead generation, they don’t have a lot of time to devote to reading longer works.

      So, we’ve narrowed down our choices to books that won’t take you months to finish reading but offer tons of value in as few pages as possible. 

      “The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick),” Seth Godin

       “Winners never quit,” right? In “The Dip,” Godin makes the claim that it’s a “spectacularly bad piece of advice.”

      “Never quit wetting your bed?” he asks. Never quit “… that job you had at Burger King in high school?”

      His advice is to “… never quit something with long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.”


      Content Card postcards, shown above, are on sale 10% off right now. Use promo code: SPHERESALE (offer expires 5.28.22). Click Here.


      For many agents, the stress of the moment may be that there’s no commission check on the horizon, or converting leads seems impossible.

      Don’t quit until you consider Godin’s “3 questions to answer before quitting.” 

      “The Dip” isn’t one of Godin’s more recent offerings, but we think it’s one of his best. At only 96 pages, it’s a quick summer read.

      Find it at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

      “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity,” David Allen

      Another oldie but goodie, New York Times best-selling author David Allen shows the reader how to become better organized and, thus, more productive.

      A few of the reviews claim that Allen seems to be stuck in the past with some of his tips—advocating the use of actual file folders rather than using the cloud or your hard drive. Overall, however, he garners 4.5 out of 5 stars at Amazon.com with glowing reviews.

      Learn how to get things done in 352 pages. Heck, you can read this over at your Starbucks tomorrow morning.

      Find Allen’s book at BarnesandNoble.com and Amazon.com.

      “Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time,” Brian Tracy

      For me, it was picking up the phone to make that first cold call of the day. For you, it may be something else, but agents seem to all have one thing they need to do that they just don’t like doing.

      Brian Tracy has the cure with 21 strategies to get around procrastination. “Read the book, eat your frog by 10:00 a.m., and then feel free to find a restaurant that serves cocktails at lunch,” sums up Laura Vanderkam at FastCompany.com.

      Tracy teaches us how to avoid common distractions, especially prevalent when so many agents are working from home.

      All that, in 144 pages. 

      By the way, get the 3rd edition (published in April 2017) because it contains two chapters that the previous editions don’t offer.

      Buy Tracy’s book at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.


      PLUS: When you have time…below are some marketing tools to help support your success.

      1. Put Your Real Estate Business a Step Above with Your Own Branded Magazine

      Homes & Life Magazine is a customizable magazine, with rich, full-color content, and a sharp, professional esthetic. It includes compelling, direct response-driven articles written by real estate industry experts, combined with engaging lifestyle content. Send out Homes & Life Magazine in Just Minutes – No Minimums Required. Or we’ll ship it to you.

      Homes & Life Magazine is the ultimate “Coffee Table Lingerer”! …and, it costs less than sending a greeting card!Click Here


      2. The Free 12 Month Done-For-You Strategic Marketing Plan

      The Real Estate Marketing Planner is a powerful 12-Month-Guide that strategically defines what marketing to do when. Four key market segments are included, niche Markets, geographic farming, sphere of influence, and past clients. – Click Here

      3. The BusinessBase, SOI building system

      The most effective thing you can do to build a real estate business is to become more visible, more likable, and remembered more often. The BusinessBASE™ not only checks all of these boxes, but it is a business building machine. In two easy steps, you can begin to build a robust sphere of influence that will provide you a lifetime of repeat business and referrals. – Click Here

      4. The Free Interactive Real Estate Business Plan

      The Free Interactive Real Estate Business Plan allows you to enter your business goals for this year and get a breakdown of how many prospects, listings, closing, and so on are needed to reach your goals.  – Click Here

      5. The Become a Listing Legend Free eBook 

      This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Become-A-Listing-Legend-3D-Book-White-274x300.jpg

      Ready to take a vertical leap in your real estate career? If you’re looking for inspiration…and the tools and methods to dominate a market and go to the top in real estate…you’ll find them in this free book. – Click Here

      6. The Take a Listing Today Podcast

      Watch the ProspectsPLUS!, Take a Listing Today Podcast for actionable content to help you get more listings. – Click Here


        Last year at this time, Americans were just getting to know COVID-19. In fact, the World Health Organization declared the disease a pandemic on March 11, 2020.

        A week later, the Las Vegas Strip shut down, some businesses became more “essential” than others and #StayHome became our way of life.

        The giant question for real estate agents was about how they would perform the many in-person exchanges required in a typical transaction?

        From listing presentations to open houses, inspections, appraisals and showings to closing, just about evert aspect of the real estate business was upended. The real estate industry responded swiftly, showing amazing resiliency.

        Your business became virtual, with nary a hiccup.

        If you’re a new agent, the list of must-have tools is far different than it was in the past. Seasoned agents now seek guidance online about items once considered “luxury.”

        We’ve queried agents across the country to determine which listing agent tech tools are a must as we enter the second year of the pandemic. Today, we share with you the most popular responses.

        Virtual Marketing Series, Click Here
        1. Video conferencing software

        The social distancing mandate put the kibosh on the traditional listing presentation. Today, the dining room table has pretty much met the fate of the closing table.

        Both have been replaced, however. While you may not be sitting across the dining room table with a potential listing client, you can achieve the same end result via video conferencing software for real estate agents.

        Who says there’s no such thing as an overnight sensation? Not the folks at Zoom, that’s for sure. Undeniably the most popular video conferencing software among the real estate agents we spoke with, Zoom offers video tutorials, live training and webinars to bring you up to speed.

        Prices range from free to $19.99 per host, per month.

        What do agents like about it? Reliability, support for those new to video conferencing and screen sharing capabilities.

        Not all is well, though, at least among agents. “… I don’t love it … the launch process gets confusing because of multiple window prompts, even after you’ve downloaded it,” according to Craig C. Rowe at inman.com.

        He adds, by the way, some good news for budget-minded agents: “Free accounts can have up to 100 people for 40 minutes and unlimited one-on-one meetings.”

        If you’re new to the software, eliteagents.com offers a walkthrough.

        Already use Zoom? Check out these hacks at techhelpline.com.

        2. Floor plan software

        Listings with accompanying floor plans receive 52% more clicks than those without floor plans, according to the folks at rightmove.com.

        Additionally, one in 10 of the buyers interviewed by the property portal said that they wouldn’t view a home for sale in person without seeing a floor plan first.

        Finally, NAR finds that a floor plan is the third most valuable aspect of a real estate agent’s website, right behind photos and the listing description.

        Floor plans aren’t expensive. Sure, you can go with a company that offers all the bells and whistles, but there are also those who offer the service for a reasonable price. Here are some that the agents we spoke with recommend:

        3. Virtual tours

        One listing agent we spoke with represents an older woman who is down-sizing. Because she suffers from lung disease, she is extremely fearful of catching COVID-19. The thought of random people touring her home led her to believe that selling to an investor was her only solution.

        Luckily, she met a creative listing agent with a number of solutions, one of which was to restrict showings to virtual tours only. In-person showings were reserved for those buyers who submitted offers.

        Her listing agent chose a Matterport virtual tour, which can be slow to create and, if you carry a lot of listings, it can get expensive. It remains, however, the gold standard of the real estate industry.

        For alternatives, check out this piece from Mandy Ellis at NAR’s magazine.realtor.


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        Please reach out to our support team at 866.405.3638 with questions or if there is anything we can do to help you with your success.


        PLUS: When you have time…here are some helpful resources we’ve made available to support your success.

        1. The Free 12 Month Done-For-You Strategic Marketing Plan

        The Real Estate Marketing Planner is a powerful 12-Month-Guide that strategically defines what marketing to do when. Four key market segments are included, Niche Marketing, Get More Listings, Geographic Farming, and Sphere of Influence. –Click Here

        2. The Free Interactive Real Estate Business Plan

        The Free Interactive Real Estate Business Plan allows you to enter your business goals for this year and get a breakdown of how many prospects, listings, closing, and so on are needed to reach your goals.  – Click Here

        3. Become a Neighborhood Brand

        Become branded in a specific neighborhood with a 12X15 marketing piece sent automatically each month to an exclusive carrier route. Watch this video to learn more or Click Here.

        4. The Free Real Estate Mailing List Guide

        This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Real-Estate-Mailing-List-Guide2-3-D-999x1024.jpg

        The Real Estate Mailing List Guide outlines the top tools for generating targeted prospecting lists including Baby Boomers, Empty Nesters, Investors, Lifestyle Interests, High-Income Renters, Move-Up Markets, and more. The Guide also defines done-for-you marketing campaigns to match these markets. –Click Here

        5. Become a Listing Legend Free eBook 

        This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Become-A-Listing-Legend-3D-Book-White-274x300.jpg

        Ready to take a vertical leap in your real estate career? If you’re looking for inspiration…and the tools and methods to dominate a market and go to the top in real estate…you’ll find them in this free book. – Click Here

        6. The Free Online ROI Calculator

        This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is ROI-calculator-b-233x300.jpg

        Consistency and automation are the keys to success. Discover how effective direct mail marketing can dramatically increase your bottom line. Enter your statistics in our Free online ROI Calculator and click the ‘CALCULATE MY ROI’ button to see your results instantly! –Click Here

        7. The Free Real Estate Marketing Guide “CRUSH IT” 

        This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is CRUSH-IT-Guide-3-d-298x300.jpg

        The “Crush It” Guide includes easy steps to launching an effective direct mail marketing campaign, how to create a targeted prospect list, the perfect way to layout marketing materials for success, seven opportunities available to target in your area right now. –Click Here