Agents, Brokers & Teams

Open Houses are old school. …Or are they?

Open Houses are old school…Or ARE they?

Online viewing of listings has completely changed the game in the past 15 years. Hosting an open house probably won’t result in the sale of that home the day you host an open house. Why is it important anyway? Buyers who are looking at multiple houses can decide whether they want to schedule a showing through their real estate agent.

Why have an open house?

  • Build traffic
  • Buyers are more relaxed
  • Prospect for new clients (LEADS!)
  • Meet the neighbors (FUTURE LEADS!)

With VoicePad’s Open House Every Day service, you can meet your clients’ desires for either in-person or virtual showing. On-demand. Or, at least the appearance of it!

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Agents, Brokers & Teams, Telecommunications

World’s largest Century 21 office uses VoicePad phone automation.

Whether it’s after-hours, an absence, a weather event…or even a pandemic, VoicePad On-Demand Reception can route calls to your agents and staff with just their spoken name…24 hours a day.

RISMedia highlights VoicePad’s innovative On-demand reception services in this informative article.

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Brokers & Teams, Telecommunications, Uncategorized

The Keyes Company Spotlight: VoicePad Generates Best-in-Class Mobile Solution

The Keyes Company Spotlight: VoicePad Generates Best-in-Class Mobile Solution

by Keith Loria

When Mike Papas, President & CEO of South Florida-based The Keyes Company, was looking to offer an easy-to-use mobile solution that could report customer activity back to their associates immediately, he decided to implement VoicePad, the real estate industry’s premier source for lead-generating mobile web technology.

While the firm utilized Reliance Network for its company websites, lead management and CRM, Pappas opted to use VoicePad for its mobile sites because he was attracted to their integration with yard signs, text platform and Spanish audio tour narration technology.

“It’s a full mobile platform that allows our customers to gain information via voice, text, or their mobile internet connection immediately, 24/7.” Pappas says, “The setup process for our listing and associates is completely automated, allowing our associates to add customization if desired.”

The Keyes Company features its VoicePad phone number on all of its yard signs, allowing the company to track all leads generated from the signs, in addition to providing automated property info right at the curb, eliminating the risk of calls going straight to voicemail or having to rely on duty desk agents for support.

“VoicePad mobile sites provide immediate access to property details including a quick search for active property listings and open houses based on the user’s current location,” says Wendi Iglesias, Chief Information Officer for the Keyes Company. “The mobile sites are company and associate-branded and provide an immediate connection to the company or associate via a click-to-call feature.”

“Customer and associates alike love the VoicePad mobile platform,” Pappas says, “We continue to increase the usage month after month. In fact, our mobile traffic currently accounts for over half of our online traffic.  And, based on the inquiries we receive from our mobile sites, I would have to say customers respond well to their mobile experience.”

Iglesias notes that VoicePad and Reliance Network worked together to integrate the two systems, ensuring that all inquiries through its mobile platform were accounted for in its company lead platform and tracked through its lead router tool with Keyes Connect.

“Reliance Network redirects all of our mobile traffic to our VoicePad mobile sites, directing the user to a specific property details page when required based on a link they receive via email or find on another site such as Facebook,” says Iglesias. “Reliance has also incorporated eCampaigns, which help our associates promote their individual VoicePad mobile sites to their contacts within Keyes Connect.”

For the Keyes Company, VoicePad is more than mobile friendly or mobile compatible; it’s a best-in-class experience for its customers on both sides of the transaction and a business generator for associates.

For more information, please visit www.voicepad.com

 

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Brokers & Teams, Telecommunications

Teams, Telecom & Listing Data: 5 Things Every Team Needs to Know about New Phone Technology

Teams, Telecom & Listing Data: 5 Things Every Team Needs to Know about New Phone Technology

BY: Randall Standard, CEO of VoicePad

Mark Z, team leader of MARK Z. Home Selling Team Inc. with Keller Williams Realty in the Detroit metro area, heads one of America’s top-producing teams. His team expects to close more than 500 transactions this year.

Key to their success is implementing the right technology. Yet in real estate, one of the most expensive, but rarely upgraded business technologies, is the phone system.  The actual phone on your desk hasn’t changed much in 30 years. Fortunately, there is a better way for teams to tackle telecom.  And, it starts with five things you need in order to select the right system to power your sales.

  1. It must be Cloud-based. This delivers all of the modern features your phone system should offer. A virtual attendant featuring custom greetings, a dial-by-name team directory, and transfer to a live operator during business hours.  A Cloud-based system means no hardware repair bills since a cloud-based system has no hardware.
  2. It must help potential clients avoid voice mail. 42 percent of potential buyer calls go to voice-mail. This is the scariest number in real estate, but it can be significantly reduced with the right phone solutions. Two vital features are: Simultaneous ring (rings multiple agents at once) and the ability to make certain that calls on specific properties are routed to the desired team member. “Money Calls” from the curb should be treated differently. An intelligent, cloud-based phone system can help you answer important calls and postpone responses to less important ones.
  3. It must save you money. You can hire an admin to answer phones for about $3,000 a month (loaded cost), but they only answer your phones for about 8 hours of a day. Many “money calls” arrive during the other 16 hours a day.  The right telecom system can eliminate the admin expense, yet, capture and notify you of your money calls 24-7.
  4. It must make you money. Real estate is still a very call-centric business and calls from the yard sign are considered some of the best leads in the business.  If your team’s phone system can’t differentiate how a customer prefers communication (voice, text or online) your phone system is probably losing you money.
  5. It must integrate with your listing data. This is where your team can trump the competition. When your phone system is integrated with your MLS feed, you can provide an IDX text-based property search solution and a full inventory call capture system (IVR) to generate leads. The right listing data-enabled phone system can give every caller the option to do a full inventory property search by text, by phone or by mobile web.

Remember:  Your agents use cell phones as their primary communication tool.  So, consider eliminating the cost of phone desk sets when they are already permanently forwarded to agent cell phones.

In the end, you can buy the same off-the-shelf phone system used by hair salons and auto dealerships. But when it comes to real estate, there are better and less expensive options. Why? It’s because you have listing data at your disposal.

And that’s the magic of TeamPhone from VoicePad, as Mark Z will tell you, knowing what calls are important improves the quality of your life, by letting the intelligence of your listing data do the talking for you!

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Agents, Brokers & Teams, Mortgage

42 Percent: The Scariest Number in Real Estate

42 Percent: The Scariest Number in Real Estate

By Maria Patterson

Real Estate remains a very call-centric business, but millions of leads are being left at the curb-literally.  Randall Standard, CEO of VoicePad, a 30-year mobile industry veteran, examines how this problem can be solved.

Maria Patterson: You have said, “42 percent is the scariest number in real estate.”  What do you mean by this?

Randall Standard: What’s scary is that 42 percent of the hottest leads in real estate – property inquiries from yard signs – go directly to voice mail.

MP: Agents are cell phone-centric, so you would think that has allowed them to be more responsive to their clients, right?

RS: You might think that, but you would be dead wrong.  With all the functionally that’s baked into a smartphone, agent responsiveness should be instantaneous, but it’s not, because, as humans, we can still only handle one live conversation at a time.  It’s not the agent’s fault.

Still, these missed opportunities have a direct impact on an agent’s income, reputation and the reputation of the brokerage.  A potential buyer may wonder, “What good are they if they don’t answer my call?”

MP: If an agent is busy with another client, is it a bad thing that a call from a new lead goes to voice mail?

RS: Yes, because it can be avoided.  The dynamics of an incoming call from a buyer are very different than following up with a buyer.  Our industry focuses on response times to leads:  The sooner the agent responds, the better.

But this strategy misses the point: These calls need to be answered the moment they arrive, even when an agent is busy.  That’s because potential buyers don’t care why the agent was unavailable; all they know is that they weren’t available when they needed them the most.

MP: Forty-two percent is a pretty precise number.  How did you arrive at it?

RS: In addition to IDX-based text and GPS mobile site products, VoicePad processes (and counts) yard signage inquiries in over 300 U.S. markets.  We’ve processed 6.2 million property inquiries by phone in the last three years, with 17 percent requesting a transfer to the listing agent.  That’s approximately a million live call transfers from the curb.  VoicePad employs “call supervision” on transferred calls:  42 percent of theses transferred calls terminated in a voicemail system.

MP: Can the 42 percent problem be solved?

RS: Absolutely, and that’s been our focus at VoicePad.  We are a unique solutions provider that now employs the following four types of technologies to make sure a curb call is answered immediately, or that the information the buyer requested is delivered in an automated format (voice or text):

  • Identifiable buyer ringtone: Agents can set a unique ring tone to alert the agent to an incoming “money call”.
  • Simultaneous ring technology: Agents, Teams or brokerages can have multiple phone numbers all ring at the same time when a money call comes in.
  • MLS speech technology: VoicePad can deliver up-to-date audio information, in English and Spanish, about the listing extracted from the MLS while the buyer is on the call.
  • Auto-response: In the event that the call is not answered, VoicePad automatically text the buyer’s cellphone with the agent’s name and contact info including a tracking link to the property being requested.

These are proven technologies:  VoicePad serves many of the most well-respected real estate brands in the U.S. and Canada.  For many firms, the overhead savings are dramatic, as the alternative is to hire more administrative support and receptionists to handle call volume.

Click here for more information on VoicePad Solutions.

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Brokers & Teams

Mobile Web site design should be your primary focus, not an afterthought

Why responsive Web site design could be sabotaging your lead generation efforts.

Mobile Web site design should be your primary focus, not an afterthought.

Here’s a hard truth.  For many in the real estate industry, their mobile strategy isn’t paying off.

Too few leads are generated, and most mobile apps have, unfortunately, failed to achieve any real market adoption.

We all know the home buyer is increasingly mobile-focused, and we see it everywhere we look – in grocery store checkout lines, on every commuter train or bus, even inside our own homes.

As time progresses, it’s going to be an even bigger bonanza for mobile devices due to the explosion of large-screen smartphones and the proliferation of tablets on coffee tables and kitchen counters everywhere.

If you’ve not already done it, now is the time to optimize your mobile site if you want to reach and identify more prospective home buyers.

Going “mobile first”

The “mobile first” development process focuses your strategy on optimizing your entire web presence specifically for mobile consumers.

There’s a danger in taking a shortcut by offering a scaled-down (responsive) site developed for a desktop computer.  For many consumers, your responsive site isn’t very responsive.  Users will often find your site slow to load and weighed down with CS files, none of which are required for a quick and efficient mobile search.

When home buyers grab their mobile devices, research says they’re using it to search.  That’s why building for the mobile site first lets you focus on providing easy access to the information that buyers want while giving you deep visibility into their activity.

Mobile Web design

Mobile first is a functional approach to Web design that develops the mobile interface first and then builds up to the traditional desktop Web site.

Today, most Web development companies do it backward.  Mobile becomes the afterthought instead of the primary focus.  What the home buyer gets on the smartphone is a tarnished version of your desktop Web site.

Conversely, mobile first uses “progressive enhancement,” the process of enhancing a mobile interface until it’s a fully functional desktop Web site.

Technology has made the functionality of the mobile Web interface now on par with what one would expect from a quality mobile app.

During the “app revolution” in the past five years, your Web vendor got a pass.  Now that it’s possible to have the best of both worlds, why doesn’t your Web vendor provide you with a quality mobile site?

The answers to this question are a little unsettling, but likely include:

  1. They don’t have to.  Just pick up your smartphone and take a look at several real estate brokerage sites.  What you’ll notice is a sea of mediocrity when it comes to the site’s mob functionality.  Although, there are some impressive mobile interfaces provided by Web vendors.  They are rare due to the lack of competition in the mobile Web development in the real estate industry.  In fact, Web vendors are probably relieved that so many firms invest in their own mobile apps.  It saves them both the trouble and expense of developing mobile functionality for your site.
  2. It was free.  You received a responsive design site as part of your Web investment.  In effect, you got what you paid for – a slow-loading mobile site, most often without a GPS search or photo-swiping technology.  As long as Web sites and mobile sites are purchase from the same vendors, expect more of the same.
  3. Lack of talent.  Quality mobile site development requires a different skill set than traditional Web design.  These folks are hard to find and expensive to retain.  Besides, they already have jobs.  They’re working at mobile first and app development companies.

If you’ve been questioning the efficacy of your mobile application results – and I’m sure you have been lately – then you need to rethink where your focus has been and where it needs to be.

The approach is no longer from the desktop down; it is from the smartphone up.  When you invest, you need to consider what it takes to develop a quality mobile site strategy.

The solution for most real estate firms today will never be found in a real estate app.  You need to avoid the barrier of any mobile solution that requires a download to view optimized content.  All of our phones are loaded with apps we never use.

And remember, hardly anyone downloads an app at the curb.

A quality mobile strategy gives you the tools to leverage your search engine optimization investment and incorporate IDX-based mobile landing pages for lead-generation tools like text and IVR (search-by-phone).  An app, well, just stands alone.  Going mobile first ensures that you’ll best serve the largest segment of your home buying market.  It unites your mobile and desktop strategies – and, you generate more quality leads.

And after all, it’s really all about one thing – lead generation.

Randall Standard is CEO of VoicePad and a 20-plus-year veteran of the mobile phone industry.

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Agents, Brokers & Teams

Top Real Estate Team Leader Knows How to Capture the Hottest Leads

Top Real Estate Team Leader Knows How to Capture the Hottest Leads

THE COMPANY

MARK Z., Associate Broker and team leader of MARK Z. Home Selling Team Inc. and JMZ Property Management, all working out of Keller Williams Realty serving the Detroit metro area, heads one of America’s top producing teams.  His team closes an average of more than 9 transactions per week and is on target to book more than 500 closed transactions.

THE CHALLENGE

The Mark Z. Home Selling Team works with a wide range of “personality types,” says Mark Z. “And, we wanted a way to accommodate every type.”  He explains that when a prospective buyer pulls up to a For Sale sign, each buyer has a distinct communication preference.  “Some people don’t want to talk to anybody, some people are looking to talk to somebody immediately and some people want a text,” he said, adding, “We didn’t want to lose a potential buyer because we couldn’t provide them with the right form of communication.”

“We couldn’t run our business at the level we do without VoicePad.”   Mark Z., Mark Z Home Selling Team

THE SOLUTION

Mark Z. deployed VoicePad mobile technology to enable his team to dramatically improve its ability to capture the hottest leads to grow its business.  “Calls from the curb are some of the hottest leads in the business,” he explains.  While some agents may take the yard sign for granted, Mark Z. does not.  “It’s the most important piece when it comes to marketing properties,” he said, adding, “You know the biggest problem in this industry is getting people on the phone, actually making that one-to-one contact. That’s what VoicePad does.  It gets people on the phone, so 80% of the problem is solved.”  Mark Z. notes that with web-based generated lead conversion, the greatest challenge is simply trying to get in touch with the person.  “With a VoicePad lead, the person is on the phone and they want to talk to you,” he said, adding, “Once you get someone on the phone, the ability to convert them from a lead to a customer increases dramatically.”  Mark Z. says that once he solved this problem, the results for his team have been huge.  “We couldn’t run our business at the level that we do – 472 transactions – without VoicePad.

THE RESULTS

MARK Z. Home Selling Team Inc. sees VoicePad as a core technology that gives his team an ability to scale its business and increase its annual production year after year.  In just the last seven years, the Mark Z. team has increased its transaction volume in the Detroit metro area nearly 600%, generating $10 million in sales and over $59 million last year.  Mark Z. and his team of 17 stick to their knitting: Staying laser-focused on their core business: Providing the best customer experience.  “The real estate industry chases shiny objects all day long, but at the end of the day, it’s just a shiny object.  It all comes back to focusing on what works: And that’s getting on the phone and talking to people,” he said.

 

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Agents, Brokers & Teams, Mortgage

Why Mobile is a Must

Recently Google announced for the first time that the number of mobile searches has exceeded desktop searches. Mobile hasn’t just arrived – it’s taking over.

Mobile in real estate is must because today’s homebuyers are on the go and they know what they want, and they want it in the palm of their hand.

Consumers crave the most current data available, and if you are not providing a real-time mobile solution to connect consumers and your agents, you’re going to lose a lot of leads.

The “mobile first” mission at VoicePad has delivered an integrated mobile technology that eliminates the need for multiple mobile vendors: From a tracking-enabled mobile website to offering simultaneous text and call lead capture, VoicePad equips agents with everything they need to land the lead.

For prospects, VoicePad puts consumers in control, as it allows the potential buyer to determine when and where they want to receive information, however they’d like.

At Comey & Shepherd REALTORS® in Cincinnati, Ohio, VoicePad has been a vital lead generation tool there for the last seven years.

As Tracy Wieland, USA director of marketing explains, “We onboarded the software system, starting with the signage and 24/7 rider. Consumers could drive by and receive an audio presentation if they wanted,” says Wieland.

Today Comey & Shepard uses one easy phone number posted on signage, print advertising or all other marketing material, allowing consumers to receive information 24/7 by calling or texting for information on any home in the MLS, or by visiting their agent’s branded, mobile website.

VoicePad has perfected automatically creating and narrating Virtual Tours, featuring photos and property details, in both English and Spanish. Everything is directly pulled from MLS data or the broker’s data. The agents and brokers do not have to do a thing. Whenever vital information is changed, the tour is updated, automatically. Agents can even edit or enhance the presentation on their own.

For Comey & Shepherd a VoicePad Virtual Tour has become an essential tool, with an adoption rate exceeding 70 percent. Wieland also finds it has become a powerful recruiting tool as well, as it helps her team make an impressive impact in a market with strong legacy players.

The key to mobile success is to deliver to the consumer the immediate information they are seeking when they are standing at the curb. When buyers are standing in front of a listing and want information on a particular house, they can call and get the listing agent, or they can text and receive a link to information about that specific property they are interested in seeing, right to the smartphone in the palm of their hand!

As more people than ever search on mobile devices for everything, including homes, it’s no longer enough to have a mobile app or provide a mobile-friendly website. You must have a complete mobile solution or your leads are going to head over to a competitor that makes mobile search easy.

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