9 Technology Tips for Commercial Real Estate Brokers
There are plenty of technology tools for us to use in commercial real estate brokerage today. Select the right tools that can take you forward in your market; in saying that, only use a few of the good ones but do so in a comprehensive way.
So why should you use these things? Only for one or more of the following reasons:
- To save time in your day and working week as an agent
- To improve client and prospect communication
- To improve your personal brand as a top agent
- To convert more listings from presentations
- To track future opportunities
Here are some tools that can save you time and help in your commercial real estate business:
- Voice recognition software will help you produce reports and correspondence easily and efficiently. A lot of sales people do not know that most modern ‘Windows’ based operating systems come with voice recognition already installed in the ‘control panel’. So you don’t have to go out and purchase expensive software. Providing you have a good computer, and a quality headset, you can start using the voice recognition software today for your property reports and other lengthy documents.
- Voice recordings are valuable when it comes to walking through properties and inspecting them. You can take audio notes as you walk around, and then transpose them later into file notes. You can easily get a ‘phone app’ that records voice and saves it to your smart phone.
- Database software will help you stay in contact with the right people for the opportunities as they arise. Given that you should be calling about 40 or 50 people per day as part of prospecting, the database is a critical process to implement in your business model.
- Cloud based storage will allow you to load important documents for access when you are out of the office. Use it to store special reports, marketing examples, and important forms.
- Blogs and websites will help you improve your personal profile. Always market your properties on a website or industry portal, but write a few blogs per week and load them to your blogging platform. In that way you can ‘show the world’ your experience and credibility as a top agent.
- Social media tools are useful and can be linked back to your blogs and website listings. Regular entries will help you with that.
- Digital photographs are powerful tools when it comes to a property presentation. Use them as a ‘slide show’ to capture the prospect or clients interest.
- Mobile telephones can integrate with the cloud based storage, the websites you use, and property market information. They should also integrate with your contact database.
- Computers and tablets will help you stay mobile and remote from the office. It is increasingly the case that many agents and brokers only go to the office a few times per week. Everything they require can be accessed online.
So these are the ‘basic’ tools; perhaps you have others to add to the list. Importantly you should use anything that makes your job easier. Grow your market share using the convenience of real estate technology.
