Communicate Better


Stay in touch with your client using e-mail and telephone. If long stretches go by with no appropriate properties, check in just to let the client know you're still actively working for her.

Keep the number of contact points manageableone or two phone numbers, one fax number, and one e-mail address, for example. Consider having a fax machine at your home office or an Internet-based fax service to send and receive faxes. By having a home office fax or using an Internet-based fax service, you don't have to go to the office to send a fax, and you don't have to worry about faxes sent to the office getting mixed up with other agents' faxes.

Follow up verbal discussions with a summary e-mail, both to give your client the pertinent information and advice in a document she can refer to as needed and to protect yourself from claims that you said something you didn't or that you failed to disclose key information.

Checklist Buyer Service Toolkit

A basic technology toolkit for serving real estate buyers would include the following:

  • An MLS system account: To track properties and sales trends.

  • Microsoft Office: To produce checklists, neighborhood comps, and other educational materials using Word; to run mortgage and price calculations and comparisons using Excel, and to manage e-mail messages using Outlook.

  • Microsoft FrontPage: To produce your Web pages. (On the Mac, you would need to choose a different tool, such as Adobe Macromedia Dreamweaver, since FrontPage works only in Windows.)

  • Adobe Acrobat Professional: To create and edit PDF materials.

  • Electronic forms software: To fill in transaction forms. Your local Realtors association typically chooses which company makes its forms available electronically.

As you get more comfortable using technology tools, consider using the following tools as well:

  • Microsoft Publisher or Adobe InDesign (in addition to Microsoft Office): To create many of your printed materials.

  • Macromedia Dreamweaver (in place of Microsoft FrontPage): For your Web materials, as well as a file-transfer program such as Ipswitch's WS_FTP Pro for Windows or Fetch Softworks' Fetch for Mac.

  • REBT's Relay Transaction System: To provide a single tool to manage communications and document exchange. (In this case, you might not need your own Web-creation software.)

  • A digital camera: To take images of the properties to preview them to your buyer.

  • Fax system: A home-office fax machine or an Internet-based fax service.

  • Software such as Nero or Roxio Media Creator: To write files to CDs and DVDs.

Feel free to use different tools than those recommended hereas long as they do the job you need, of course.


Use a client Web page to post relevant documents in one convenient place. A client Web page is also a handy venue for large files such as disclosure packages available to the client that her e-mail system might reject if you sent it as a file attachment. If you're a do-it-yourselfer, you can create and update these Web pages yourself and upload them to a Web server, using tools like Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Macromedia Dreamweaver. If you're not interested in using technology at such a hands-on level, either hire someone else to do this or subscribe to a service that provides a simple Web-based interface for posting content to the Web, such as the REBT Relay Transaction System.



The Tech-Savvy Real Estate Agent
The Tech-Savvy Real Estate Agent
ISBN: 0321413660
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 100
Authors: Galen Gruman

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