Communicate Better

When working with sellers, it's easy to lose touch during those marketing stretches when you have the information you need but don't yet have buyer queries or offers to coordinate. Don't let long stretches go by; stay in touch with at least an e-mail or telephone check-in just to let the client know you're still actively working for him.

Help the seller stay in touch with you by providing a manageable set of contacts for youone 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, so you don't have to go to the office to receive or 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 he 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 Seller Service Toolkit

A basic technology toolkit for serving real estate sellers 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 net-sales 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.

• A digital camera: To take images of the property for use in marketing, as well as image-editing software such as Adobe Photoshop Elements.

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

• Adobe Macromedia Dreamweaver (in place of Microsoft FrontPage): For your Web materials, as well as file-transfer programs 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.)

• 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. For example, you could post checklists, forms, and other such materials for the seller to have access to whenever he wanted. (Consider converting any such printed materials to PDF format so they can be posted to the Web.) Even if the seller doesn't want to print various forms himself, he can still review them online before you drop off the paper copies. 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'd prefer not to do so much technology work yourself, 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.