Wishing You The Best . . .
Month: December 2011
Crystal Ball
I was reading a fascinating article about Venture Capitalists and what they are pouring money into right now. It’s a good clue about the tech advances we can expect to see in coming months. A couple of things caught my eye.
First there is Apple’s SIRI voice recognition program. I’m not an Apple person, but I understand it is far superior to anything else on the market. Supposedly you can get your IPhone to do almost anything by simply speaking to it. Right now SIRI is proprietary – only Apple can work with it. But speculation is that they will open it up to App developers soon. Already people are tinkering with it to interact with all kinds of other things: televisions, thermostadts, appliances. Imagine sitting in your living room saying, ‘Set temperature to 72%’ and having it simply happen!
Another key area is education. Just as Amazon made bookstores irrelevant and ITunes drove record stores to extinction, so technology will at least change the way education happens. I don’t think brick and mortar schools will go away entirely, but what happens inside them will look very different in a few years.
As evidence, the article I read referenced M.I.T.s’ OpenCourseWare program. Right now, M.I.T. has over 2,000 of their courses online and available for anyone to take FOR FREE. Soon, every class they teach at the Institution will be online, so essentially, you will be able to get a complete M.I.T. education gratis. They won’t be awarding degrees for the work, but it will be possible to get a Certificate. As someone dealing with distance learning all the time, I wanted to check this out.
I went to ocw.mit.edu and looked around a bit. T’here are courses in all kinds of things. I checked out Spanish. A year ago I bought the full Fluenz Spanish program and I can’t say enough about how good it was. I’m not conversational (yet) but I’m comfortable in places where English is not spoken. My quick scan of the free M.I.T. program has me believing it might be superior in some ways. It’s designed to be done in four hours a week for about two months. The whole program is built around a little movie with a plot, suspense, characters. You learn by listening and watching the interactions and then completing exercises and reading. The quality looks outstanding.
This kind of stuff gets me very excited. I love the way our electronic world is changing. Things that once seemed beyond the horizon are now almost within our grasp. And the speed at which new ideas move from the horizon line to our fingertips is getting faster and faster. Is there any doubt that, soon, the right technology, mixed with the right consumer offer and operating system will completely change the real estate business?
Why YOU Should Be On Tomorrow’s Broker Roundtable Call
I’ve said it before: the biggest challenge we have as Help-U-Sell brokers is staying connected. We’re spread out all over the country and have only occasional opportunities to get together face-to-face. Plus, we work in a hostile environment – one where most of the real estate ‘professionals‘ around us wish we’d just dry up and blow away. That can grind on you after a while. It’s important to tune in every now and then just to keep your head screwed on right!
There are several ways to stay plugged into Help-U-Sell. The company Facebook and Twitter pages are good. So is our company newsletter, Help-U-Sell Connect, and this silly little blog (do you realize we’re approaching 300 posts here?). But nothing is better than our weekly webinars/teleconferences. Tech Tuesday – which will convene in just a few hours – is action packed with good information about how to build and manage your web presence and your technology in general. And Wonderful Wednesdays are . . . well . . . .
LISTEN: in the last six to eight months, the Wednesday Broker Roudtable Calls have been electric. Every week, great new information has been disseminated and the group has grown increasingly comfortable with sharing what they’re doing, what’s working and what’s not. It’s one hour a week to be reminded how powerful it is to be Help-U-Sell (remember: if you are a broke or agent in a Help-U-Sell office, you are Help-U-Sell).
Tomorrow’s call will be a little special in that we have a guest; two of them, actually. Patricia Boyd, who everyone fell in love with at the Success Summit, will be there talking all things finance, and she’s bringing Chris Jackson of TurnScor. TurnScor markets credit repair/improvement software to brokers who then can give it (for free) to as many people as they’d like. It’s a wonderful thing to add to your value package. I mean: what buyer wouldn’t benefit from a 5% increase in their FICO score? Even the one with great credit might qualify for a better loan thanks to the free program their Help-U-Sell broker gave them!
Best of all, TurnScor is running a special for the month of December: a 25% discount. AND Patricia is offering her two part Certified Real Finance Advocate training program free to everyone who takes advantage of TurnScor’s offer. It’s a ridiculously good deal. And it’s all about increasing your knowledge and the value you bring to a transaction. We have 11 days left in December. I think I’d set a goal to complete Patricia’s training and get certified by the end of the year and then give the TurnScor software to everyone on my CI list as a kind of Holiday gift. You know: start the new year with a better credit score, courtesy of Help-U-Sell.
You can learn more about TurnScor and the promotion on Patricia’s website: www.cRFApro.com.
Also on tomorrow’s call, we’ll update the results of the Winter Warm Up contest. Brokers are competing for points awarded for new listings, as well as closed buyer and seller sides. As of the end of November, Deb Schmidt from Minnesota is in the lead, followed closely by Richard Cricchio (Hawaii) and John Powell (Arizona). But the field is very tight and anyone could hop into the lead before the contest ends in February.
It will be our last Wednesday call of the year, so we’ll take a minute to look back at 2010 and forward to 2011. So think of it as your company Holiday Party; ok, that’s stretching it a little bit. Think of it as your weekly sales meeting and TUNE IN! If you haven’t signed up yet, do so now by clicking HERE.
Of Steve Jobs, the Music Business and Real Estate
Jose Perez of PCMS Consulting is on RISMedia today talking about Steve Jobs and the music industry. What’s that got to do with us? you ask . . . quite a bit, I’d say.
Before we go there, however, let’s drop into Wall Street. We often look at the history of the securities business in the last 15 years and draw parallels to real estate. Remember? Used to be, we had to contact a broker to trade a stock and we paid a percentage based commission for the privilege. Stock trading was mysterious, complicated, beyond the grasp of most people and the commissions were, well, just the reasonable cost of entry. Then along came Charles Schwab with $15 flat fee trades. Consumers loved it and the industry took note. The forward thinkers not only shifted to the new model, they enhanced it by putting powerful analytic information in the consumer’s hands on the Internet.
Sound like the real estate business? You bet.
Perez is saying the same kind of change happened in the Music business. Remember when we used to go to the music store to buy vinyl LP records, and then CDs? That’s how music was distributed. The whole industry was built around the idea of making and marketing these plastic objects called ‘records.’ But then, technology made it possible for people to take the records, digitize them and then share them (often illegally) over the Internet. The industry reacted not by looking forward at how they might capitalize on this, but by looking to the courts, suing the most prolific pirates. Meanwhile, Steve Jobs – a music industry outsider – quietly invented the Ipod – nothing more than a solid state drive with a simple user interface – and the ITunes store for making digital music accessible to consumers. For 99 cents you could buy a song . . . and, today, that’s what we do.
Just as in real estate, we had a music industry fighting to preserve the status quo . . . and losing; because you can never preserve the status quo. It is impossible. In both cases we have industries struggling to keep information out of the consumer’s hands . . . and losing.
Want another example? How about the Travel industry. Not too many years ago we used to call a travel agent to book a plane trip or a vacation. They had all the information: schedules and fares and so on; and they earned a nice commission for helping us navigate this mysterious process. How many travel agents do you know today? Really: they have become largely extinct! And how do we book travel today? We go to the Internet where all the information is housed and make our decisions for ourselves. Unfortunately, the pricing model for travel has not changed significantly . . . which makes me wonder: whose getting that commission today?
And here we have real estate: an industry that justified its percentage based commissions for decades largely by hoarding information. Then along came Don Taylor (and by the way, he came along a good ten years before Charles Schwab had his epiphany). He saw a way to do the real estate business not for a nonsensical percentage based commission, but for a Low Set Fee. He saw all of this hoarding going on and decided that Information Without Obligation would be one of his new company’s core values. The maturation of the Internet twenty years later put that value on steroids . . .
And how did the Industry react? It ran in terror for the hills, dug foxholes, locked up the valuables (the information), put its fingers in its ears and refused to hear what consumers were saying. Even today, with a real estate market undergoing complete upheaval, with change swooping down around us like a Tsunami, how many of the big national brands are talking about their pricing model? Um . . . none. Even today, when consumers can (with the click of a mouse) get all the information REALTORS used to hoard, how many are talking about how we can use that fact to streamline the process and make the experience better for the home buyers and sellers? Um . . . none.
All I can say is: get ready. We’re about to witness a magnificent collision. The vision of Don Taylor is about to come to full fruition as it collides with the reality of today’s consumer, the Internet and the upheaval in the marketplace. Five years from now as brokers collect their Set Fee at closing, they’ll scratch their heads, look back and wonder: ‘Did we ever really do business that old fashioned way?’
The ABC Tool
There is a new piece of agent tech out that intrigues me. It’s call the ABC Tool and it is an online client and transaction management tool. It puts the agent at the center of the myriad of details that must be coordinated and provides an efficient platform for agents and their clients to communicate and move together toward a successful closing.
The tool is in BETA testing right now and pricing has not been established. However, you can go to the website and sign up for a 30 day free account. I’ve asked a couple of Help-U-Sell brokers to take a look and tell me what they think and will report back, but if you’re curious, take a look:
www.TheAbcTool.com
I stumbled on this in an Inman News article and was struck by the comments by ABC’s founder, Michele Serro. Here’s how she describes the homebuying experience:
- Homebuyers range from wanting low- to high-touch experiences with their agents. Some homebuyers want complete autonomy, choosing to look at listings and homes by themselves; others want an agent to merely function as a sounding board; while yet others expect high-touch service from their agent, seeking accompaniment to showings and someone to run the deal.
- The real estate agent is the sun around which all other planets, and parties, revolve. As a central figure in the homebuying scenario, the agent needs are currently underserved by the market as well — from generating leads, prequalifying homebuyers, managing documents, and managing the expectations of clients.
- The process feels opaque, decentralized and out of control to most homebuyers. Homebuyers are seeking a single, centralized resource and repository to increase transparency around the process and communications between all stakeholders involved.
- Homebuyers seek validation and support throughout the process. Many homebuyers turn to friends and family members to provide both administrative and emotional support throughout the process, or are advised by other trusted service providers in the process.
- Document collection, management and sharing is a serious bottleneck. For all service providers involved in the buying or selling experience, document management is a critical, and often painful, part of the process. Missed milestones (often due to missed deadlines in document filing) can have lasting domino effects, ultimately impacting a homebuyer’s closing date.
- The complexity of buying a home today is exponentially greater than it was a few years ago. The housing market crash has resulted in fewer leads for agents, increased rigor, due diligence and regulation around financials, and extended timelines for those looking to buy.
And here is how she describes the ABC Tool:
Our tools and features coordinate agents and homebuyers seamlessly together, recasting the agents as the indispensable experts they are and supporting them in operating efficiently in an increasingly inefficient business environment and broken system.
(ABC Tool) takes care of much of the administration, so agents can focus on sharing their expertise of a certain area and putting best practices to good use — rather than filling out paperwork.
We also coordinate all the other players, like attorneys, inspectors and even lenders, and clearly spell out their roles and responsibilities along the way.
At first glance, I think this might be something that will improve efficiency, minimize errors and missed items, and above all, build agent value in the transaction process. Check it out and please, report back!