The Vision 2030 Project was developed to answer this question by reaching out to sales partners at The Group Inc., local developers and other agents in the community. Based on his extensive research and feedback from innovative thinkers in the industry, Eric shared his findings with The Active Enterprise Network in order to set the stage for further growth among members.

But what does the future of real estate look like?

With more and more people beginning their home search online, the roles have changed – and will continue to evolve over the next few years.

In 2000, 48% of people found their home through a realtor and only 8% found their home online. Fast forward 10 years and we find that only 38% found their home through a realtor in 2010 while 37% found their home online. The percentage of homebuyers who find their home online will only increase by 2030. Why is this?

Agents are no longer the keepers of the information. With the rise of technology and the online world, customers have more information at their fingertips than ever before. Customers are doing their research and won’t contact an agent until they’re ready and prepared to continue down the path of home ownership.

It won’t be long before customers can access even more information pertaining to a home – whether that’s sales history, liens, how much is still owed on a home and much more. With the steady growth in mobile technology, users will be able to take their “virtual agent” out on the road with them.

Additionally, they’re going to be able to quickly find information about an agent’s track record including sales history, customer service ratings and their success rate for pricing homes. Agents will need to adjust their position and provide the expected high level of service, backed by a high level of understanding to be able to thrive.

If consumers can find the information without an agent, what will we bring to the table?

As our industry becomes more and more transparent, it’s up to us to adapt to meet the needs of this new age consumer. While we don’t believe the need for agents will decline, we do see a shift in the way they conduct business. Communication between an agent and consumer won’t change, but how we communicate with one another will.

Consumers will still rely on agents to help them find their next home as it is a big decision and a complex process. However, the agent’s role will be to help these consumers make sense of the data already available to them, and as such will require a high level of knowledge.

In addition to being well-informed on the Real Estate Industry, the new, younger wave of buyers will expect a certain level of tech-savvy-ness when working with an agent as well. By utilizing cutting-edge technology and personalizing the online experience that customers have come to expect, you will be better able to market your brand online.

What can we do today to prepare for tomorrow?

As we mentioned earlier, the need for professional guidance will increase over time, so having a trained, educated and knowledgeable agent will need to increase over time as well. Establishing a strong training program will help increase the adoption of new technologies so your agents don’t fall behind the curve.

Obviously being the first in your market to implement the latest functionality on your site will help you win business. However, with the gap between new advances in technology getting smaller, it now comes down to who implements it better and focuses more on usability and consumer engagement.

The sales process is becoming more about engaging and building relationships with the local community. Customers want to interact with your brand and will likely choose a company that shares similar values. By engaging with your customers and humanizing your brand, your brokerage will be associated with a positive experience and increase the chances a customer will continue the home buying process with you. (Tweet this article!)

Broker → Agent

Agent Productivity Tools: Empowering Agents and Streamlining the Business Model
During this session, John Sable, Managing Partner at Active Website, will discuss the latest agent productivity tools available on The Active Enterprise Platform. Through these tools, brokers can provide agents with the tools needed to bridge the online communication gap with customers and create a more personalized experience. Joining John during this discussion, a guest speaker will discuss their scalable model for getting agents to adapt to the tools available to them.

Speaker:
John Sable
Managing Partner
Active Website, LLC

New Realtor Orientation:Training New Recruits for Increased Adoption of Technology
The Group, Inc. Real Estate has implemented a training program for new agents in order to increase the adoption of the technology available through The Active Enterprise Platform. The Group’s Marketing Director, Helen Gray, explains why the program was created, the training required by each new agent and why it matters.

Speaker:
Helen Gray
Marketing Director
The Group, Inc. Real Estate

The Power of Attraction: Effective Recruiting Strategies for Continued Growth
Instead of just pursuing agents, you need to develop a recruiting plan that makes your brokerage stand out from the crowd. By using your website as part of your recruiting initiatives, potential recruits can gain a better understanding of your culture – and most importantly what makes you different than the competition. In this session, John Turpin will discuss Turpin Realtors’ strategy for attracting new agents.

Speaker:
John Turpin
President
Turpin Real Estate

The Changing Workplace: Rethinking the Traditional Office Space
The mobile life of an agent has a huge impact on the changing workplace. With agents constantly on-the-go, we’re now able to create a workplace that is flexible and accommodating to these needs. Steve Studley from Hasson Company Realtors and a guest speaker will discuss the evolution of their new workplaces and their strategy behind it.

Speaker:
Steve Studley
VP of Marketing and Business Development
The Hasson Company

Related Posts:

• 2011 Active Enterprise Network Annual Conference: Bridging the Gap Between Broker and Customer
• The Active Enterprise Network Gears Up for 2011 Annual Conference

By Amanda Stephan

Studies show that consumers investigating real estate online will visit as many as five different sites.  A brokerage that responds within 3-5 minutes is 239% more likely to win the business. By implementing an inquiry management system which includes a dedicated team member responsible for responding to all inquiries, brokerages are better able to monitor and track inquiries and provide better customer service to potential buyers and sellers.

The Group, Inc. made the decision to change their existing business rule structure to the First Responder Program after learning about Skogman Realty’s success with a similar format. While inquiries on Skogman’s agent websites are routed directly to the site’s owner, all other inquiries are initially reviewed and responded to by their eBusiness department.  This allows consumers to receive a quick response which agents are not always able to provide while on-the-go, and helps to standardize the brand experience.

With the adoption of this structure, Skogman met their return on investment for the entire year after only the first quarter.  The Group, Inc. has adopted that structure and taken it one step further by routing agent website inquiries through eBusiness as well.

The Group went live with First Responder business rules during the first week in August and are excited to see the results the change will bring.

For more information on how implementing the First Responder Program can increase your eBusiness closings within The Active Enterpise Network, please contact our LifeCycle & ROI Manager, Stephanie Streeter.

Every year, REAL Trends ranks the performance of residential real estate companies across the country by sales volume, transactions, mortgage, etc. This annual report is a trusted standard of measuring performance, so again, congratulations to the following members!

The 500 Largest Brokers in the U.S. (Ranked by Closed Transaction Sides for 2010)

• 15 – Ebby Halliday Realtors
• 98 – Murney Associates Realtors
• 102 – The Group, Inc. Real Estate
• 155 – Skogman Realty
• 166 – Hasson Company Realtors
• 178 – The Danberry Company
• 189 – Kentwood Real Estate
• 190 – McEnearney Associates, Inc.
• 210 – Charles Reinhart Company Realtors
• 312 – Milestone Realty Consultants
• 385 – Residential Properties, Ltd.

The 500 Largest Brokers in the U.S. (Ranked by Closed Sales Volume in 2010)

• 12 – Ebby Halliday Realtors
• 63 – McEnearney Associates, Inc.
• 87 – Kentwood Real Estate
• 106 – The Group, Inc. Real Estate
• 108 – Hasson Company Realtors
• 168 – Murney Associates Realtors
• 204 – Charles Reinhart Company Realtors
• 211 – Residential Properties, Ltd.
• 235 – Skogman Realty
• 332 – The Danberry Company
• 375 – Milestone Realty Consultants

Top Leading Real Estate Companies of the World Affiliates

• 9- Ebby Halliday Realtors
• 35- Murney Associates Realtors
• 44- Skogman Realty
• 47- Hasson Company Realtors
• 49- Kentwood Real Estate
• 50-McEnearney Associates, Inc.
• 53- Charles Reinhart Company Realtors
• 63- Milestone Realty Consultants
• 68- Residential Properties, Ltd.

The Largest Independents

• 10- Ebby Halliday Realtors
• 40- Murney Associates Realtors
• 42- The Group, Inc. Real Estate
• 52- Skogman Realty
• 55- Hasson Company Realtors
• 60- The Danberry Company
• 63- Kentwood Real Estate
• 64- McEnearney Associates, Inc.
• 67- Charles Reinhart Company Realtors
• 83- Milestone Realty Consultants
• 93- Residential Properties, Ltd.

Top Firms Ranked by Closed Sales Volume Per Sales Associate

• 3- Kentwood Real Estate
• 9- The Group, Inc. Real Estate

Top Firms Ranked by Closed Sales Volume Per Office

• 16- Kentwood Real Estate

Top Firms Ranked by Average Sales Price

• 24- McEnearney Associates, Inc.

The Billionaire’s Club! (Those who closed at least one billion $ worth of real estate in 2010)

• 12- Ebby Halliday Realtors
• 63- McEnearney Associates, Inc.
• 87- Kentwood Real Estate

Top 500 Firms Ranked by Mortgage Closings

• The Group, Inc. Real Estate

Top 500 Firms Ranked by Title Closings

• The Group, Inc. Real Estate

• The Danberry Company

Real Trends Market Leaders

• Ann Arbor: Charles Reinhart Company Realtors
• Dallas/Ft.Worth: Ebby Halliday Realtors
• Denver: Kentwood Real Estate
• Fort Collins: The Group, Inc. Real Estate
• Lexington: Milestone Realty Consultants
• Portland: Hasson Company Realtors
• Providence: Residential Properties, Ltd.
• Toledo: The Danberry Company

While we received a lot of great photos, there could only be one winner. At this time, we’d like to congratulate The Group, Inc. Real Estate out of Ft. Collins, CO for winning our flag photo contest!  For their prize, The Group will receive 5 FREE hours that can go towards enhancements to their site.

Below is the winning photo. The Colorado State University cheerleaders helped The Group, Inc. fly their flag proudly!

In addition to extending their stay with The Enterprise Network, The Group’s website received a new redesign in order to create a sleeker, tighter site that incorporates new technologies that meet the needs of today’s consumer. Some of these enhancements include:

Usability

In Q1 of this year, The Enterprise Network released the Homepage Layout & Features usability report and in Q2 we followed up with our second usability report, Sitemap & Navigation. From our findings, we were able to integrate into The Group’s site a more well-designed homepage, better top-side navigation, in-content links and a more user-intuitive placement of pages within the sitemap hierarchy –just to name a few.  These changes will create a highly unobtrusive browsing experience for each user, ensuring multiple visits and more traffic.

Onboard Informatics Integration

In the Real Estate Industry, there has been a major push for more hyper-local content. Users want to know specific information about their community including demographics, weather, architecture, etc. – and they want to know it right down to the street where they might be living. Onboard Informatics provides this information and has been integrated into The Group’s homepage, property details and community pages, as well as in each Individual Property Website.

Individual Property Websites (IPWs)

Each new property listing at The Group receives its own IPW. Each IPW is customizable by way of personalized and informative content and serves to boost SEO and page traffic to The Group’s parent site. IPWs provide a huge advantage over the competition, providing a URL corresponding to the property’s address. Since their inclusion, IPWs have becomes the #1 listing tool for the members of The Enterprise Network.

New Agent Rebrands

Each agent at The Group, Inc. will have their own personal website. Running off the engine of the parent site, these rebrands inherit the navigation and functionality of the parent site, which further boosts usability for the user by creating a streamlined design.

One-Click Login

Now customers can login to The Group’s website using either Google’s OpenID or Facebook Connect. This method removes the need for remembering another username and password in addition to storing all preferences and favorite properties. This adds yet another level of convenience for the user.

Mobile

The Group’s main site, blog and rebrand sites – such as IPWs and agent sites – have all been optimized for mobile devices. Now every Android and iPhone user can view these pages with the same features and functionality they would find browsing on their PC or Mac.

Other enhancements to the site include a sophisticated blog redesign, the inclusion of searchable sold data, the integration of drop-down menus and a shallower header upon which the new site’s clean look is based. All these upgrades ensure that The Group, Inc. maintains top position in their market. By remaining a member of The Enterprise Network, any new developments and functionality to The Enterprise Platform will be integrated into The Group’s site to further secure their place as a leader in the independent Real Estate Industry.

By Jeff Payne

Every year, REAL Trends ranks the performance of residential real estate companies across the country by sales volume, transactions, mortgage, etc. This annual report is a trusted standard of measuring performance, so again, congratulations to the following companies for a successful year.

The 500 Largest Brokers in the U.S. (Ranked by Closed Transaction Sides for 2009)

• 12 – Ebby Halliday Realtors
• 112- The Group, Inc. Real Estate
• 154- The Hasson Company
• 156- Skogman Realty
• 192- The Danberry Company
• 199- The Kentwood Companies
• 242- Charles Reinhart Company Realtors
• 285- Milestone Realty Consultants

The 500 Largest Brokers in the U.S. (Ranked by Closed Sales Volume in 2009)

• 12- Ebby Halliday Realtors
• 89- The Hasson Company
• 99- The Kentwood Companies
• 108- The Group, Inc. Real Estate
• 223- Skogman Realty
• 261- Charles Reinhart Company Realtors
• 335- The Danberry Company
• 339- Milestone Realty Consultants

Top Leading Real Estate Companies of the World Affiliates

• 7- Ebby Halliday Realtors
• 43- The Hasson Company
• 44- Skogman Realty
• 50- The Kentwood Companies
• 62- Milestone Realty Consultants
• 63- Charles Reinhart Company Realtors

The Largest Independents

• 8- Ebby Halliday Realtors
• 42- The Group, Inc. Real Estate
• 52- The Hasson Company
• 62- The Danberry Company
• 63- The Kentwood Companies
• 72- Charles Reinhart Company Realtors
• 76- Milestone Realty Consultants

The Billionaire’s Club! (Those who closed at least one billion $ worth of real estate in 2009)

• 12- Ebby Halliday Realtors

Top 500 Firms Ranked by Mortgage Closings

• The Group, Inc. Real Estate

Top 500 Firms Ranked by Title Closings

• The Group, Inc. Real Estate

Real Trends Market Leaders

• Ann Arbor: Charles Reinhart Company Realtors
• Dallas/Ft.Worth: Ebby Halliday Realtors
• Denver: The Kentwood Companies
• Fort Collins: The Group, Inc. Real Estate
• Lexington: Milestone Realty Consultants
• Portland: The Hasson Company
• Toledo: The Danberry Company

To read more, check out our press release, The Active Enterprise Network Makes Real Trends Top 500 List for 2009.

By Amanda Stephan

The Job Loss Protection Program is included in The Rainy Day Foundation’s HELP program (Homeowner Education and Loan Protection). The program provides up to six months of mortgage payments in the event you lose your job within 24 months of purchasing a home. Launched in 2008 with the goal to help Americans maintain responsible homeownership, the HELP program is predicted to provide over eight million in funds in 2009. In good economic times and bad, the Rainy Day Foundation wants to help.

To be eligible for assistance from the foundation:

1.    You must be between the ages of 18 and 66
2.    Be employed full time (minimum of 30 hours per week)
3.    Unemployment must commence involuntarily during coverage period
4.    Cannot be self employed (greater than 10%), an independent contractor, or active military

To learn more about the details and conditions of this program, visit The Group, Inc.

Name: Todd Fields
Title: Broker
Company: The Group, Inc. Real Estate
Personal Website: tfieldsweb.com

Q: How long have you been with the group?
A: 15 Years – before computers!

Q: You have long been a supporter of The Group Inc. website and Individual Agent Websites: What are your favorite features? What about them has worked for you?
A: I think we have one of the most comprehensive sites around. You can use my website or you can go to thegroupinc.com. I try to council people. I ask how did you find us? How are you looking at houses? And they usually tell me through our website. I do ask them to go and look at my personal site.

For relocation especially, we’ve got all your resources for any question you ever ask, including what is the population of every ethnicity you can name! We’ll have an answer for you somewhere on the website or a link that will take you to it. One of our best features that we have is that our listings are updated a lot quicker than everyone else on different real estate sites like realtor.com.

I also ask everyone, “Have you used our really cool “polygon tool?” And they’ll go “huh?” I ask them this because when I ask “what could we do better for you before you go onto the website?” they always tell me that they hate looking for properties and having to search through 40 of them to find two that they like! A lot of times they have a specific area in mind they want to look in and we have a solution for that. I walk people through it. I tell them to give it a try because it is based more about you the customer, not about us. And by then most people have tried it and said, hey this is pretty cool!

Q: Do you feel like generally people do well with the map search? Or do you think they are doing the normal search because they don’t know how to use the map search?
A: The map search sometimes just needs personal direction by an agent. I happen to really like it because if you like a specific school area, you know we can type that in for you. Or if you like a certain area of town, you take that grid and map it out. Some people get frustrated because they can’t drop the polygon tool in the right place but I ask people to take a deep breath and get your favorite glass of red wine or something like that in the evening and sit down and I’ll walk you through it because once you learn to use the polygon, you’ll find you get a real concise listing, the showings you want to see. It’ll show all the homes in there. All you have to do is click on there.

I’ll tell them, you told me churches were really important to you. I want you to type in churches and see what happens. And I will wait a minute, and hear them go. “Wow you’ve got to be kidding me” when all the churches pop up. Or where do you like to get your favorite coffee? It’s just that initial learning curve that takes some time to get over with some people but once I get people on it, they get the hang of it quickly and love it. So that’s what I do. I just try to educate them on it and they get it, but most agents just don’t want to take that kind of time.

Q: How long have you had your own Individual Website?
A: Since The Group first introduced them.

Q: How have you tried to promote your Individual Website?
A: It’s not that hard. I try to get them there from my bio basically because if I just met you over the phone, we’ve maybe talked for about 15 minutes now, I want to go into a relationship, a relationship of buying or selling a house. If we’re going to have a business relationship then why don’t you check me out at tfieldsweb.com? I’ll bring that up or say, “Shoot me an email and I will send you a link. I want you to take a look at us. Check out The Group, our history and my history, and make sure we can work together because I’ll bet you no matter how many times you’ve bought or sold a home you’ve never had an agent say check me out. Go on there take a look at the kids – it’s pretty cool.” I’m a soft sale. I’m not really directing people towards the blog or any kind of conversations because I’d much rather pick up the phone and talk to people.

Q: Do you follow the trends of social networking or is that something you stay away from?
A: I am a member of a few places but definitely Facebook. I’ve made money off of Facebook. In fact I should make a lot of money off of Facebook this year!

Q: So you have actually generated business off of Facebook?
A: My kids made me get on there and then for the heck of it, it was a Saturday night and my wife and I were just sitting around, and I said boy what happens if I click my reunion date? I said, “Look at these people I haven’t talked to in 30 years!” I got together with a few of them online, called them, did the texting thing and the blogging on there and you can get a good thread going with a few people and that’s cool. For instance one guys lives only about ten miles away from me up here in Fort Collins so we had a beer and we sat down and talked. I asked him what he’d been doing and he told me he sold some business…for $46 million dollars! So I of course asked where he was going to buy his 2nd and 3rd home and he said funny you should ask. So now I am getting together with him and another guy from my class who lives outside of Boulder to help them buy their next homes.

I was working with a doctor up here and his wife, at the closing table, mentioned something about her college daughter and Facebook. I said do you have an account? And her eyes lit up. You wouldn’t believe how much advertising I got off her account. She loved the marketing we did on their house because I do aerial videos. I like to get the toy helicopters that take the pictures, you know, the aerials, and I put them together. She said they put the pictured up on Facebook and her friends loved it! I said can I make you a friend? She said absolutely so now I’ve changed things. Instead of being the blogger saying I’m now getting up to go to the bathroom, and now I’m going to go get a water, I now say looking forward to yoga, sales meeting and writing a contract. And I get responses. People are calling back. So I am using Facebook more for business that way.

Q: You seem to have several success stories like that?
A: Yeah and I’ve got more. I graduated from Boulder High School back in the old days, and thirty years ago our team won state basketball championship. So on Facebook I heard from one of my friends that lives in Merin County (San Francisco). So I’m talking with Annie and she mentions one of her brothers is going to go to this thing at CU because the athletics director, an old buddy of mine at CU, is throwing a party for the team. So I went down there and I was talking to my buddies and it was good to see them. Facebook came up and a couple of the business guys asked how I am doing with it. I said go find me on it and one day, I got a call back from several of them looking to do business.

Still, I think if you’re going to train people on Facebook though, you have to tell people that the first two weeks is social and nothing but gossip. Watch yourself because it can become very addicting!  

Q: You mentioned you do all your own videos. Do you use a vendor that The Group, Inc. has arranged or your own vendor?
A: I hire out. Right now I use Defiant Productions. It’s a couple college kids that were written about in the paper so I thought I would give them a call and get them started. The video I did, the very latest one, we actually did a lot of the filming and most of the voice-over was done in studio.

I’ve got a personal vendetta against agents who don’t treat their listings like businesses, who put up three pictures that are blurry because they took them with their camera phone. I’ve got a real problem with some of these guys who say hey I do video and then they throw it on YouTube and get this little blurry picture. Am I going to look at a blurry picture and consider spending $500,000 on something? You can go to Vimeo and Vimeo is high class, definite quality. These guys have the nice camera, they have the microphone system set up so that your voice is clear. I’m getting good responses. I like the way we showcase the houses. Technically I think the last one was a little too long but for a beautiful house, the guys put together a pretty cool deal.

CLICK HERE TO SEE ONE OF TODD’S VIDEOS.

Q: You seem pretty tech savvy. What is your favorite feature that The Group, Inc. website has?
A: Our website is tremendous. I think it’s a great resource. We drive people to it and they call us. I love getting a call and they say can you show me a home? I pull up the home and it’s a RE/MAX listing. So I have to ask, “How’d you find us?” And it’s always because they were on our website. That’s great how did you find our site? They were just ‘Googling’ the area and ours looked pretty cool. Here I am showing RE/MAX homes and Coldwell Banker homes that they found on our site! These are people that obviously are just out there trying to get the best deal but I like that. I love our website for that.

Q: Is there anything you’ve come across or seen that you’re interested in right now?
A: I think the concept of live video is interesting. I know live chat is a big thin that people try to incorporate but live video would be really cool. I’m doing a lot of business from people International and out of state so I’ve gone to Skype for that. The bandwidths are getting good enough the computers are getting good enough now for most people to where video is becoming a must. A live video feed. Talk to somebody, not a realtor, because nobody wants to talk to a realtor but talk to a customer service/realtor rep – something like that would be really cool to play with. If you have someone who presents themselves well they could have the camera on them and respond anytime someone pops up wanting to talk over live video!
 
Q: What is your favorite thing about working at The Group, Inc.? What has kept you there for 15 years?
A: The people. We don’t sell, we council. And we’re all family here. You put all of this stuff together and you get a pretty good relationship here.

About People in the Network Making A Difference: We like to highlight staff and or agents around the Enterprise Network that are making a difference in their organization and the Network itself. We asked each of our Members to nominate people they think deserve recognition as things happen in their organization. We talk to these nominees and find out how and why they are making an impact and try to uncover some of the things they are doing that others in the Network could learn from. If you know of someone who should be nominated leave us a message. 

NINJA Partnership Advantages for the Enterprise Network:

• There will be branded content available for the Broker to distribute to agents that want to get on the NINJA path.
• A game plan will be developed for companies that want to introduce the NINJA program into their business outlining what steps to take
• NINJA speakers will be occasional guest speakers on monthly Enter­prise conference calls and at other Enterprise Network events.
• Active Website will provide Brokers with email content on the NINJA Program
• The Broker can use this content to post on internal blogs, send out in digital newsletters and printed material. (The concept is to give the Broker great content – a huge benefit to existing agents and in the recruiting of new agents.)
• NINJA will promote the Active Enterprise Network as a preferred vendor and partner on the NINJA website. This will help with SEO rankings and bring value to the Network.
• The Active Website team will be looking to incorporate NINJA consulting and training into our Active Enterprise software.
• There will be tailored consulting and information available for all Enterprise Network Members.

Through this partnership members will have access to more than just the Ninja classes. Members will also receive: Discounts on the NINJA CD’s and sales materials (normally requires a Level Two membership); access to a special ‘Enterprise Only’ NINJA Training Class taught by Larry Kendall in 2009; all Enterprise Network agents get a FREE Level One membership to the NINJA Network which includes the “Ninja News” e-newsletter and “The Real Estate Insider,” an electronic version of The Group, Inc.’s newsletter.

As a result, our Brokers can provide the following benefits to their agents:

• A FREE Level One membership to NINJA Nation
• A FREE month of membership to Level Two
• Discounts on NINJA training materials
• Discounts to NINJA shop

This partnership opens up the NINJA doors to the Enterprise Network. Our goal is to bring qualified vendors together to help in various aspects of our client’s business. With access to all of its services and products at a discounted rate, Active’s Enterprise Network is one step ahead of the competition. Let’s start selling!