(Tweet this article!) Kicking off our Holiday Blog Swap, we’d like to take a closer look at the future of real estate and what we can do to prepare ourselves for continued success. At this year’s annual conference, we had the privilege to hear Eric Thompson, President/CEO at The Group, Inc. Real Estate, explain the Vision 2030 Project and answer the important question: What does a brokerage, agent and customer look like in 2030?
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?
At our 2011 Active Enterprise Network Annual Conference Stephanie Streeter, Active’s ROI and LifeCycle Manager, unveiled one of our newest products – Agent LifeCycle. Currently scheduled to be released to Enterprise Network members in 2012, Agent LifeCycle will provide agents with an efficient platform for communicating with their customers.
We understand that agents lead very busy lives, so having a system that allows them to stay connected and organized is crucial to their success. Agent LifeCycle was developed to do just this through features like contact management, lead development, sales tracking and marketing that can be personalized to each agent and their individual needs.
It was key that this new product be beneficial to all agents regardless of their technology proficiency level, so when developing the interface we took both personalization and ease of use into account. For ease of access, the Agent LifeCycle program will be launched already fully integrated within the Enterprise Network Admin Dashboard.
Agent LifeCycle is currently in live beta testing and phased releases will start in early 2012. Additional features of this new product include:
At the core of every brand are the people. Your staff and agents are the biggest point of contact to your customers which is why you want people at your brokerage that will provide outstanding service. To accomplish this, John Turpin, President of Turpin Real Estate, discussed how attraction is key in every brokerage’s recruiting strategy at the 2011 Active Enterprise Network Annual Conference.
With the changing landscape of real estate and the growing amount of competition, having an effective recruiting strategy is necessary to attract new agents. During his session, John discussed many tactics for their new recruiting strategy including targeted relationship building, regular meetings to evaluate the recruiting process and the review process for potential recruits – just to name a few.
On top of building relationships with new hires, they also focused on creating a business that others want to work for. By creating a culture that makes agents excited about the brand, the chances those agents will spread the word increase as well. Turpin uses these happy agents to their advantage by showcasing testimonials on their site.
Chances are, if an agent is thinking about switching brokerages they are looking at the competitors’ websites. Knowing this, Turpin Real Estate created a “Join Our Team” page. Here they were able to address potential recruits directly. The page features:
Agent testimonials
Videos focusing on Turpin’s beliefs on teamwork, the future and quality over quantity
Technological advantages of working at Turpin Real Estate
Call to action items so potential agents can contact the Turpin team
Below is an example of one of Turpin’s recruiting videos:
Results
Their new recruiting strategy had many results. The first being that they hired nine newly licensed agents and 12 experienced agents from other companies. These new recruits now represent 19% of Turpin’s total agent population. Turpin also unexpectedly found that through the creation of the videos, their agents re-examined the positives of working at Turpin Real Estate and created a sense of community among their agents.
At our annual conference, Ebby Halliday’s VP and Director of Marketing, Randall Graham, presented Ebby’s strategy for community involvement. Ebby was founded in 1945 on three legs of service including service to the client, service to the industry and service to the community. For 65 years, Ebby has focused on the giving back to the communities they serve and getting involved in things that matter most to clients.
By doing this, they have seen substantial success when it comes to brand recognition. Ebby has maximized their community relationships through a variety of different events and marketing campaigns that reach their local audience. A few of these campaigns were discussed in length at this year’s event including Ebby’s charity powder-puff football game, their sponsorship of the 2010 Super Bowl and video contests.
Today, we’d like to focus on one important aspect of Ebby’s campaign efforts for the Blondes vs. Brunettes charity powder-puff game. In addition to print and online advertising, social media outreach and more, all advertisements were aimed to promote and attract customers to their website to continue their home search through the recently released proximity search.
At this year’s Active Enterprise Network Annual Conference, Active Website’s Director of Deployment, Tyler Olmsted, and Director of Mobile Technology, Chris Chares, discussed the impact search, mobile and social networking can have to the online home searching process. 89% of home searching is done online and the process can often be a cold, impersonal experience. However, with the new advances in these areas we are able to bridge this gap and provide a robust experience to customers and give them search results that better match their needs.
Before people started home searching online, they would first go to their realtor to help them find homes based on criteria other than the number of beds and baths, price range, etc. Customers would discuss what was important to their lifestyle and the realtor would then be able to help them find homes that matched all of their needs.
However, since more and more buyers are starting their search online before talking to an agent, we need to provide better tools that mimic the experience they would have with an agent. Through search, mobile and social networking, we can achieve this goal. (more…)
