Minimizing the "Madness" in your March

The games are on and you’re still in the office.

Well, you WERE in the office, but you’re starting to—“cough!”—feel that cold coming on.

“I’m heading out,” you tell your broker, and she nods in agreement with a smirk like she doesn’t exactly believe your influenza efforts, because she’s heard the same from a half-dozen other agents this week.

You’re on your way home, the radio’s blaring the game, and you’re hot in anticipation of your three-day weekend on the couch, where you’ll indulge in endless basketball and about as much food.

Your brackets are sure to kick butt, your friends are on speed-dial in an effort to streamline bragging and you’re already thinking of what you’re going to do with that $250 you’re certain to win because you’re the only one to take that #12-seed to the Elite Eight. Your foolish friends didn’t see what you did—that their shooting matches up well against the major conference team that you think is a little overrated.

You pull into your driveway, ready to make the mad dash through the door, straight to the TV. Anything that comes between you and that couch might just receive your best running back impression and, blockers or not, you’re certain you’re scoring on this carry.

It’s just then that you remember that little bug that has been in your ear all morning. It’s not the one you pretended had infiltrated your immune system, but the one that kept reminding you there actually was something you needed to do today. You ignored it because you were too caught up with your pre-calculated cough and quick cruise home.

But now it’s clear. You had a REALLY important call you had to make. It was with the buyer who told you to touch base this week. He was prepared to finally make an offer on that house, but needed to speak with his wife this week upon returning to town. He thought he might be able to talk her into it, and you were on the top list of about a dozen real estate agents he had spoken with. He wasn’t overly impressed with a few of the others, who didn’t get back with him when he had previously asked. You’re now on the verge of being added to that list.

You had planned on watching one game on your TV, streaming another on your laptop and a third on your smartphone. The third option will be paused for a moment. You grab your smartphone on the way through the door. By the time you’ve juked and weaved your way to the couch, you’re logged into the new mobile DeltaNet app. You find the client and his contact information, and you glance at your notes on him.

Today, indeed, you were supposed to make the call. No problem. You hit his phone number, your phone connects it, and you’re speaking with him by the time you’re able to turn on and mute your TV. You’re watching the game, having the conversation, and business and basketball—in all its March glory—are simultaneously tackled by the smart athlete you’ve become over the past five minutes.

As you get off the phone, you update your notes on his profile. They’ll be there for you next week, when you make it back to the office once this “cold” is cleared, and inevitably forget everything going through your mind except how awesome that last shot was, and your friend’s reaction when you hit him with the expected “I-told-you-so!” call that he is most certainly anticipating from you.

You’ve discovered the balance between business and pleasure, and your business and bracket alike are prospering because of your wit.

Next year, your co-workers will be begging you to give them some insight on the bracket. You’ll start by telling them about the DeltaNet.

Contact Delta Media Group for more information on how to take your business mobile, and start streamlining your life.

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Just how important IS technology in Real Estate?

Does spending more money on real estate technology help you make more?

Does making more money help you spend more on real estate technology?

The question might be the industry’s chicken-and-egg. It’s tough to tell which caused the other, and if you polled 10 different people, you might get five to answer each way.

Trying to assume conclusions out of the statistics might be irresponsible. But the stats show what the stats show, and the stats show real estate agents who invest more in marketing and technology make more money.

This, according to a new survey InmanNext conducted that compared top-earning real estate agents (those who take in $100,000 or more per year) to agents earning between $30,000 and $50,000.

Nearly 1,400 real estate agents responded—enough to reduce the study’s margin of error to a small percentage.

Here’s a few things the study showed:

• High-income earners “reported spending more on marketing and technology.”
• High-income agents “cited technology and support as the main reason they would leave” their brokerage within a year.
• Agents making $200,000 or more per year listed Web search as very important to their business, while others listed it as being of low importance.

The study showed high-income agents are also more active online.

“About 39 percent of respondents in the $30,000 to $50,000 income range reported updating their website or blog once a month,” it read. “Less than a third updated their site more than a few times a month compared to nearly half of respondents in the $100,000-or-more income range who updated their site at least a few times a week.”

The same applies for social networks.

“High-income agents tend to cultivate their social media channels more than middle-income agents. While 96 percent of respondents in both income ranges said they belonged to Facebook, just over two-thirds of middle-income respondents reported having between 500 or fewer friends on Facebook, compared with nearly half of high-income agents reporting 500 or more friends on Facebook.

“Among those making $200,000 or more, more than a third reported having more than 1,000 friends on Facebook.”

High-income agents are also more likely to have a Facebook account, Twitter account and YouTube page.

As noted, the cause and effect of this poll isn’t defined. But high-income agents appear to embrace technology, search engine optimization and social media more than others, and actually view it as a reason to consider staying or leaving their brokerage.

A lot can be said for real estate technology, but it starts and ends with how it might help your business succeed, whether you’re an agent or brokerage. We think we might be able to help in that department.

Contact Delta Media Group for more information on how improve your business through new real estate technology, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media incorporation and mobile.

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Delta Updates for March 2nd 2012

Here is a copy of an email I just sent out to all Administrators...



Everyone,

Here are the major updates for the past week at Delta that I think you should be aware of...

Pinterest.com Was NOT Working But...Is...

OK. As you know, the Pinterest button was added to our 30,000+ sites about two weeks ago. Since that time some users had experienced intermittent issues with pinning photos, including yours truly!

The good news is that we fixed it late last night! The bad news...we have to accept responsibility for the problem.

Let me explain:

I knew about the problem of not being able to pin but the problem was intermittent and not consistant. This made it very tough to track down and resolve on our end. We actually thought that the problem was on Pinterest's end and we reached out to their support department on multiple occasions on the issue. Unfortunately, we still have not received a single response from their support team :(

However, I started thinking about the problem more last night and, for whatever reason, I was starting to wonder how they were coping with their rapid growth. (Basically I was thinking like the techno-geek that I am and thinking about the server issues that come with growth.)

What came to mind was that I wondered if Pinterest was being hosted on the Amazon Cloud. So, I did some digging and found that they WERE hosted on the Amazon Cloud. Bingo!

We actually block part of the Amazon Cloud. If you're wondering why check out this Google Search. So, I got up from my desk and walked over to the operations department at around 6:30pm, shared what I found and the team (Shane and Stephen) came up with a solution that allows us to still block the Amazon Cloud attacks and still allow Pinterest to work. They had the solution up and running by 7:02pm last night...Thank you Shane and Stephen!

The Best Quick Property Search Keeps Getting Easier to Use

We've upgraded the Quick Property Search on all the sites yet again.

With this update we've expanded the acceptable logic for doing full property searches. With our Quick Property Search feature we're tracking that customers prefer this method by more than 2 to 1 now and it's growing.

As a reminder, our Quick Property Search can search States, Counties, Zip Codes, School Districts, Areas, Cities, Subdivisions, Neighborhoods, Lakes, and Addresses all at the same time, in real time while showing total number of properties in each match result. The matches are also sorted with the matches with the most results first. You'll also notice that we don't limit our matches to just a few like some other companies do which makes ours even better yet :)

A Better Call to Action

We've updated all sites using our proactive MyHomeFinder notices to feature a new notice (pictured below).

This new notice is much cleaner, more visually appealing and we only require an email address now. This will help encourage more customers to engage with your company and your agents as they search for properties.

Manage Your Open House Ads with Delta

We've released a new Open House Ad Manager. This system gives your agents the ability to enter open house ads for use in publications all while managing deadlines. There are so many features that if you are interested you should reach out to our Customer Service Staff for a walk-through of the system.

Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,
Mike Minard
President
Delta Media Group, Inc.

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Going Mobile in Your Business

The first time you touched your phone today you might have been hitting the snooze button. Shortly thereafter, you turned off your alarm.

It might not have been long before you used it to check your email. Or Facebook. Maybe you read the news, whether from an app or website. Perhaps you checked the weather. Or you might have skipped the daily events and instead responded to your Words with Friends game.

At that time you probably didn't think about what you might do with your cell phone tomorrow morning. You probably just assumed it would follow the daily ritual. You probably didn't think you might use it to check the status of a lead. You might not have expected to use it to see if you received a new lead overnight. Maybe you planned on checking Facebook to see if it was a special day for any of your clients, but you already saw on the DeltaNet that it was Bill's birthday.

Perhaps you didn't envision being able to quickly add new customers. And you just assumed you'd have to get to the office before you could update the description on that listing. But it’s early in the morning, you haven’t finished breakfast and you’ve already done all those things.

Your clients are followed up with. Your leads have been processed. Your listings updated.

And now, as you finish your cereal and leave your house, you can focus on prospecting. You can relax about the tedious work you used to spend what seemed like your entire morning doing, even when you had other plans. You can focus on real estate, and depend on technology to quickly and easily take care of the other matters of your job.

It’s been said that “today is the first day of the rest of your life.” Well, we’d like to think tomorrow will be the first morning of the rest of your real estate career. It will be the first morning you can take care of business before getting to your business. It will be the first morning you can follow your leads and stats without interrupting your day to do so.

Tomorrow morning is the first morning you can wake up and use the DeltaNet app, directly from your cell phone. The DeltaNet app is going live today. Tomorrow, it might start your work day.

Easy to use, the DeltaNet app allows you to access most customer related facets of the DeltaNet, all within an app, all from your mobile phone. You can access your website on the go. You can respond to your leads from the grocery store. You can add a new customer you ran into while at dinner. And your entire business will stay with you, accessible at your finger tips, for as long as your mobile phone does.

Stop feeling like you’re married to your job. Check in on it, then put it back in your pocket and carry on with your day. It will be there the next time you need to check in.

Contact Delta Media Group for more information on how to take your real estate business mobile.

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System Updates for Last Week and Major Mobile Release for DeltaNet 4.0 Information

Here is a copy of an email I just sent out to Administrators. These are the major changes from this past week to the system.

Everyone,

We've made a few system changes this past week as noted below.

Major Mobile Update for DeltaNet 4.0

At the end of this week we are releasing a new mobile version of the new DeltaNet 4.0. This update will be available to ALL agents that are using the new DeltaNet. With the previous version of the DeltaNet only agents on the upgrade had access to a mobile optimized version. So, this is really good news for ALL agents.

So, here is what the agents will be able to do:

Quickly Add Customers - Agents will be able to easily add cusotmers on the go. This includes the ability to easily setup new listing emails.

Process Leads - Agents can process leads!

Accept Broadcast Leads - Agents can accept broadcast customers!

View Customer Contact Information - Agents have access to their directory of customers in the DeltaNet anywhere they are from their mobile device.

This new mobile DeltaNet will work on iPhone and Android phones. Screen shots are below. I'm sure you'll have questions and we will share more information at the end of the week when we launch this! Also, keep in mind that these screen shots are taken from a test account with "junk" data so the names and data will be very odd :)

       

Pinterest, Pinterest, Pinterest...

So you've probably heard about Pinterest (http://www.pinterest.com). I'm pleased to announce that we've added in support on our sites for pinning photos onto pinterest. You'll notice that on some property detail pages we've added the Pin It button.

We're Doing More Social for Your Agents

We're integrating more social media for your agents to the system and we've added social media links to all new listing emails. The way this works is if the agents have their social media information entered in the DeltaNet then we automatically add these icons to the emails that are going out.

Notice the Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube icons at the bottom of the image to the right. Each icon shows, provided the agent has the information for each appropriate social network entered.

DeltaNet 4.0 Agent Welcome Message is Back!

We've added the ability to do an agent welcome message back into the DeltaNet. If you had the welcome message in place on the previous DeltaNet you will need to go in and activate the message. There is a checkbox ("Show in Agent Dashboard") on the page where you edit the welcome message within the DeltaNet. If you aren't sure where this is please contact our customer service department and they can help you with it.

More Competing Properties Are Showing

We've received questions on how we are matching up "Competing Properties" on the reports that go out such as Seller Reports. As I saw examples of properties that had no matching competing properties it became clear that in some cases we weren't looking at the right criteria. So, we have dropped looking at the number of bedrooms and the number of bathrooms. In many cases, there would be a home with 4 bedrooms where all the other homes have 2. And even though the homes were similar in price and size we would not include them because they were so different in terms of the number of bedrooms or bathrooms.

So, the criteria we are checking on now for competing properties are: Price within 30%; Square Feet within 15%; Same City, State, and Zip Code; Same Property Category.

Better Back-Tracking Ability for Closed Lead Sources

We've updated the Customer Contact Profile Sheet on the Admin Side of the DeltaNet to now provide more information on customers and which agents they have worked with. Companies that are tracking back where each transaction originated have found it useful to know if agents have shared leads in the system with other agents.

Let me give you a scenareo where this may be useful: Agent X closed a transaction. You can see the customer in the system but the customer is assigned to Agent Y with a fee (because the brokerage generated the lead). However, lets say that Agent Y shared the customer with Agent X. In this specific scenareo we have made it much easier to see this "history". See the screen shot below.

As always, if you have questions please contact our customer service department at support@deltagroup.com.

Sincerely,
Mike Minard
President
Delta Media Group, Inc.

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System changes week of February 5th, 2012

I sent out an email update last week on some various changes we made to our system. Here is a copy of that email. If you would like to get on the email list please email support@deltagroup.com and let them know you would like added to the weekly update email list.

Everyone,

Hopefully you've had a good week! In this email I'm outlining a few system changes that we've made in the past week. As always, if you have any questions please email support@deltagroup.com and the team will help you.

The Best New Listing Notification Email System Got Better

We've updated the format of the New Listing Notification Emails. The subject of the emails has been updated to be in the format of [Company/Agent Name] listing updates for mm/dd/yyyy: x new, y open houses, z back on market, a sales(s) pending, b sales(s). Here is a good example from an email I just got a couple days ago: Donna Aber listing updates for 2/8/2012: 6 new, 9 open houses, 1 update, 1 sale pending. As always, the agents can override this default subject format if they choose under the preferences section of the DeltaNet.

Blogging Updates that Make Sense for ALL Agents

We've posted an update to our blogging system that makes our integrated blog system work more like popular blogging systems such as Blogger. We've removed the Title section so we now have a Subject and the Blog Post itself. We've also re-arranged some things on the public side to clean-up the format some and make it look cleaner. This feature has been very popular and is available to all companies and all agents that are on the upgraded and standard systems. Agents can access the blog features under the Marketing Tab. Administrators can access this feature for their company under the Admin Side under the Marketing Tab as well. If you aren't using this feature you really should consider doing so unless you have a specific SEO strategy for not using an integrated blog.

Easily Add Customers While Doing an Email Blast in DeltaNet 4.0

For customers using the new DeltaNet 4.0 we've updated the email blast feature in the Customer Center. We've added the ability to quickly add customers and the ability to easily add attachments. A "hidden" feature is the ability to also drag and drop attachments to the email blast. Did I mention that I'm sending these updates out with this tool now ;)

Agents Can Easily Email All Customers now in DeltaNet 4.0

Another feature we've just added to the new email blast feature in the Customer Center is the ability to email all customers. We're trying to make it very easy for your agents to communicate with their customers!

Agents Can Personalize Email Blasts Easily in DeltaNet 4.0

One last feature added in the past week on the email blast feature in the Customer Center is the ability to personalize email blasts that are going out to all customers. We've added a button in the toolbar that is titled "var" where agents can insert Customer Database variables. So far we have added "Client Full Name" and "Client First Name". This works just like a mail-merge. If these variables are used we will address each email recipient with their appropriate name in the email that the agent sends out.

YouTube Video Control for Agents

Videos are really big and agents are adding more and more videos. With these videos it is becoming necessary for us to add some options to allow the agents to filter out other agent videos from properties that are displayed on the agent sites. We've given agents the ability to hide videos uploaded by other agents. We've heard of some agents that didn't want branded videos from other agents showing on their site so we added this control. Agents can access this under Listing Display controls of the Website section.

More Reporting to Administrators

We've updated the Agent Roster Report and added an option that will allow administrators to see which agents have been removed from the lead broadcast list. This helps Administrators quickly see what agents are in the broadcast pool and which ones are not.

Better HTML Editor

First, let me apologize for not pre-announcing this feature release. I'm sorry! With that said, it was necessary to push out an immediate update to the HTML Editor within our system. The editor we were using starting showing errors with the latest Internet Explorer updates and the editor is no longer supported. We were planning a move to this new edit but, we had to rush the release out.

The new HTML edit is the same editor that Facebook, Apple, Joomla, Wordpress, Microsoft, etc. use. It's good and it produces really good, clean HTML code. We're excited about it.

Also, we have an updated HTML Editor Manual that we've created that we will have live by Monday within the DeltaNet.

Agents Can Hide Office Name on Their Sites Now

We've added the ability for agents to hide the office name from their sites. By default, we show the office name that the agent is in on their websites. Some agents have requested that we hide their office name for various reasons. The ability to disable this is on the last step of customizing the website. There is a checkbox for "Show office name on website". Our default is checked.

Sincerely,
Mike Minard
President
Delta Media Group, Inc.

  

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FInding feasibility in the foreclosure fiasco

More real estate news this week.

Foreclosures could increase in 2012. In fact, some sources say they could hit an all-time high. And as we know, with news these days comes questions. Especially when that news concerns the economy.

You find yourself sitting in your office, yet again, pondering the possibilities. This has gotten old over the past four or five years, depending on which market you’re in.

What would an increase in foreclosures do to the housing market? How would home prices be impacted? How will home buyers and sellers respond? Would an increase in foreclosed homes prompt more home sales or fewer?

While such questions burn in your mind, your buyers and sellers are, for the most part, clueless. They can’t easily find foreclosed homes. Foreclosure websites often don’t display all foreclosed listings, and many require a registration just to search. And what about short sales?

More than 8 million people used Google to search for foreclosed homes in January. That was only using the top dozen search phrases, and only on Google. That number doesn’t include searches for state, city and township foreclosures, detailed searches for foreclosures, foreclosure searches on real estate websites, or foreclosure searches on Bing, Yahoo or AOL.

Let this number sink in for a moment: Eight million searches in one month. If each search were a lead, that would be enough to give eight foreclosure leads per month to each REALTOR in the nation, and that’s before looking at all the other tens of thousands of ways people searched for homes.

And therein lies the problem. Your real estate company can’t receive any of those leads because you don’t have foreclosure listings. And that’s assuming you have good enough search engine optimization to show up high in Google rankings for other property searches.

Well, you didn’t have foreclosure listings. But now you can, so long as your MLS has a data feed for it. That is, if you’re using Delta Media Group.

The data feed means your real estate website will automatically show all area foreclosures, updated daily. Visitors can use your website to search all listings or only foreclosures. Visitors can also distinguish between short sale and foreclosure listings, in order to better differentiate what kind of purchasing process they may face.

And those searching for foreclosures shouldn’t even have to go to your website to find them. With Delta Media Group’s search engine optimization services, they can find your website and its foreclosed listings when searching on Google, so you can start bringing your brokerage a share of that eight-million piece pie.

Visitor takes to Google to search foreclosed homes in their region. He finds your website. He searches foreclosed homes on it. He submits a request for more information. Your site automatically distributes the request to eligible agents, one of which contacts the visitor within minutes. The visitor gets the information he desires and your agent signs him up to automatically receive detailed market updates of other foreclosed and for-sale homes in the region he’s searching. This all happens within minutes.

Doesn’t that process seem a heck of a lot easier than trying to make sense of the foreclosure implications you heard about on the news today?

Contact Delta Media Group for more information on how to display foreclosed homes on your real estate website, and how to improve your real estate search engine optimization.

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The new-age marketing of real estate market news

The news in real estate can be pretty confusing for you, let alone your buyers.

Just yesterday, news broke of a federal mortgage settlement plan.

“How will that affect those currently interested in buying or selling,” you thought to yourself while watching the news.

It’s a valid question. With the government stepping into the real estate market in different ways, it’s bound to affect your business.

“I need to communicate this message,” you think, knowing the trends you’re seeing in the local market is of the utmost importance.

In the past you had little control over the news. What was said or written was said or written. Real estate ultimately operated at the hands of the local and national news, and you were essentially helpless in that plight. Many other agents have fallen victim to this way of doing things. They wait for the phone to ring and play fire control anytime a negative story on the economy hits. They aren’t sure how to communicate their side until they get that phone call from an already worried customer.

But not you. You have technology at your side. So you take to your blog, which you set up through your Delta Media Group agent website. You begin typing away, explaining what the government is looking to do and what it means to the local market. You explain the amount of foreclosed homes, how long the average home stays on the market and how much inventory your market currently has. You compare that to past markets, and prior “roller coaster” real estate trends. The market hasn’t always been stable. It hasn’t always been bad or good. It has always been consistently inconsistent, and good times often follow bad, and sometimes vice versa.

The current trend is just that—a trend. It’s not expected to last forever, and the homes that have quickly gone down in value should come back up, just like the homes that quickly went up in value have come down. There are many markets where the roller coaster has higher hills and steeper falls. You explain that these often make the headlines, but rarely represent your market and its exact trends. Each market it unique, and yours has its own nuances.

You explain the market, in your brief manifesto, and push to publish. “I need to share this story now,” you think. And you go about doing so. You post a link it to your Facebook account. You tweet it on Twitter. Your blog subscribers already received it, but your other customers haven’t. You email it to them via an email blast you quickly set up in the DeltaNet. You just as quickly post a link on your website home page.

In a short amount of time, your story about your market has legs. Those who were curious can see how the news relates, not from a national level but close to home, directly from someone who works in it daily and knows the market they live in.

With any luck, your Twitter followers retweet it. Your Facebook fans like it, share it and comment on it. Their fans and followers see what they’re doing, and others begin going to your blog, which is linked to your website via the DeltaNet, and reading the news you spread.

Pretty confusing indeed. But now your story is out. Your customers thank you for it. You were proactive in your communications rather than reactive, waiting to field the phone calls of worried and dissenting real estate clients alike. New people were even exposed to your message, shared with them by some of your clients who spread the news you posted.

“Thank you,” one of them writes to you on Facebook. “I’ve seen this discussed quite a bit on CNN, but I haven’t seen anyone talk about how that affects our neighborhood. I’m glad to see what’s really going on and how it relates to me.”

You quickly had your say, and you didn’t have to stand on a park bench with a megaphone to say it. Besides, you didn’t want to step on that vinyl advertisement of another agent who might not have had the means to spread the news so quickly...

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My, how far real estate technology has come...

There’s a good chance you don’t remember the last time you couldn’t run an errand because you were waiting for a phone call.

Think back for a moment.

You were trying to schedule a check-up at the doctor’s office. You knew if you waited to speak with them for another day, your appointment could be pushed back another week. You really needed to run to the store to return that videotape so you could get home and start dinner, but you just needed to get that phone call first.

Isn’t it amazing how far things have come?

Now that call will reach you on your cell phone. All you’ll have to do is pull it out of your pocket or purse. When you schedule that appointment, you can immediately add it to the calendar on your phone, which will remind you the day before that it’s coming, and what time you scheduled it for. And all this can be done before you have the chance to put that Blu-ray in the RedBox return slot.

On the other hand, maybe things haven’t changed so much. You still work out of a real estate office. You still drive to that office. You may communicate with your clients through email and social networks, but you still speak with them on the phone—often at your desk in your cubicle where the phone wire ties you to the wall, just as it always has.

Now you use the computer for business. You can get on the Internet, find homes and easily tell your clients about them without filing through mounds of papers. Now your clients reach you online, even if you have never met them before. Now you take your business logs home with you.

You walk in your house, get on the Internet, log into the DeltaNet and your entire real estate business is in front of you. All your clients, all your communications with them, what they’re interested in, when you need to follow up with them, how you last followed up with them and even their birthdays and anniversaries are all there on your screen. That made things easy.

You can follow up with them there, remind yourself to do so at a particular time tomorrow, or just see the communications you’ve had with them automatically, since the DeltaNet has profiled them for you and automatically sent them follow-up information from you, all relating to their real estate inquiries.

How much easier was it to work from home after you attained that technology? How much more secure did you feel knowing it was all there, with you at all times, and all you had to do was log into the Internet to access it? No more forgetting. No more apologizing for not following up. And don’t even scoff if you lose your notepad. Heck, even if your computer stopped working a new one will hook back into the Internet, right where you left off. No more getting sick and not being able to take care of that one client you needed to touch base with that day, only to find out a day later that he was taken care of because he spoke with another agent already.

Now envision that technology, and how much easier it made your life. Envision how much more difficult it was before you had access to it. Envision that period before you had a cell phone, and how much different it was then; how unbearable that would seem to you now.

Now envision that same cell phone with all the information and capabilities the DeltaNet has provided your business by computer.

Hold that thought for a few more business days...

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Using education to hone in on home sales

The worry overcame Carol as she read from CNNMoney.com this morning.

“New-home sales hit a record low,” the headline read. And immediately, Carol could see the look in the eyes of her agents.

“How am I going to keep motivating them with news like this,” she thought to herself.

Carol knew the news wasn’t as bad as the article made it out. In fact, it didn’t even pertain to existing home sales. Plus, home sales rose in December in the county her real estate office was located in, and sales were up over 2010 levels.

But the national media tends to have a lot of pull in public perception, and public perception tends to have a lot of pull in the morale of Carol’s agents. And any negative news story involving real estate can come into play.

“I know things are better here, but my buyers are apprehensive because of what they keep hearing every time they turn on the news,” she remembers an agent telling her just a few months back. “They keep hearing these things, and they grow weary of buying that home they were set on. They’re afraid they won’t sell their own house.”

At the time, Carol wasn’t able to give the agent a good answer. The company had a lackluster website, her agents received few, if any, leads, and her agents seemed to be fighting an up-hill battle against the negative press.

The economy hasn’t been the best, home sales aren’t what they were in 2006 and 2012 is an election year. Gas prices are up, as is the unemployment rate, and worry has been running high since the infamous real estate crash of 2007.

Carol knew then that she had to make changes. She invested in a new website, pitched the news to her agents and knew that the future looked brighter. But the negative press kept coming.

“How do I energize my agents in a market like this,” Carol wondered.

And then the answer hit her: Education.

Carol had recently asked around the office to learn that many of her agents weren’t aware of several of the tools their website provided them. They had all been offered training on the site, but most just looked to set up their own agent websites so their presence was online. They weren't aware the site actually had tools built in.

Her agents had recently asked around to find that many of their clients weren’t aware of their market conditions, and were hesitant to talk real estate as result. They weren't aware that much of the news didn't pertain to their area, and that trends showed it was a great time to purchase.

The DeltaNet could help address both problems.

Carol started planning training sessions. She knew she could efficiently manage all the leads and traffic the brokerage’s real estate website had drawn in the short time since it launched. She could have leads automatically dispersed to her agents, and follow up to assure agents were receiving more leads more quickly, and could answer their clients instantly.

Agents could send their clients not just information on homes for sale, but entire market reports. Clients could see what homes were listed in their neighborhood, pricing trends for local listings, what listings went back on the market, how many listings were on the market, and how much listings sold for.

Agents could create a true picture of what was happening in the market around them, rather than forming their opinions from the national news. They could communicate that to their clients, educating them on the market and its up-to-date trends, so they would be the most informed when it came to making their decisions.

Carol saw how to educate her agents, and she saw how to help her agents educate their clients. She immediately logged into the DeltaNet, scheduled a training session for the next morning, and sent a notification to all her agents.

Carol was already using her new real estate website, and the education process was already beginning.

Contact Delta Media Group at 866-233-9833 to find out how you can more efficiently educate your agents, and give your agents the tools to better educate their clients.

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Paula's dream home, back on the market

Paula couldn’t help but fall in love with the house on Main Street.

She drove past it several times over the years, constantly imagining how she would decorate it if it could one day be hers.

So you could picture her excitement the day she noticed the “For Sale” sign in the front yard. She stopped at the store on the way home from the office, turned on to Main Street on the way back from the store and there was the sign, propped in the front lawn like a trophy with her name on it.

She barged through her door almost as soon as she pulled into her driveway.

“We have to schedule a showing! Are you good this weekend?” she emphatically asked her husband. He was, and Paula took to the Web, quickly Googled the house, clicked on the first real estate website she saw and requested a showing.

She heard back the same day...but the news wasn’t good.

“I’m sorry,” the real estate agent said on the phone. “There’s already an offer on the table for the listing you requested to see. But we can help you find another house.”

Paula was devastated. There were no other homes of her dreams. The one on Main Street—that she had waited to see go up for sale for so many years—had. And she was too late.

Paula might have known earlier had she more actively been in the market. She would have probably been notified had she previously set up a My Home Finder account on the real estate website. But questioning the “what ifs” didn’t help anything. Frustrated from getting her hopes up only to feel them crashing down, Paula forgot about real estate for a while.

That’s why it was such a surprise the morning she found the listing was back on the market. She discovered as much not by driving past it—the “For Sale” was still in the yard from the last time it was listed—but from an early morning email from the real estate company.

“Listings Back on the Market,” the email read, and Paula was stunned to see that very home right underneath the title. She immediately called the real estate agent.

“I just got your email,” she exclaimed. “It’s back on the market??”

“It is,” the agent responded. “We were just notified this morning. I was going to call you shortly, but wasn’t sure if you’d be up this early.”

The agent quickly logged into the DeltaNet, found Paula’s profile and scheduled a showing with her—for that night. Paula showed up early, saw what she wanted to see—mainly that there were no significant issues and that her husband approved—and made an offer on the spot.

“I don’t want to lose this one again,” she said, standing in the home’s kitchen with the agent.

And she might have, had it not been for the notification email. Paula received it, but she didn’t understand how it got to her. She didn’t realize how bad the agent felt for her. She didn’t see when the agent set up her online profile. She wasn’t aware that the agent customized it to specifically follow that house and others like it in the area, and notify Paula if it or others became available.

Paula didn’t know much about the process that brought the home of her dreams back to her. To her, it felt like fate—it all worked out somehow, and it all felt out of her hands in the meantime.

But the agent knew. And Paula had her dream house as a result.

Contact Delta Media Group at 866-233-9833 to find out how you can more efficiently help your customers fulfill their dreams.

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Replacing real estate apprehension with insight

At the time Tim bought his last house, he had no insight to what was going on in the market.

He knew real estate was supposed to be a good investment because the newspapers reported as much.

He knew he could get a loan with nothing down because his friend did.

He knew his real estate agent at the time could help him buy any house on the market because she told him so.

Tim didn’t know much about real estate at all, which scares him today. He wants to sell his current house, wants to know he won’t lose his butt on the transaction, wants to find a nicer house, and wants to know his investment won’t get him in trouble a few years down the road, like his current house did over the past few years.

Tim has found this difficult, though. The newspapers are only reporting negative news. He keeps hearing about foreclosures on TV. And his real estate agent, who he thought he could trust, never contacted him again after his last purchase. In fact, when Tim called her brokerage he discovered she had left the real estate industry altogether.

You can’t blame Tim for having a negative taste in his mouth toward real estate. You can’t fault him for being tainted by those in the industry who might have oversold on false expectations just five years earlier, but were nowhere to be found when Tim faced real problems.

So Tim ventures again into a sea that now seems even more vast and mysterious than it did the first time Tim navigated it. He needs someone to help advise him, and he’s going to make darn sure he vets that person’s expertise a lot more than he did his prior agent’s.

Tim asks a real estate question on a handful of local brokerage websites. He doesn’t know what to expect, but wants to know a real person will actually respond to him, first and foremost.

“If and when someone does respond, I’m going to make sure they can answer my questions, instead of immediately trying to sell me something,” Tim thinks to himself.

He doesn’t have high hopes, which is why he’s surprised when his phone rings within a couple minutes of submitting his question.

“I’m Lori,” the voice on the other end of the phone says. “I wanted to thank you for visiting our website, and had an answer to your question, if you have a moment to speak.”

Tim is dumbfounded. He received auto-responder emails from most of the sites he submitted his question to, but had never received a call back so quickly on something he inquired about. In fact, Tim’s last experience with a company was waiting on hold with his cell phone provider for 18 minutes. He finally hung up.

Lori answers Tim’s questions, which concerned the neighborhood he currently lives in, and what he might be able to sell his house for.

“Why don’t I set you up with an account on my website?” Lori asks. “That way you’ll get a weekly email detailing your neighborhood report.”

The next day, Tim finds a market report in his inbox. It shows other listings on the market that are similar to his own. Tim sees those for sale, those pending a sale and those that recently sold. He sees their address, square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, the year they were built, list price and list date. For those that have sold, he sees their closing price and date, as well as the difference between what the seller originally asked and what the home sold for.

“This is pretty in-depth,” Tim thinks to himself, as he starts summing up where his house stacks against those he’s analyzing.

He looks at the report’s overview. It includes the total number of listings on the market in his neighborhood, both weekly and monthly. He sees the recent trends of what is happening around him, and where his transaction might fit in the process. Just then, another thought starts entering Tim’s mind.

“This is a better view of the market than I’ve gotten from the media. This can actually help me list my house, and when, and for how much. It’s far more in-depth than the info I got from my previous agent.”

Little does Tim know, Lori set the report up to be auto-generated. Tim will receive an updated report each week, and Lori can log into the DeltaNet to track Tim's interaction on her website.

Tim isn't so worried anymore. His collective apprehension is replaced by the reassurance his new insight provides him.

Contact Delta Media Group at 866-233-9833 for more information on how to arm your customers with the insight they need to use your brokerage to make their next transaction.

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Navigating your New Year's resolutions

Did you buy that gym membership yet?

Are you eating healthier? Getting to bed earlier?

If you’re anything like most people, you’ve probably spent a portion of the past week thinking about your New Year’s resolutions.

If you’re anything like most real estate agents, many of those resolutions also have to do with improving your business.

“I want to do a better job following up with my clients.”

“I want to ask for more referrals.”

“I want to be more efficient in my business.”

“I want to grow my online presence and gain more business from the Web.”

Those are all lofty goals, and ones that you’d probably like to permanently apply to your daily business. But New Year’s provides a great reason to buckle down now, and holds you accountable to carry on with your resolutions throughout the year.

There are two tough parts to every New Year’s resolution. The first is how to start. The second is how to continue. And, as you’ve likely found, the more you delay it, the less likely you are of ever fulfilling the resolution you vowed to see through.

So you hop on your laptop. You look at your calendar, which is up to date on the DeltaNet. You have four events in the next week, including two listing presentations and a showing. There are a few opportunities for new business.

You check and see if you have any new leads that you haven’t processed yet. There’s one—you forgot about it, but your office manager mentioned it when you chatted with her on your drive home from that meeting. Another opportunity.

You glance at who has recently been active on your real estate website. Seven people. You check what they were looking at and ask yourself if you’ve recently sent any new listing information to them. You see that you have. Each has received a New Listing Notification email from you this week with listings for sale in the areas they’re looking for. Two of those emails even show listings in the area that just went back on the market. You view those listings and remind yourself to call them tomorrow and see if they have interest in any of them. Added to your “To-Do” list.

That has you thinking…isn’t one of your clients’ birthdays coming up? Or was it his anniversary? Oh yeah. Birthday. Tomorrow. And three other clients have birthdays next week. You’ll have to remember to shoot them an email. You go ahead and schedule that now. It’s been a couple years since you helped them buy their house, but maybe they have a friend or relative who’s starting to look.

Any new news from your brokerage? It looks like they scheduled an office training for next week. You add that to your calendar as well.

Five minutes and the work that used to take you hours is already finished for the day. Not only have you not left your laptop, but you haven’t even left the welcome screen of the new DeltaNet.

Follow-up? Ask about referrals? Efficiency? New business opportunities? Check, check, check and check.

As a matter of fact, you have enough time left over to add a few more New Year’s resolutions to your list.

Now about that gym membership…

Contact Delta Media Group at 866-233-9833 for more information on how to enhance your real estate business in 2012.

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DeltaNet version 4 ready for launch on February 7th

The new DeltaNet is officially available for launch on Tuesday, February 7th. In preparation for the launch I'm creating some videos.  Here are just a few so far...

For agents the new DeltaNet...

• Saves them time because it's more user friendly
• Helps them stay engaged with customers through the new customer center and the automated customer relationship platform
• Makes communication with customers easier through automated communication and easier to use tools
• Let's them process leads faster through auto login and fewer clicks
• Enables them to convert leads into relationships through the new email marketing platform and customer relationship platform

Check out these videos...

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New DeltaNet Screen Recording

See what's in store for Delta customers in 2012...

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