Technology For Agents

What software do you use to house your real estate database?  Among the real estate agents I’ve consulted with, most agents seem to use either Top Producer or Microsoft Outlook.  We know that Top Producer is fairly secure; you’re asked for a username and password before even logging in.

What about Microsoft Outlook?  Anyone with access to your laptop or computer can simply open Outlook and see your database in it’s full form.  Online Tech Tips recently published a nice how-to on securing your Outlook database that deserves a look.

If you are using Microsoft Outlook as your real estate database, keeping your information secure should be a priority near the top of your list!

Thanks goes out to Lifehacker for pointing out this tutorial.

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It’s been brought to my attention by a power user at our market center that Top Producer 8i may have done away with advanced searches.

If you had been a 7i user, you would have been privy to an extensive searching option which allowed you to build a custom search to quite a high degree of complexity.

Wanted to find all open house contacts that did not have an email on file? No problem! Or perhaps you’re looking for anyone without a phone number to apply an “email only” action plan.

Both of these types of searches are no longer available in Top Producer 8i. Joey Lam from Top Producer provided some insight:

The quick and advanced searches in Top Producer 7i are combined into one search in Top Producer 8i. Some of the search fields available in Top Producer 7i are not currently available in Top Producer 8i.

He’s going to be submitting a recommendation to development to bring back the advanced searches, which I appreciate, but why do away with it in the first place?

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A nifty tool from Top Producer was announced at the Keller Williams family reunion this year called Live Post. Essentially, it’s a way for agents to print single postcards, letters, and flyers straight from the 8i dashboard. The cards go to a printing company and are created, stamped, and mailed for you.

Not only does this save you time (and therefore money), but you’re also able to keep all of your systems integrated into Top Producer 8i and not among multiple vendors websites and databases.

• Live Post Product Information
• Live Post Pricing and Postage

Powered by PostNexus, Top Producer LivePost lets you professionally print letters, postcards and flyers, and send them by US Postal service, directly within Top Producer 8i Keller Williams® Realty Edition. With LivePost, you can customize Top Producer 8i mail templates with your own personal message, and distribute them to any of your Top Producer 8i contacts. And, no matter how many pieces you send, you’ll always receive the same per-piece rate.

This sounds like a cool deal for new agents wanting to get more into marketing, but I’d imagine you’d eventually save money with bulk mailing your own marketing pieces. I’ll be giving Live Post a shot soon and blogging my experiences.

Update: As of the date of this post, the setup fee for Live Post is $99. Printing and postage fees (see link above) are additional.

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One of my favorite contact managers just introduced a new feature that goes hand-in-hand with their market snapshot product. Market builder is an automated prospecting solution designed to streamline the direct mail process and help drive traffic to your market snapshot feature of Top Producer.

Learning About Market Builder

Choosing how your lead generation will be handled is undoubtedly a very important part of your real estate business. It’s important to keep your overhead low, conversion ratios high, and the level of complexity manageable.

We know that Market Builder aims to satisfy at least two of these requirements (conversion ratios and level of complexity), but is it still affordable?

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Ryan Ward, a real estate specializing in Atlanta, Georgia real estate, wrote up a nifty review for Microsoft’s Office 2007 Suite that many real estate agents I’m sure have contemplating using (including me). With his permission, I’ve brought his review over to TechForAgents.com.

His review goes into depth on his experiences with the performance of Office in his day to day business, and what you can expect by migrating over to the new version of office.

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