Technology For Agents

In the past, Top Producer 7i hasn’t been the greatest email platform provider. Using their software, you can forward all emails to your Top Producer inbox and send emails from there, but the system really isn’t as robust as Google or Yahoo Mail, even Microsoft Outlook. Probably the best thing about using Top Producer for your emails is that when searching a contact in Top Producer, you can view their history and see a list of all emails sent to that contact in the past.

Our cries have been heard! Top Producer has now introduce Outlook Connector. This piece of software links your Top Producer account with Microsoft Outlook 2003 (2007 not yet supported) and comes with the following features:

• Email features within Top Producer 7i automatically launch Microsoft Outlook 2003 rather than Top Producer 7i’s My Email.
• When sending an email from Microsoft Outlook, the message is copied to the recipient’s contact history in Top Producer 7i.
• Search your Top Producer contact list and add contacts as message recipients, all from within Microsoft Outlook.
• Manage your Top Producer email and all additional email accounts directly from Microsoft Outlook.

This functionality comes at a hefty price, unfortunately, at $149. Though this is a one time fee, I have been using Top Producer 7i and Microsoft Outlook for quite some time now interdependent of each other, and I personally cannot see spending $149 to link the two at this time for a system that has been working fine up to this day.

As real estate agents, we must analyze all expenses and make sure that will all new added expenses, a replaceable income can be accounted for. In this case, linking Top Producer and Microsoft Outlook will not increase my sales directly, thus I cannot justify the expense to my business budget.

It’s always puzzled me why Top Producer charges for upgrades to their software such as this one. The new functionality should be used to entice new agents to become a user of their system, not as a way to continually hit the wallets of agents eager to invest in technologies that may not necessarily benefit their business. Top Producer 7i is a wonderful tool to have in your arsenal. A pricey upgrade such as Outlook Connector, though a nifty tool to have, is not really required and shouldn’t be invested in without making sure it can TRULY help your business become more efficient and prosperous.

You can learn more about Outlook Connector here.

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