Web Site Design

The most knowledgeable companies that I know of right now who are designing great Web sites for real estate agents can be located at www.bestimage.com, www.sizzlingstudios.com, www.advancedaccess.com, and www.realtor-webdesign.com. The first two companies are more expensive than the last two companies, but the quality of their finished Web sites and the services they offer reflect this, too.

E-mail Newsletter

Sending an E-mail newsletter to your clients and prospects involves doing a lot of things right so that the recipients love receiving every single edition of the E-newsletter from you. The best resource that I know of for learning how to do this correctly is to listen to the 28-minute interview I did with Jack Peckham of the Real Estate Cyberspace Society on this subject. You can listen to my interview with Jack by clicking here.

In addition to this, when the number of subscribers to your E-newsletter begins to grow you will want to have the sending of the E-newsletter and all subscribe and unsubscribe requests handled by a professional company that can do this for you. The company that I utilize for this can be located at www.Savicom.net. They will also allow you to use their service for free until you have over 30 subscribers to your E-newsletter.

For custom HTML E-mail newsletter template design, I recommend www.quimbik.com. 

HTML E-mail Stationery Design
(for sending regular E-mail messages to your clients and prospects)

Please contact Anna Baron at anna@thevirtuallink.com. Or you can visit her Web site at http://www.thevirtuallink.com. Anna is very good at designing HTML templates for sending E-mail and her prices are very reasonable, too. If you'd like to impress your clients by sending them HTML E-mail instead of plain text, have Anna design a template for you.

Postcards and Flyers

The company that I utilize for printing all my postcards and flyers is Postcard Kingdom. I simply find that their prices and quality are very tough to beat. Take a look at their Web site at www.postcardkingdom.com and you'll see what I mean. They can also do all of your mailing directly to your prospects and clients for you, too, which will save you a lot of time in your business. If you need custom design for your printing, I know of no company that can match their rates in this arena either. If you mention my name, they'll also give you a discount.

E-mail Autoresponder Systems for Drip E-mail Campaigns

Utilizing autoresponders can be a great way to build your business. Autoresponders are a series of E-mail messages that you design in advance and then send out to your prospects at specific intervals that you predetermine. The messages are completely mail-merged to the each person's own name also. And best of all, once you enter a prospect into an autoresponder sequence, they continue to receive the entire sequence of E-mail messages that you've designed for them without you ever having to do anything again! 

You can design autoresponder campaigns to follow-up with prospects who will be looking to buy, sell and lease in the future. You can also utilize them to follow-up with past clients you've already done business with to continue to build their loyalty. And, in addition, you can utilize them to keep any and all of your clients and prospects informed on anything you feel is important to them.

Two of the best autoresponder services for you to utilize at this time can be located at www.aweber.com and www.eprospecting.com. 

Toll-free 800 Voicemail Services Designed for Real Estate

These are great for locating more buyers, sellers, and lessees for you to begin working with. Caller ID cannot be blocked on toll-free 800 numbers. What you then do is record voicemail messages for people to listen to that describe individual properties that you have available, or the requirements of specific buyers and lessees that you are working with. Each individual property or buyer/lessee requirement will have its own voicemail message and extension number for people to dial to hear the message. You can then send flyers to your territory asking people to dial the 800 number and appropriate extension to hear more about a property or requirement that you've told them about on your flyer. Or you can also place ads in the newspaper asking them to do exactly the same. When people then dial the toll-free number and extension to hear the voicemail message, the system forwards the caller's phone number to you for immediate follow-up. You can also have riders made for your listing signs with the toll-free phone number and extension number that corresponds to each listing, too. This alone will substantially increase the number of sign calls you receive on your listings. The sign rider will then mention that the callers will hear a pre-recorded voicemail message describing the property when they dial the 800 number followed by the extension.

To successfully obtain more listings, you can implement a similar approach to what I've described above but instead record messages describing what individual buyers and lessees you currently represent are looking for. You can then send flyers to owners describing these requirements along with the toll-free 800 number to call and the appropriate extension numbers to hear each message describing each individual requirement in greater detail. Owners who have buildings coming available for lease or sale that meet these requirements will then be calling to hear your recorded messages. Then you can call them right back to talk about their building and when it will be coming available. 

To maximize your response rate, you may want to include several different buyer/lessee requirements in different size ranges on each flyer that you send out. This way, if an owner receiving the flyer has a building coming available, at least one of the buyer/lessee requirements you've mentioned on the flyer will most likely be in the size range of his building. This will then maximize the probability that he will call and listen to your recording which discusses in more detail what your buyer/lessee is looking for. You'll then be able to call the owner back in about one minute and discuss with him the building he has coming available!

Another great way to utilize this system is during your listing presentations. What you can do is pre-record a voicemail message describing the property you're trying to list before you go to your listing presentation. Then when you're sitting in front of the owner, you show him a flyer you've designed for the property that has both the 800 number and the appropriate extension on it. You then ask the owner to call the number, dial the extension, and listen to the voicemail message. He will then be absolutely blown away to hear detailed information about his property on the voicemail message! You tell him that people will be able to hear this information 24 hours a day, that you'll be immediately notified when anyone listens to the message, and that you'll follow-up immediately with anyone whenever they call.

As the final touch, you can also program the system to deliver a flyer on the property immediately to a caller's fax machine. All the caller has to do is enter their fax number when asked by the system to do so to have a flyer on the property immediately faxed to them. So while your owner is still holding the telephone, have him enter his fax number and voila---immediately he will receive a flyer on his property delivered through his fax machine!

I can't fully express to you how powerful this experience is to property owners. It can literally set you completely apart from your competitors and have the owners choose you as the agent they will list their property with over anyone else. This of course first assumes that you're at least in the running as a potential candidate to get the listing.

Here's a big reason why utilizing this system is so powerful:

While there are always a lot of prospects out there for you to locate and begin doing business with, many of them are not too excited about making a phone call knowing that they will have to talk with a salesperson on the other end. (Would you rather call and speak to an insurance agent you don't know right now or call and hear a short voicemail message describing the features of the program they have to offer you instead?) So the voicemail system then puts you in contact with substantially more prospects in your area who are looking to make transactions, and you can then continually work with only the the best prospects and let go of the less desirable ones that you otherwise might cling to.

This is also a great way to obtain unlisted phone numbers of building owners in your area who you would like to build relationships with. Even if their phone number is unlisted, you will know their phone number immediately when they call and listen to one of your voicemail messages.

The best company that offers this service right now is Proquest Technologies and they can be contacted at 1-800-613-8088. They have an entire written program designed on how to utilize their service that is truly outstanding. The program was written with the residential agent in mind, but it can also be easily adapted to the commercial side of the business, too. If you mention my name when you contact the people at Proquest Technologies they will also give you your first 200 minutes of (800) phone service for FREE.