This isn't about real estate, rather just something that hit me while I was driving today in the rain -- when my phone rang. This post involved my cell phone and a car. I'm guessing most real estate folks have these things -- so there's my relevance.
The caller ID thing on cell phones suck! I pay for caller ID each month, but my cell phone only seems to know the number, never the name associated with it -- unless of course I have them in my phone address book. Seeing ten digits flash on a tiny screen, that's not caller ID.
I don't like hitting REDIAL just because someone called me. There are too many telemarketers just holding their breath I do just that to validate that I'm a live consumer willing to respond to a simple missed call.
I started with Google but that doesn't always work as phone tracking is not their biz. There are lots of others that hold data about unknown calls with direct experiences of call receivers. It's a simple premise: Allow people to create topics as phone numbers, then let anyone post about that number. Telemarketers will quickly have their intentions known to search engines. Here's one site that allows you to start a thread about a number -- or see if someone already has some info about the number. If you click the below URL you'll see what people are saying about 237-6959:
Maybe not always accurate, sometimes no info at all. But the number that had called me five times in one day-- they had LOTS of comments about their evil telemarketing intentions. (i don't really mean they were evil... everyone has to make a living :)
Another one I liked:
numberinvestigator.com allowing you to do the same thing of punching in a number, but to not see what others think, more about the physical aspect. It also provides information about where the number was created (e.g., Ameritech, Verizon..) Gives some other stats such as population, housing units, square miles. Anway, I'm convinced it works because it found me:
Dingo and Joomla, two open source products that are extremely low cost, would be an excellent start to help automate a property management operation. While Dingo and Joomla would be a good start, it’s likely that eventually more ingredients would be needed to make this a fully effective system. At first glance, you would need the following functions to build a low-cost, easy-entry, online property management system.
Broadcasting/publishing of public information, both to renters and to property owers/managers. A way to attract both renters and potentianlly building owners. This is the basic function of the Joomla portion of a website. It does this well, is easy to learn and maintain.
Taking care of rental properties is not something you want to attempt with sticky notes. Face it, you will have multiple groups asking lots of different things. There must be a central way to record everything to make sure nothing slips through the cracks. In addition, you will need a way to delegate to others and just as important, a bread crumb trail so you know who said/did what when. If you are involved in getting things fixed, there are other important issues like liability, insurance, security and getting people paid.
Potential renters will want to see an inventory of available properties with images, features and all relavent information necessary for renters to make this decision: Do I want to go look at it?
Contact People to Follow-up (Joomla)
A contact management system to keep track of property owners, managers and renters and everyone else in the loop.
A was brainstorming with a friend recently about lead generation and she was contemplating on which search terms to put more money. She had tried up'ing her daily spend, but all she was getting was more clicks, not more business.
Google and Yahoo are now the Yellow Pages. (I still can't believe they print and deliver those big books) If today Google and the rest dropped you from their database it would not be unreasonable to freak-out until that problem was fixed.
It certainly does make sense to pay for leads, but paying for the wrong clicks will drain the ad budget and you'll end up with people who maybe will view your home page for two seconds, then bounce.
Sidebar: If you want to experiment with your pay per click ROI, here's a handy form from metamend.com
Clicks are great. Traffic is a must. But you want relevant traffic otherwise, it's like going to the bar to find a wedding cake. Imagine if the bar owner had to pay for the person to get to the bar, only to learn a tall cake was the only thing on his mind.
Ok, everyone knows what seach term relavance is. Enough enough.
Before I get to the brainstormy part, I want to contrast what people are currently paying for clicks in Ann Arbor. Here are some numbers I compiled by viewing the source code of three reasonably well established agents in this area, then combined it with current market value of their search terms. (I made up some of those headings, like TSL and SPM, but they are real numbers ... see below for definitions)
Someone willing to pay almost $12 per click on the search term "ann arbor home" -- is it any wonder that Google opened today at $348.99 is currently up $5.13?
If you're a baker, to catch the person looking for a wedding cake, it's better to go hang out where they sell Better Bride magazines. Waiting at the bar might work, but it will take a lot longer for a click to convert to a lead.
Now for the brainstormy part
As a real estate agent, you want to know when people are moving, so why not cozy-up with a moving/ transport company? Not everyone will have an agent when they begin getting moving quotes, and if they're new to the area, your well designed website will still be of value to them. Maybe they're renting while they look or this could just be your chance to meet someone new in the area to expand your circle of influence.
I called this company to ask if they would entertain such an idea and the owner seemed very open to it.
The relationship could be one of simple banner exchange, destination city specific targeted ads, or the purchasing of email addresses. (Currently they don't sell their data, but my hunch is that nobody has ever made them an offer)
So am I missing something? What's the downside to this?
Yes, it's true. Unless you're carrying around some museum piece, your mobile phone has a tiny GPS in it. Even if you have a cheapo crappy one, it still has one in it as near the end of 2005, all cell phone carriers were required to provide the ability to trace cell phone calls to a location within 100 meters or less.
This morning I had my phone stolen while I sat in a bagel shop sipping expensive coffee. I figured I would call my carrier and ask them to assist. I could at least find out who might be calling what numbers and, at best, where the phone is.
They could do neither. They said the last call my phone had made was 15 hours earlier. (I had made a call an an hour before it went missing.)
According to the tech support group, the on-board GPS serves two purposes.
1. Finding you in 911 situations 2. GPS enabled applications
If you call 911, the call includes GPS location data so maybe they can find you. The GPS application... that's the on-screen mapping software to help you find your way when you're in unfamiliar terrain. If you have an iPhone, I'm sure you know what I'm referring to.
Anyway, don't bother calling your carrier when you're phone is stolen unless you can get the thief to dial 911, even then, you're still out of the loop.
There is one other option: Location Based Services (LBS)
These are companies that produce phone-based applications that run on certain phones. You download the application into your phone, create an account on their site, and you can watch your phone move down the street as a red dot.
Some of these work even if the phone is powered off. Be aware, it's not nice/somtimes illegal to do this to people without their consent. (Of course, kids that have phones you're providing... I think you could get away with that one, at least legally.)
Bottom line, don't turn your back next time you're having a bagel or maybe even easier, keep your phone in your pocket.
Today we released our fist version of our new task manager called Taskhopper Dingo. It's a product that runs within Joomla, a content management system, to keep track of three things: Clients (or leads), Projects (or properties) and whatever tasks are necessary to convert leads to clients and clients to sales.
Whenever I talk to agents, or anyone in a similar self-directed business, where many tasks must be juggled without hitting the ground, I am always amazed at how many different ways we go about trying to accomplish the same end. The image below to the left, you might recognize as that invention in the late 60s that revolutionized how we remember important to-dos. (I think might also have been responsible for the most security breaches once computer systems started asking for IDs and passwords)
The use of adhesive-based paper squares isn't really the best way to keep track of what needs to be done next. I had one person describe to me their version of using yellow note pads to maintain order in their client-property-task world. It all seemed to make sense until I asked,
"Ok, so you have 15 leads, 10 properties and some number of tasks for each. With all those yellow note pads, how do you know what's most important today? (They actually said they use color coded sticky notes)
Even better, "How do you possibly ever take a vacation? How can you share this with your team?"
Dingo, unlike sticky paper, is software you plug into a Joomla website. Using the login feature you, and others in your group, can record details about clients, properties and the tasks required to convert leads into sales. (Visitors and clients don't see it... only those on your team)
It's a pretty good fit for multi-agent offices where there is a true sense of teamwork. Even if you don't have Joomla based website, it still may be something you might want to consider. (Joomla/Dingo is easy to learn and a low-cost solution so you could run a separate website just to keep tasks in order)
We're putting together some reasons Dingo might be something that fits into your world. In the meantime, if you would like to try it, just drop me a note. I'm glad to share with anyone willing to give us some feedback.
Everyone always talks about "backing up your data" which is of course a good thing. In fact, not backing up can be considered an act of corporate negligence as it takes very little time for the data to quickly exceed the value of whatever holds it. Replacing a hard drive is cheap and easy. Replacing a thousand iTunes, not quite as quick and easy.
There's the other side to a backup process. It's called business resumption or data restoration. It's what you do after something bad happens.
Yesterday was a good example of when something simple turns into something ugly.
About a week ago we had a technical hiccup on the server. We made some quick checks; all seemed fine. We were busy and nobody was complaining. About 2am yesterday, one of our servers was auto-updated with some new software. The update overwrote/reset something that made certain services stop. e.g., http is a service. When you ask for a web page, the web server software listens and responds via http. We tried to restart the services, but they were not behaving.
Without getting into the details, we asked the data center for help and within a few hours, the server was back, but our data wasn't. What we didn't know was that the hiccup a week previous was related to our backup system. When we went to restore our data, it was corrupt so we were backing up garbage.
Restoring bad data is like going back in time. Ever write a long post and then have your browser crash? Imagine a one that you wrote for five days.
So, moral of the story:
1. Don't ignore hardware/software warning messages. This is true with computers just as it is in life.
2. Make sure your backups contain data that prevent you from time travel. (i.e., run a test to make sure they work)
3. Have a written business resumption process so that when something does happen, you have a reliable checklist that anyone can follow.
PS. I realize that most don't run their own servers, so then replace "server" with "laptop" or whatever your primary computer is where important data resides. Everything above applies to any device that holds data that exceeds the value of the container.
Fully unrelated to the excellent people who run/maintain our current building, we have decided to find new office space. We've been in the same place for one year, and when we started it was only intended as an interim location. So we've given notice and need to make some fast plans for a new corporate home.
I've concluded we don't have sufficient time to find the perfect space, so my plan B (or now plan A) is to see if perhaps there are any existing businesses with some unused space we can rent starting next month. (December 1st) We are flexible on this and would be fine with just a few hundred square feet.
In case this is your first time reading, we are an established internet design firm. We are ideal tenants with excellent references. We're quiet, don't spend all that much time in the office and pay on time. Perhaps there's a real estate office out there that might like to have an internet company within shouting range?
If you might know of any shared space available in the Ypsi-Ann Arbor area please drop me a note.
Thanks!
Kase
PS. That's a picture of the sun as it sets in Targu Mures, Romania. This was a shot taken from our hotel when we were there last week.
During an undeclared recession like this one, it can be advantageous to reassess your business strategies. The phone may be ringing less, and you can use that time to take inventory of where you are and where you would like to be in terms of technology. Take advantage of this opportunity to cut costs and increase efficiency so that you’ll be able to take on as much as you want to when business picks up again. Here are seven excellent tools to aid you in your improvement endeavors:
Joomla allows you to quickly build professional websites and intranet sites. Every detail can be customized and you have full control of everything that goes on the site because you manage the source code. The Joomla extensions database has almost 4000 existing plug-ins, allowing it to do just about anything you could possibly need it to do. Joomla costs nothing to obtain; you will, however, need someone to install and support it.
This doesn’t have to be an expensive super-hacker, though – anyone who operates a Wordpress site or a Facebook page can become a Joomla webmaster in a pinch. Should you need real technical help, Joomla pros are now easy to find and inexpensive to hire.
In an office where there are more projects than people, some type of online task manager is a must. Taskhopper Dingo is a plug-in for Joomla that’s truly ideal for keeping track of who needs to do what – and when. Imagine an admin answering the phone: rather than writing down the details of the call on paper or sending an e-mail, the message is placed into Dingo. If the note is about a particular client, an e-mail (or text message, if you so choose) is automatically sent to the agent-in-charge so follow-up can be swift and effective.
Using Dingo can keep client information separate if that's a requirement, but it also allows you to share information so that different project managers can communicate with one another.
3. Property Listing Plug-in
This tool allows you to quickly and easily publish your properties to the web; from there, your customers can view unlimited photos, use mortgage calculators and take virtual tours, schedule a showing, use a comprehensive search engine to discover different properties, and more. This plug-in offers you the opportunity to manage your office as well as individual agents, who can assume online ownership of their properties.
Customers can even e-mail a friend when they come across a property of particular interest. This is a must-have for real-estate agents who want to stay ahead during these tough times.
This is where you keep all the names and numbers that make your business world go round. This is not a Joomla product, but that’s okay because you really don't want to mingle your CRM with your public website – that could be confusing. What does vTiger do? Essentially, it performs the typical CRM tasks: lead management, account & contact management, opportunity management, campaign management, mass mailing, e-mail templates, Mail Merge templates, “to do” lists, meetings and calls, shared calendars, e-mail notifications, Outlook plug-in, Thunderbird extension, 20 pre-built reports, custom fields…you get the idea.
Remember, all these tools are open source, which means that you’re free to take them in whichever direction you choose.
This tool will help you keep track of income and expenses from all of your accounts. Small business features allow you to manage customers, vendors and projects, and help you with invoicing as well as accounts receivable/accounts payable. gnuCash can even communicate with your bank (using the same technology protocol as Quickbooks). Everything can be extracted into reports and presented as graphs. Switching to gnuCash from other accounting software is easy because it can import data from MS Money and Quicken.
Dump Microsoft Office! OpenOffice provides a great alternative to existing commercial office suites. It comes with the following tools: word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), presentation (Impress), drawing and graphing (Draw), equations and formulae (Math) and a database tool which also builds reports and forms (Base). All components are multi-platform and multilingual.
This is not an online product – rather, it’s one that you download and install on your PC. It works great in Windows and Linux.
Dump Windows! If you purchase a new laptop at just about any retail store you have one choice: Windows Vista. But that doesn't mean you have to keep it. Ubuntu runs Firefox, OpenOffice and everything else above. Why dump Windows? Because it's loaded with bugs and lots of other nasty software designed to force you to upgrade constantly. It's an endless loop of expensive frustration, but there’s a better way!
Here's the tricky part of all this: Change.
Asking people to change their behavior patterns is no easy task. Habits and routines can really hinder technological adaptation, but that doesn’t mean that technology will stop evolving. We’ve just got to roll with the punches.
I've been involved with hundreds, maybe thousands of projects and the failed ones share a theme in common: the end users didn't want to change their ways, or what was delivered was not compelling enough to make them switch. Most unsuccessful endeavors are characterized by uninvolved stakeholders and general ennui. Yuck. Nobody wants that.
We’d like to help one agent become bigger, better, and more efficient, so we’re offering the following:
An analysis of your current technology
Hosting and installation of the open source products listed above
Support and training to help make sure everything runs smoothly
We will provide these services, at no charge, to the agent who proves that s/he wants it most and will put it to the best use. This will be no obligations, no strings attached, nothing for you to pay, no Fear Factor-like hoops for you to jump through (I don’t want to see you eat a scorpion any more than you want to nosh on it).
So give it some thought and comment about what makes you an active stakeholder in the revamp/overhaul of your existing office technology. We'll choose the winner in early December, and if it’s you (and it very well could be), you’ll be on the path to technological nirvana in no time.
PS. We have intentionally not included a blogging product because we know the really good agents do that here! :)
The domain name was created 18 days ago and is said to be owned by someone named MichellGregory. The IP address says the server may reside somewhere in the Ukraine. The contact information for the site lists Michell as somewhere in the 2767729 zip code with a phone number of 1-387-900 fax: 1-387-900. I tried calling but couldn't get through. Hmmm. Maybe I'll drop him a letter in the mail.
I would like to talk to Michell. I would even pay for lunch just to find out how he might be connected to a recent attack on a number of websites, (one I cared about) that ruined yet another weekend, and most of today, cleaning up after some hackers that spewed their code like some out of control school kids with an attitude problem.
I understand hackers with a cause. We were here! You suck! Obama is Satan. John and Sarah are a perfect match. Whatever. I would never spend my time this way, but i understand it.
Sites that hijack your traffic, and redirect you to pay-per-click adult sites. I get it. It's nasty, but it's a monetary model with a history of generating revenue.
Here's the Warning
If you run a Wordpress site, or any CMS, be alert to any unusual errors. You might see a simple PHP error, either from the front or the admin side of a site. In our case, one of our users was unable to upload a file. Could have just been some harmless permissions setting. What I found was pretty scary.
First some remote access software had been installed on the site. It gave anyone with knowledge to that location full file access to the entire server. A script had been run that appended and inserted some java script into just about every index.html along with random PHP files. (Not actually a great hack, as it should have prepended the code, rather than tacking it on to the end) And inserting it randomly into PHP files? That's a bad plan as all that will do is alert people to the problem. Anyway, it was a mess. Without a clean backup plan, the site would have been toast.
If you should run into this, you can check out Stephan Miller's blog as that's where we exchanged some notes about this today when it was still unfolding.
Oh yeah, one more thing: Don't trust your hosting company to fix these types of events. If they do, consider yourself lucky. Make sure YOU are doing your own backups and have actually tested the restore process.
Hey Michell. If you're reading this, drop me a note. Lunch is on me.
I've made a few comments in a post by Bill Kennedy that deals with the topic of switching from Top Producer to possibly Outlook. In his post and in a few of the comments, there were references to Outlook being free.
Yesterday I stumbled across an old document that reminded me of how expensive free things can be.
In the old days, I was the IT guy at a company that had about 400 PCs. When the decision to switch to Outlook was made, the 78 page document to the left was created to answer *most* of the questions that would arise. While this had been designed for users, everyone knows, most don't like to read the manual. What followed was a long bumpy ride that consumed many months of tech support to get everyone comfortable with the new and improved email system.
Granted you likely don't have 400 PCs in your office but even for one, there still can be 78 pages of things to write about adjusting from the old to the new.
But my point is not to bash Outlook. This is about switching from one thing to another. That could be converting your old website to a CMS-based version, going from Top Producer to Outlook or changing mobile phone carriers. Regardless of the initial price, they all have conversion costs that will consume your time and money.
If you're planning a conversion, take the time to write down what's required, then prioritize based on your business processes. Going from Top Producer to a plug-in enhanced version of Outlook might work, but without that list of priorities, you run the risk of learning how expensive free software can be.
Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
Another one I liked:
Dingo and Joomla, two 
Today we released our fist version of our new task manager called 
The use of adhesive-based paper squares isn't really the best way to keep track of what needs to be done next. I had one person describe to me their version of using yellow note pads to maintain order in their client-property-task world. It all seemed to make sense until I asked,
Everyone always talks about "backing up your data" which is of course a good thing. In fact, not backing up can be considered an act of corporate negligence as it takes very little time for the data to quickly exceed the value of whatever holds it. Replacing a hard drive is cheap and easy. Replacing a thousand iTunes, not quite as quick and easy.
Fully unrelated to the excellent people who run/maintain our current building, we have decided to find new office space. We've been in the same place for one year, and when we started it was only intended as an interim location. So we've given notice and need to make some fast plans for a new corporate home.
Joomla allows you to quickly build professional websites and intranet sites. Every detail can be customized and you have full control of everything that goes on the site because you manage the source code. The Joomla extensions database has almost 4000 existing plug-ins, allowing it to do just about anything you could possibly need it to do. Joomla costs nothing to obtain; you will, however, need someone to install and support it.
In an office where there are more projects than people, some type of online task manager is a must. Taskhopper Dingo is a plug-in for Joomla that’s truly ideal for keeping track of who needs to do what – and when. Imagine an admin answering the phone: rather than writing down the details of the call on paper or sending an e-mail, the message is placed into Dingo. If the note is about a particular client, an e-mail (or text message, if you so choose) is automatically sent to the agent-in-charge so follow-up can be swift and effective.
This tool allows you to quickly and easily publish your properties to the web; from there, your customers can view unlimited photos, use mortgage calculators and take virtual tours, schedule a showing, use a comprehensive search engine to discover different properties, and more. This plug-in offers you the opportunity to manage your office as well as individual agents, who can assume online ownership of their properties.
This is where you keep all the names and numbers that make your business world go round. This is not a Joomla product, but that’s okay because you really don't want to mingle your CRM with your public website – that could be confusing. What does vTiger do? Essentially, it performs the typical CRM tasks: lead management, account & contact management, opportunity management, campaign management, mass mailing, e-mail templates, Mail Merge templates, “to do” lists, meetings and calls, shared calendars, e-mail notifications, Outlook plug-in, Thunderbird extension, 20 pre-built reports, custom fields…you get the idea.
This tool will help you keep track of income and expenses from all of your accounts. Small business features allow you to manage customers, vendors and projects, and help you with invoicing as well as accounts receivable/accounts payable. gnuCash can even communicate with your bank (using the same technology protocol as Quickbooks). Everything can be extracted into reports and presented as graphs. Switching to gnuCash from other accounting software is easy because it can import data from MS Money and Quicken.
Dump Microsoft Office! OpenOffice provides a great alternative to existing commercial office suites. It comes with the following tools: word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), presentation (Impress), drawing and graphing (Draw), equations and formulae (Math) and a database tool which also builds reports and forms (Base). All components are multi-platform and multilingual.
Dump Windows! If you purchase a new laptop at just about any retail store you have one choice: Windows Vista. But that doesn't mean you have to keep it. Ubuntu runs Firefox, OpenOffice and everything else above. Why dump Windows? Because it's loaded with bugs and lots of other nasty software designed to force you to upgrade constantly. It's an endless loop of expensive frustration, but there’s a better way!
The domain name was created 18 days ago and is said to be owned by someone named MichellGregory. The IP address says the server may reside somewhere in the Ukraine. The contact information for the site lists Michell as somewhere in the 2767729 zip code with a phone number of 1-387-900 fax: 1-387-900. I tried calling but couldn't get through. Hmmm. Maybe I'll drop him a letter in the mail.
Yesterday I stumbled across an old document that reminded me of how expensive free things can be.
;)
;)
