The plan was ambitious to say the least. The plan was to set the bar incredibly high and get there. We did not. We came up short thinking we could build the entire company of tomorrow in 60 days including holiday weekends and summer vacations and well just huge ideas!
We did get the office prototype 90% completed:
The plans are set and renderings and equipment lists are almost done to duplicate the 2000 sq ft building with a capacity for 18 agents (more as the agents continue to integrate our mobile office system more below). The office is designed to be a home for agents, kitchen, large common area, high ceilings, lots of glass. It is also intended to be a marketing piece this office is in Flint MI backing up to I-75 with a huge daily traffic count and the same signage in the back as the front. A billboard in the area is $2500 a month today our rent is less than twice that. I think bang for the buck.
We did redo all of our branding, minus one big piece...
The branding overhaul included all tag lines, business cards (and a scalable way to obtain them quickly and inexpensively from any location), logos, websites...this is our big miss, our main website needs to be redone it is the mother-ship, we are researching and demo-ing many options we have to get this right, (our current site spits out seven to eight separate buyer contacts a day on over 2,000 visits that is only for Flint!).
Our beta site in Kalamazoo is a stand alone right now, www.ChangingStreets.com. It has been a solid performer, for only 45 days live, we still have a long way to go with it over the next 10 days.
We also implemented a professionally designed direct mail campaign and portal from which to launch the campaign, it is awesome. Paired with our other marketing (see below) this will be a key arrow in the quiver.
OF course I had to get T-Shirts they arrived today and they rock.
Our Marketing Has Gone well. The goal was quick and inexpensive soft launched with ROI. I think we have gotten that. I am a big fan of blogging to the consumer and getting them to the blog. We blog value, market info, hot deals, what moves buyers and we point them there with advertising, direct mail, drivers on the mother site and business cards. Blogs all give the story and have a call to action, what does the consumer want to do, see a home? List a home, there is a link from that blog. We not only host our own blogs but I have AR and do a lot of Localism sponsorship. We will be doing car wraps, this has worked very well for us in the past. In the last 30 days in markets that did not exist and no website for the new markets or drivers on the mother site we are getting requests. We are excited about that, requests are simply an opportunity to serve a client and earn their business, that is a good start. We have received three requests off of our home searches for each of the new markets, Kalamazoo, Detroit (Oakland County) and Raleigh/Cary North Carolina.
Systemshave been the toughest part of our quests to build the "office of the future". We are beta testing netbooks, and everything the agent would need online, we are bundling email, fax, virtual pbx phones, forms, blogs, website updates, even office stuff like policy and procedures, and making them available from any computer anywhere.
It is great so far a 2.5 pound netbook and a smartphone and there is nothing I can't do from a kitchen countertop or a Starbucks!
The toughest part is tying in the client contact portion, with the virtual pbx we can advertise a static number, that number could go to an auto attendant, which I am not fond of, or forwarded anywhere based on a schedule we input. I am finding it very difficult to design the system were this meets agent and consumer needs. The other great part of this system is the "call me know" button we can put on our websites and the consumer can click and automatically be tied to the agent, for NOTHING!!!
Licensing and Setupwere no walk in the park, registering and applying for firm licenses and joining MLS's is work, especially across cultures and state-lines. I am now a proud member of four boards and mls's, UGH! With four seperate IDX sites and rules. At this point I am reasonably happy with our IDX provider, (the contacts starting to come in helped) but I am not sure they understand the consumer as well as they think: or maybe it is the fact their consumer and mine are completely different.
Ok that was off topic. The licensing and state laws has created some issues with multiple sets of policy and procedures, it has also created issues with accounting systems as emd rules are different. There is always the consolation of twice as much con-ed.
In summary we missed being complete in 60 days, but we did come a long way. I think that by this time in September we should be done and waiting with our just add a broker real estate kit!
Comments(0)