The Day the Phone Died!

Last week my phone died.  I have an office phone, it is a smart phone.  I am able to be far more productive with this phone than just a regular phone.  With a smart phone you can use all the great tools available to real estate agents like Realtor.com, Zip Realty, foreclosure.com and any number of other applications designed specifically for the realtor.  These tools are already in the hands of our clients and prospects so it only makes sense that we consider a smart phone a basic tool.  When you have a smart phone you can check email, you can see your visual voice mail rather than having to do an extra step and call in for messages, you can use your phone as a GPS to locate a property easily and quickly.  The Franchisee of the agency where I am the Director of Marketing right now has even used his smart phone to secure a listing after showing Jeff Lobb’s Digital Marketing video over his phone.  Suffice it to say, a smart phone is an essential tool for a real estate person.

On Thursday my phone was turned off in the morning.  I had no GPS and so I had to “blood hound my way” to a meeting.  I had been there once before and so I was able to find it.  I was 20 minutes late for a board meeting of the Social Media Breakfast group I am involved with.  This is a terrible impression to make early on with a group.  The excuse my phone died seems unprofessional as well.  Later that day the phone was back on, but the damage on that incident has been made and I will have to work harder to make up the ground that this incident caused.

On Friday at the end of the day I got a call from an Asset Manager I work with to go do a BPO.  It was 6:30PM my time and what I like to do in these situations is get the photos right way due to the quick turnaround for the BPO.  I went to my car and put in the address in my cell.  It was back on, right…well, yes, but the GPS wasn’t working so fortunately I was near the office and slipped in and did it the old fashioned way with Google Places.  Because the house was in a tricky area I had a hard time finding the hidden road without the GPS and so the old school way took me an extra hour of my time.  Now it occurs to me that my smart phone was dumbed down by the office without letting me know.

Today I went to write a blog and post it from my cell.  You guessed it.  I have no access to my email, no access to the websites I manage, no access to my content.  All that went away when the phone went dead and then the plan was changed.  Did I mention I didn’t know any of this was going on?

This week I will make sure my phone is once again smart.  I will take care of this because an agent can not exist today without a smart phone.  It is not a perk, it is a neccessity.  To tally up the financial damage this has caused is instructive and maddening.  It shows how valuable our tools are and how they need to be constantly available.  Remember to back up all your content and you won’t have been dumbed down like I was last week in the middle of a great week.