Leveraging Inexpensive Technology for Scale, Leads and Relationship Management

Today, a real estate agent friend of mine from another company asked me if I ever get any leads from Listingbook, a service that is pairing with MLS's across the country to connect agents and real estate customers and prospects.   While I stated that I personally don't get a lot of leads from it (to my knowledge, all buyers and sellers in the system have been invited by an agent, so they are usually aligned already), I can say that I find Listingbook completely INVALUABLE, when it comes to managing my seller and buyer prospects and clients (especialy buyers).  I can log on there once or twice a day and stay in touch with ALL of my prospects and leads.  Plus, once I enter a buyer's home search criteria, or "assign" the sellers' own address to them, the customer/prospect gets a morning report from me every day, so they feel like I am never missing a beat, even if I don't physically talk with them for a while.  It's also GREAT for generating quick, easy and thorough CMA's, and, for communicating with agents quickly and easily.

Honestly, I particularly recommend LB for someone who is working in the business part-time for now.  Used in conjunction with a smart phone, you can keep in touch with your clients on your lunch breaks and/or as needed, and they never really have to know that you are part time.  (For a look at what LB has to offer, check out my replicated website, which comes free with a one year subsription that was just over $100: www.kimm.listingbook.com).

As for lead generation, I do get a nice amount of leads from my website www.kimismyagent.com.  It's a very easy to use and inexpensive site from VLS Homes.  It doesn't have a ton of bells and whistles, but it definitely gets the job done, both in terms of incoming leads AND pushing out listings to every real estate site imaginable.  Here is the link to sign up for VLS if you're interested: http://www.postyourlistings.com/homepage.htm?agent_signup=t&refkey=trj01kmalone

If you sign up, definitely let me know (so I can follow up with them and get my $5 referral credit! ;-).

Anyway, leveraging these two technologies has actually been GREAT for my business and I HIGHLY recommend them both.  Not that anyone asked, but just thought I'd share. ;-)

What inexpensive technologies are you using to scale your business and manage your customer relationships?  I'm always on the look out for services that are providing tremendous bang for a small buck!