You know that it’s a Good Thing to stay in touch with your sphere. You know the more touches you get with them, the more likely you’ll stay top-of-mind when they need a real estate agent or when they know someone who does. Pop-bys are a proven way to get face-time with your sphere, but scheduling visits is a challenge. If you have a big circle of influence (COI), you could easily spend all day — or several days — knocking on their doors and still only say hello to a small fraction of people. And don’t forget about all the planning involved! To do it efficiently, you’ll have to coordinate your ..read more

Texting has become such a part of our daily lives that I often wonder how anyone survived without it. It’s convenient and efficient and accomplishes the goal of quick communication. What if you could also use texting to increase your website leads and increase your GCI? Leadferno is a tech company that created a tool that does just that. You add a short piece of code to your website, and then visitors can begin a text conversation with you in minutes from any page on your site. It helped veteran agent Cari McGee – Walkthrough host Matt McGee’s wife – earn an extra $58,000 in GCI in 2022 after ..read more

Enjoying this episode? Be sure to follow The Walkthrough to get future episodes delivered automatically: Apple Podcasts/iTunes | Spotify | YouTube About This Episode How would you like an extra $58,000 in GCI from your website? How about more than doubling your website leads? That’s what happened to host Matt McGee’s wife, Cari, when they installed a texting tool on her website early this year. Not live chat. Not chatbots. A business texting platform called Leadferno. This week on The Walkthrough, Leadferno founder Aaron Weiche talks about why texting makes you easier to work with and how it ..read more

The real estate business has always had a too-much-paperwork problem. Overstuffed folders spilling onto desks, filing cabinets tucked into every corner of the office, agents shuttling around town to have clients sign this and initial that, stacks of closing documents that can be measured in inches instead of pages — those hectic, ink-driven days may be largely behind us, but now we’re faced with a new problem. The PDF problem. Born in 1991, the Portable Document Format was a refreshing upgrade to the way folks do business. The ability to capture a document and send it electronically while main ..read more

For Georgie Smigel, a real estate veteran with 30 years experience, everything changed on the second day of Pennsylvania’s shelter-in-place directive. “I was in my house, in shock, and I’m like, okay, everything has to change, period. We need a virtual listing presentation. We need virtual open houses. And it took us three weeks to get that off the ground because, you know, we had to practice. We had to learn how to stitch all that together.” The Georgie Smigel Group — the No. 1 team in Coldwell Banker Pittsburgh’s region in 2019 — used to make videos a few times a month, primarily creating li ..read more

Even in the midst of a pandemic, some people will still have to sell their houses — and it’s your job as their agent to help them do it. That means getting creative at a time when much of the country is under a shelter-at-home order — and in-person showings, listing appointments, and open houses are all largely off the table for now. It means taking extra precautions and changing up protocol around property inspections and appraisals. It also means settling on the right listing price for a home in a volatile market, with many unknowns as to both the trajectory of the coronavirus and its econom ..read more

You’ve probably long been pretty familiar with the concept of working remotely. Indeed, unlike some across other industries, with workers who had to start from scratch as newly remote professionals when the pandemic crisis changed the landscape of the working world, most real estate agents were already well prepared. After all, agents often work out of their cars and on the go much of the time. But you still likely count on your brokerage to provide some basic support, as there is some percentage of work that is typically conducted in an office. And now agents will need to know how to do the o ..read more

If you’re looking to get more real estate client reviews, consider using one of the many paid online services available to agents, teams, and brokerages. A review management platform (sometimes also called a reputation management platform or customer satisfaction platform) allows you to systemize the process of asking for, receiving, replying to, and managing your online reviews. Used correctly, a platform like this should enable you to get more reviews from past clients and collect them more efficiently than sending manual requests. Here are several that real estate agents should consider, li ..read more

When we recently asked some of the top agents on HomeLight’s platform to tell us about the pain points in their business, this was a common theme in their replies: When it comes to technology, there’s too much to choose from! We’re going to do our best to help here in HomeLight’s Agent Resource Center, with articles, podcasts, and whatever kind of guidance we can provide to ease the pain of dealing with So. Much. Technology. In this article, we tell you about 10 mobile apps that will make your marketing efforts easier and more efficient in 2020, especially with the videos and images you create ..read more