Mark Z, team leader of MARK Z. Home Selling Team Inc. with Keller Williams Realty in the Detroit metro area, heads one of America’s top-producing teams. His team expects to close more than 500 transactions this year.
Key to their success is implementation of the right technology. Yet in real estate, one of the most expensive, but rarely upgraded business technologies, is the phone system. The actual phone on your desk hasn’t changed much in 30 years. Fortunately, there is a better way for teams to tackle telecom, and it starts with five things needed to select the right system to power their sales.
- It must be Cloud-based. This delivers all of the modern features your phone system should offer: A virtual attendant featuring custom greetings, a dial-by-name team directory, and transfer to a live operator during business hours. A Cloud-based system means no hardware repair bills since a cloud-based system has no hardware.
- It must help potential clients avoid voice mail. 42 percent of potential buyer calls go to voice mail. This is the scariest number in real estate, but it can be significantly reduced with the right phone solution. Two vital features: Simultaneous ring (rings multiple agents at once) and the ability to make certain calls on specific properties are routed to the right team member. “Money calls” from the curb should be treated differently. An intelligent, cloud-based phone system can help you answer important calls and postpone responses to less important ones.
- It must save you money. You can hire an admin to answer phones for about $3,000 a month (loaded cost), but they only answer your phones for about 8 hours a day. Most “money calls” arrive during the other 16 hours a day. The right telecom system can eliminate the admin expense, yet capture and advise you of money calls 24-7.
Remember: Your agents use cell phones as their primary communication tool so consider eliminating the cost of phone desk sets when they are already permanently forwarded to agents’ cell phones.
- It must make you money. Real estate is still a very call-centric business and calls from the yard sign are considered one of the best leads in the business. Your team’s phone system needs to be able to handle both call and text inquiries, including auto response. If your system can’t differentiate how a customer wants to be communicated-to, by voice OR text, your phone system is probably losing you money.
- It must integrate with your listing data. This is where your team can trump the competition. When your phone system is integrated with your MLS feed, you can provide an IDX text search solution and a full inventory call capture system (IVR) to generate leads. The right listing data-enabled phone system can give every caller the option to do a full inventory property search by text or by phone.
In the end, you can buy the same off-the-shelf phone system used by hair salons and auto dealerships. But when it comes to real estate, there are better and less expensive options. Why? It’s because you have listing data at your disposal.
And that’s the magic of TeamPhone from VoicePad, as Mark Z will tell you, knowing what calls are important improves the quality of your life, by letting the intelligence of your listing data do the talking for you!
