Hello Everyone. Today was another day of excellent speakers and workshops. Here is a recap with some photos follow:
The morning started out with a very powerful keynote from John Bearden, CEO of GMAC Home Services. His theme was "Let The Future In". He provided an excellent state of the company speech. Of particular importance, he chose this morning to announce some very exciting, progressive and valued added tools coming to all of us in the near future. I attended a workshop this afternoon that dove deeper into the details of these soon to be released tools. Here is a brief overview:
There are three new initiatives:
* Market Advantage Program - this will be rolled out to all companies and Realtors in April of this year. This is a web based platform that provides the following services to you: new marketing items (brochures, digital newsletters, flyers, HTML email formats and much more) that can be customized by the agent with simple clicks. In addition this platform provides a client management system for client follow-up, email campaigns, newsletters, animated flash photo shows for listings and more. The great news is the cost of this new program to you is: $0.00. Yes, zero dollars.
* Grassroots PR Program - we all know that the best advertising is word of mouth, relationship building and "grass roots" efforts. This is a web based, online templates that can be customized for each office. It provides auto delivery to local media outlets. Basically, it is a means to be proactive and aggressive in sharing market news, information about our company. But more importantly, about each of our team members as they make news in our community via volunteer, professional or civic activities. Again, the cost is: $0.00. Amy signed us up today at the Expo.
The next development, titled R/E Connex Mobile Workstation, will be rolled out over the next 6 months. To set the stage and describe this new tool: How would you like to turn on your computer in the morning, log in with one code, and see the following, web based (accessible anywhere and anytime), "desk top" format right in front of you:
* Outlook Email / Calendar
* CRM Database (customer relations database with all your clients)
* MLS Interface
* Toolkit CMA
* All RANM ZipForms (auto populating information when accessing client)
* Connex2 Leads (GMAC lead management system)
* Market Advantage Program (see above)
* Real Estate News Headlines (Inman, RSS, etc...)
* Report Generator (source of your clients, productivity, contacts, etc....)
* Your online communities (active rain, facebook, etc.....)
* And More
Basically, everything you need to conduct a professional business is featured on "one" desktop with links to all these areas listed above. What GMAC undertook this past year was intensive development of a one stop online platform. They found a vendor that could "plug in" the best of the breed (e.g. TopProducer, ACT and other systems you may already be using) technologies into one platform. It is what they call a "mash-up" of best of breed systems that will communicate seamlessly with each other.
One speaker gave this vision: You are driving down the road, you get a text, email or voice message that you have a contact via yours/our website. You contact the client quickly. Their data is automatically loaded into your database. When you get to a computer you add information from your conversation. Customer gives description of what they are looking for and that they are not ready to move for 12 months. So then you access your follow-up system that will send any new listings that meet their criteria automatically. You set up a follow-up reminder / email system. Twelve months comes, they are ready to make offer. You pull up contracts on the system, they auto populate data from your contact management system, you email the contract and a copy is placed in the clients database automatically along with any and all emails/correspondence that went to them through out the process.
What GMAC stressed is that they will roll this out and beta test in key markets over the next 3 months. Then, they will provide "training" on the tools featured on the desktop. They will not launch this without training on the tools. This is very smart on their part.
There is much more information to come on this. It creates some questions on our current lead tracker system. As for cost? There will be a cost. Once they roll this out, I will share with everyone. It is their goal to demonstrate that what you may be spending today on your contact management systems and other technologies, not to mention time wasted and inefficient communications with clients, is costing you more than what this will cost annually. Again, there is much more information to come. Hopefully this provides you with a good summary. I'll share more next Tuesday. In addition, they announced a new website product for GMAC and member companies. I will share more on this too.
Personally, it is good to see GMAC focused on investing resources on the development of the above tools. In my opinion they are spending the money where it can best be helpful to building our business and, most importantly, serving our customers.
Next Keynote Speaker: Jeffery Gitomer
Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The New York Times best seller The Sales Bible and The Little Red Book of Selling. All of his books have been number one best sellers on Amazon.com, including Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Patterson Principles of Selling, and his latest best-selling books The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, and The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude. Jeffrey's books have sold millions of copies worldwide.
We were all inspired by Jeffrey Gitomer today. He gave a keynote address as well as a workshop in the afternoon. Here is some snippits from his presentation:
* Think Globally and Act Locally is a Lie! Rather we should Think Locally and Act Personally.
* Put your brand on everything!!!
* If you will interview your top 10 loyal customers and document "their" buying motivations, their story on why they chose you, their call to action......write all this out in a testimonial, have a video testimonial if they will agree and then put on your website or other communication mediums. If you do this, seriously do this, you will double your business.
* What is your Google Factor? Google yourself. See what other see when they Google you. Get your name on Google! He gave some tips on this.
* He showed us picture of Peter Best. You may not recall but Peter Best was the lead drummer for the Beatles who quit several months before they invaded America because he found a "better" job. This decision cost him $2 Billion Dollars! Lesson: Don't quit too soon. The pastures may not be greener. Become the best "not" Peter Best.
Again, great speaker. Great author. Great motivator. Gave great tips during his afternoon workshop. His website is: www.gitomer.com
Here are some pics from today:
Grady is up bright and early making sure he gets a seat:
As a Premier Service Award Recipient, Jennifer got to March in with a Tamboreen and all the other Premier Service Recipients:
George and Kaye Ready to Go:
