Real Estate Operations Management
Wish you could snap your fingers and have a
streamlined, automated, smoothly flowing real estate business?
Are you already very organized but it’s all on paper? Or are you just not organized but want to be?
How many times have you gone to some event and walked away with a page full of great ideas? How many times have you implemented all of those ideas? Some of those ideas? None of those ideas? Why not? Because day-to-day business gets in the way. Something can always take priority despite the best intentions.
Now imagine that you just paid someone to fly in and they’re costing you $1,000/day and they’re not going away. They’re sitting there saying “Okay now I need you and Debbie – she’s your closing coordinator, right?” And now you and Debbie are gone for four hours! But you can’t afford four hours right?! Sure you can. If it’s your priority. If you have no choice because that guy is sitting there waiting for you. It’s amazing how, when you are committed, the time becomes available because you have made the time. You are no longer waiting for the time.
Normally there’s no one holding your feet to the fire. There is no accountability. This is all about accountability. This is 100% live on-site complete implementation. This is finally getting it done and behind you, and moving on to a much easier life. It’s about getting it done – now.
The more times I do this, the more it becomes obvious that the thing agents most value about this program is that it forces you to sit down with me and literally put into effect a plan to organize your transactions from start to finish. Not just talk about it, but literally put it into effect in your CRM.
Okay fine, it does take longer than snapping your fingers but not too much longer. How about two days depending upon how much you want to accomplish. Two days. How long have you been meaning to get it done? How many fires do you have to put out on a regular basis that could have been avoided if something hadn’t fallen through the cracks? How many referrals have you lost because you haven’t been servicing your clients like you know you could/should?
This is where my background comes into play for Real Estate Operations Management Coaching.
- Retail Management
- Computer Operations Management
- Real Estate CRM Coaching
- Production Management
- Computer Operations Support Manager
- RE/MAX Agent closing almost 50 sales/yr. with an assistant and a buyer’s agent
- RE/MAX Regional Roving Technology Consultant to 90 offices and 1,800 agents
- Author “Choosing and Using a CRM”
- Author and teacher of broker level credit courses in real estate technology
- Founder/President – RE-ACT,LLC since 1999
It’s a lifetime mix that produces a perfect recipe for operations management and getting you organized and systematized with Real Estate CRM Coaching.
“I am so thankful that I found out about your Operations Organization program. It was the answer to my team’s flagrant offense of purchasing technology, installing software, and then not spending any time or resources on training and integration.
Your approach, with a hands-on and on-site visit is in my opinion the ONLY ONE that works. Classes don’t. Books don’t. Tutorials don’t. You sat down with my team and I and showed us how and why to do it, and then we did it. It was the best money I have spent on my business this year and I endorse you and your company without hesitation.
Gary – feel free to use my name as a reference and until the next time we have you out here – keep up the good work!”
If you’ve gotten this far, are you thinking “I don’t think I really need this. We’re already organized. So what if it’s on paper checklists!”
Several years ago I spent two days with Bill Luke. He had far and away the most organized team I have seen to date. He had a Listing Coordinator, a Closing Coordinator, a Marketing Manager an Office Manager, and three Buyer Agents. Everyone had a checklist of what they were supposed to do and they had those checklists down pat. So why fix it if it ain’t broken?
About a year after I worked with Bill I got the following email out of the blue.
“Hi Gary, I wanted to follow up with you regarding the success of our implementation of your Operations Management consulting.
As you know, we have for some time been operating with extensive manual checklists. The checklists we designed were created with two main objectives. First to enable us to work as a complete team, and second as a complete management tool for our client’s entire real estate process.
With your help, we were able to fully automate our own 432 step process into the CRM. Having used the system now for over a year, I can attest to you the success it has had on our business. Being able to launch plans (not checklists) has made our operation much more efficient and complete. Those in the office responsible for managing client files no longer need to improvise and second guess the process. Each step is automatically set up on their desktop w/ step by step procedures as a reference if they need it.
Our office manager has been able to alter the plans as needed, enhancing our ability to customize a particular client’s process or to simply edit a plan for efficiency. Our entire business model’s servicing process is in our CRM and is the tool of choice in our company. I want to thank you for your expertise and guidance in helping us to automate our servicing process.
It has made a world of difference to all of us and most importantly helped our client’s receive a thorough and completely managed real estate process.
If fully servicing a client is important, I recommend the real estate professional automate their process. No more hand written notes, no more “to do’s” falling through the cracks, no more embarrassing phone calls to explain something forgotten, no more sleepless nights wondering what was done or left undone. It is all there, in the system, documented and professionally managed.
So what am I proposing?
To start with – transaction management. Automating your listing and closing process such that when you get a new listing or sell a house you or your assistant clicks a button which launches a pre-determined set of to-do’s, reminders and phone calls. Each of them are automatically assigned to whomever is responsible. Each of you will open your task list for the day and know what you have to do. We start with my Trans-Plans and modify them to your personality and market.
Is it really worth it? How exactly does this benefit you?
- You take control of your business. You will no longer be dependent upon hoping all the players in the transaction do what they are supposed to do.
- Stop the details from “falling through the cracks”.
- Reduce your overall stress level more than ANY other single action you can take.
- Save you approximately 150 – 200 hours by not having to create and key in the Trans-Plans and e-mails yourself.
- Keep you in touch with automated letters or e-mails, for your buyers and sellers throughout the listing and closing process.
- Generate a report for your listing appointments and initial buyer consultations that shows your prospective clients exactly what it is that you will be doing for them, and give them the comfort of showing them proof positive of your organization, and professionalism.
- Significantly reduce the learning curve for new agents.
- Significantly reduce the time necessary to train a new assistant, or give your assistant a comprehensive list of their responsibilities. One that you can track!
- Give you new ideas to differentiate you from your competition.
- Enable you to create and maintain a detailed history of your transaction for future reference.
- Provide an instant to-do list for someone helping you out while you’re on vacation.
- Enable you to provide detailed “Client Reports” for your buyers and sellers.
- Get FAR more paperless.
- If you have a team, everyone is assigned their individual tasks, which appear on their calendar – not yours!
- If you have a team – you will stop playing “Who has the file?”
- If you have a team – the number of inter-office phone calls, emails, and texts will be cut to a fraction of what they are now.
- Depending upon which CRM you have, it may also save you a great deal of inter-office communications due to what will be available on your phone.
- Establish your business as a turn-key operation for anyone wanting to purchase your business in the future
If you have WiseAgent, Realvolve or IXACT Contact – Trans-Plans are included and will be installed as a starting point, saving time. If not, we simply start from scratch with whatever CRM you use, using the plans to copy and paste from.
But this is far from just creating a list of to-do’s. In the coming years you will be honing the plans as procedures change and you will be adding things simply to improve your services to your clients. You need a conceptual foundation upon which to add them. There are many nuances to creating and maintaining these plans that you can learn by trial and error, or you can learn them as we build them.