Posts

Listing & Closing Checklists for WiseAgent!

People have been asking when my “Trans-Plans” Listing & Closing Plans & E-mails/Letters would be ready for Wise Agent. I’m happy to announce that they are ready! The folks at Wise Agent have been working diligently on it and they are now available. You can see the details or purchase them by clicking here.

Trans-Plans is an extremely comprehensive set of activity plans/checklists and a set of e-mails/letters that enable you and/or your assistant to stay on top of your listings and closings like a truly organized professional. Regardless of how much help you have, these plans will ensure smoother transactions and higher client satisfaction with everyone always on the same page.

If you have been considering trialing WiseAgent  I have negotiated an extended trial of 45 days, and if you end up purchasing it though my link, the Trans-Plans E-mails and letters are included as a bonus.

Wise Agent now joins a growing list of CRMs that have formatted Trans-Plans to automatically install into their program.

That list includes:

Feeel free to call and see what they look like and how they work in your CRM!

Workflows and Assistants

If you have an assistant, how long did it take to train them? How many hours did you lose in productive listing and selling time? Your production went down did it not? And now if that assistant quits next month you have to start all over again. One way to minimize the time it takes to train a new assistant is to have an Operations Manual. The problem is that If you have ever written an Operations Manual you know that the day after you get it done and printed up, it is already on its way to becoming obsolete.

A much better way is to have activity plans in place in your CRM. The new assistant’s time to transition into their new job and the learning curve will be a very small percentage of what you just went through, which means you save a great deal of time and money.

Some CRMs enable you to have Notes in each task in the activity plan which you can use to describe click-by-click, how to accomplish that task. It can tell how to edit the letter/e-mail for that activity; how to print the report in that activity; what that activity is telling the assistant to do, why they are doing that activity, and so on. The notes section of the activity can be used as a Dynamic Operations Manual. This eliminates a tremendous amount of training time, and eliminates the need for a traditional operations manual for that set of tasks.

The difference is that with a paper operations manual in a small overworked team, it inevitably becomes useless, because it is not kept current. Using the activity plans, and the notes in the activities, means you can edit/change/update that particular activity on the fly, and it is automatically incorporated into any future launch of that plan. It is extremely easy and takes very little time, and therefore it is more likely that the plans will be kept up to date.

Also keep in mind when you are building your activity plans for listings and closings, that they should be extremely comprehensive. The goal is to prevent the outgoing assistant from having anything in their head, that is not in the activity plan. Any task they do regularly for any listing or closing should be a part of the plan. If it’s not set up that way, things will inevitably fall through the cracks because that person is not there to remember to do it. You wind up having to closely supervise the process again until you finally build the plans correctly – comprehensively.

To put it in perspective, the Buyer Closing Plan in my Trans-Plans has 117 tasks in it. So you can expect one that you build to have at least 60 to 80 tasks and probably more. The point is not that it’s a contest to see how many you can cram in there. It’s just that that is how many things you do almost each and every time you close with a buyer. If you do it, it goes in the plan.

via Activity Plans and Assistants.

Top Producer Mobile can now launch activity plans

Product Announcement. Top Producer has now added the ability to launch activity plans from the contact screen in the mobile version. So now if you get a lead call, say from a hot buyer, you can launch the “Two Month High Touch Buyer Prospecting Plan” right from your phone! Pretty cool!

Are you using your CRMs Workflows?

It’s a shame so few people use their CRM for Transaction Management. Many agents use the CRMs activity plan/campaign/task series capability for following up with leads or for post closing follow-up. But very few understand the value of tracking your listings and closings with that same feature.

For those of you who have ever created a prioritized checklist of tasks for the day, you know what it feels like while you are burning through that list. It is so much easier and faster to complete your tasks for the day for a couple reasons. One is that you do not have to think about whether or not you need to do them. You already decided that. That’s why it’s on the list! The other is that you don’t need to decide which task you need to do first, because you already decided that as well. These two characteristics make getting through your task list much easier, faster, and stress free. And the satisfaction when you complete it is almost palpable.

Now apply that to listings and closings. The majority of what we do for each listing and closing is the same every time. Put up a sign, put on the lockbox, put it in the MLS, send out a thank you email/letter etc. Then when it sells, send a congratulations email/letter; is the second deposit in yet; is the appraisal in yet; is the home inspection scheduled; are the home inspection results in?; has the homeowners insurance been ordered, and so on. All these tasks can be put on a list and scheduled to occur X number of days after the listing date, or before the expiration date, or after the contract date, or before the closing date, etc. What you end up with is the ability to click a button and have the CRM post what task you need to on the days that you need to do them, automatically. The end result is that you start each day with an automatically generated to-do list for that day for the majority of what you need to do for all your listings and closings.

One of the reasons this business is as stressful as it is, is because we start every day and go throughout each day making the same decisions over and over and over again. Do I need to check on the appraisal for Vine Street today? No. OK – Do I need to check on the second deposit on Tower Hill Road today? No. And I go through that every day and then the next day I ask myself the same questions until the answer is yes, and then I do those tasks. Imagine what it would be like if you didn’t have to waste time and energy every day asking yourself those questions over an over again. And you wouldn’t even have to sit down and create a new to-do list each day, because it would be done for you automatically. Well that is exactly what using plans in your CRM will do for you.

 

The end result is that it:

·         Reduces your overall stress level more than ANY other single action you can take

·         Stops the details from “falling through the cracks”

·         Keeps you in touch with automated letters or e-mails for your buyers and sellers throughout the listing and closing process

·         Dramatically improves your level of customer service both in reality, and in the client’s perceptions of you

·         Gives you a comprehensive “Action List” to present to buyers and sellers in your initial presentations with them

·         Significantly reduces the time necessary to train a new assistant, or give your assistant a comprehensive list of their responsibilities. One that you can track!

·         Enables you to create and maintain a detailed history of your transactions for future reference

·         Provides an instant to-do list for someone helping you out while you’re on vacation

·         Enables you to provide automatically generated detailed “Client Reports” for your buyers and sellers

·         Gets you FAR more paperless

·         If you have a team, everyone is automatically assigned their individual tasks for each listing and closing, which appear on their calendar – not yours!

·         If you have a team – you will stop playing “Who has the file?”

 

The point is that if you have a good CRM, you have this capability sitting right in front of your nose already. Maybe you already knew all this, but have not “had” the time to do it. If you wait until you have time, you may never get to it. You have to “make” the time. I have worked with many teams around the country helping them develop their transaction management plans. I have yet to see anyone who used them and honed them, eventually stop using them. Once they realized how much more efficient it made them and how many benefits there were, they all look back and say “How did I do this before without them?”

 

via Are you using your CRMs activity plans?.

Tran-Plans now available for IXACTContact!

Announcment:

“Tran-Plans” are now ready for use with IXACTContact! Trans-Plans are listing and closing plans and campaigns that save you about a month of work by using them as a template instead of you trying to create it all on your own. Previously they have been released for use with Top Producer, Agent Office, AdvantageXi, & Active Agent for Outlook. They are also being worked on for use with RealFutureCRM and RealtyPromoterSoftware. For more information, please go tohttps://garydavidhall.com/planslanding.htm

Gary David Hall's Trans-Plans Campaigns

Are you using your CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) to follow-up?

My timing in my career in Real Estate sales was impeccable – not!

I started in 1987, when the market was starting its decline, and I got out in 1994 when the market was turning to the good once again. In my first year, I sat new construction for my broker, and that community’s sales were virtually nil for everyone sitting them. When I wasn’t sitting the samples, I was sitting “on floor/opportunity time” for that same broker. Well no one was getting many opportunities in that market either. I was doing BAD!

Finally after the better part of a year, I stopped doing both, and started doing my own prospecting. Once someone’s name got into my database (I used one called Real Estate Specialist in those days – a DOS program) they got followed up with until they would either, as Steve Stewart would say, “Buy or Die”!

So over the next 5 years, with no pre-existing sphere of influence to speak of, I went from 0 sides in 1988, to 43 sides in 1993, in a very slow, buyers market. How? By mailing or calling everyone who had the misfortune, I mean good fortune, of finding themselves in my database.

I ended up going from a non-producer in a mom and pop shop to the number two agent in transactions in a 100% RE/MAX office simply because I followed up consistently. The other agents in the office called me the ‘King of follow-up’ because they knew I consistently did business with people months and years after I first met/spoke with them at an open house, ad call, sign call, door knocking, local pub, golfing, or whatever. I never let them forget me. And I was able to do that easily and efficiently by using my CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software.

So are you, you know, using yours?

If you own a CRM, and you ever have that phone conversation that contains the words – “Oh thanks for calling, but we already bought a house”, then you are not using follow-up plans with your prospects!

Any time you speak with someone, and they said something like “Oh we’re not doing anything until Bobby graduates in June, always made sure you get something personal out of them like that he liked to golf, or that Bobby was going to major in photography. That goes into that prospect’s notes. You then continue to mail/e-mail them – consistently – until it gets closer, and then you call.

You have a pre-arranged follow-up “Plan or Campaign”. As soon as you get that lead, you click a couple buttons, and select the plan you have specifically created for that kind of lead. It would be a Hot, Medium, or Cold plan, and when the plan called for that phone call somewhere down the road, it will come up on your to-do list.

When I called him back many months and sometimes years later and asked if Bobby was still interested in photography, you could hear a pin drop on the other end of the phone. There was always one of two reactions. He either marveled at my memory, or he said something like, “You use follow-up software don’t you?” Either way I had them, especially if he said the latter, because he knew I was organized. Buyers and sellers like organized!

Now, I teach people to track those things in the right manner. So let’s say you find out about a special golf outing in your market area. You can do a quick search, find the golfers, and shoot an e-mail out to them to let them know.

Or maybe Doylestown Borough just announced a tax break in the local paper. How many people read the paper any more? Before they find out by word of mouth, you can do a quick search on your past buyers who bought in Doylestown Borough, and let them know about it. Are you not just the best darn Real Estate person they have ever known!

And what are you doing each time you send out these notes? You’re staying “top of mind” with them, and of course, you are asking for referrals.

DO NOT neglect your past clients with regards to follow-up. Are you proud of the job you did for them? Did they like the job you did for them? Then capitalize on it! Make absolutely sure you ‘touch’ them atleast once each month by mail or e-mail, and annually or semi-annually by phone. And again, alwaysask for a referral.

If you are not consistently in your past client’s face, guess who will be? Right! The neighbor or the brother-in-law who just got in the business. They are hungry and prospecting. If you are not top-of-mind with your past clients, you will lose money.

If your CRM does not have its own “Content”, that is, pre-written e-mails/letters, then write your own. Just make sure to use spell check, and have someone else critique and edit them.

If the thought of writing scares the Dickens out of you, buy some like “Dave Beson’s LetterWriter“. And remember what I said in a prior post about pre-written content., the value is in the concepts, not the wording. Or do a search on “Real Estate Prospecting Letters”. Be careful though. Some of them are reallydated.

A contact manager is a glorified RolodexTM. Outlook is a good example of a contact manager. What you have, or should have, is a CRM, which stands for Customer Relationship Manager. Operative word beingRelationship. Its job is to help you maintain a relationship with your suspects, prospects, and clients, by targeting specific groups of people, with customized plans for follow-up.

You customize by categorizing them, such as hot buyer, past seller, etc., or by keeping certain information on them such as that they like golf, or are a graduate of Penn State, or that they like wine, etc. All of this information enables you to target market to them, as opposed to doing what all the other agents who do not know them do, which is generalized non-targeted marketing. Which do you think works better?

The point is, you have a tool to make you more money already. Start using it! Do not let your CRM solution suffer the same fate as that poor Nordic Track® you have, sitting in the corner being used as a lingerie rack!

The Value of ‘Canned’ content in CRM’s

On a fairly regular basis, I hear people comment that this person’s or that program’s form letters or fliers are bad/not for their market/hokey, you-fill-in-the-blank.

The value in ‘canned’ content is not necessarily in that you can take them as they are, and start using them. While it is true that there are some things, some times, that can be good they way they are, or pretty close, it is rare. The value is in the fact that the content, the concept, is already there for you, and pretty much done. What is left for you to do is to tweak it to your personality, and/or your market. The value is in not having to start from scratch. Starting form scratch takes a great deal of time. That’s where the value is; the time savings.

It’s literally impossible to create a body of letters, fliers, post cards, or activity plans, that are perfect, for everyone in every market. Different people have different ways of communicating, with different personalities. And the difference in markets is vast in some ways from one to another, with regards to terminology and procedure.

The point here is that once again, there is too much of a tendency to throw the baby out with the bath water when searching for a CRM solution. People hear; “Oh the form letters in that program are terrible”, and they discount the software on that basis alone. That’s a mistake. The form letters in all CRM solutions need to be tweaked. Granted, some more than others, but it’s necessary in all of them, for the reasons stated.

I liken CRM software to the purchase of a home, in that when purchasing a home, you are actually purchasing a parcel of land, and the improvements on it, the house. The lot can not be changed. It is where it is. It can’t be changed to any significant degree. The home however, can be added to, or raised for that matter, and built anew. CRM software also has two parts; the program itself, and the content. The program, for all intents and purposes, cannot be changed, whereas the content, can be added to, deleted, or modified.

When looking for a CRM solution, one of your decisions is which is more important for your needs. Is it the content, or is it a complete system to track prospects, track your history with those prospects, schedule to-do’s and reminders, create reports, manage your listings and closings, create mailing lists from the way you have categorized your contacts, and manage drip email campaigns. In my opinion, there is not one single CRM solution out there, that has the best of both, so keep this in mind when conducting your search.

Trans-Plans WorkFlows/Activity Plans/Action Plans

As you hopefully know, I am a reseller Top Producer 8i, Agent Office, Active Agent for Outlook, and many other Contact Management/CRM solutions,and a trainer for Agent Office. Just in case you are unaware, I am also the guy that created Trans-PlansTrans-Plans are available for Top Producer, Agent Office, and Active Agent for Outlook. ‘In Agent Office and Active Agent for Outlook, they are called Activity Plans’.  In Top Producer 7i they are called ‘Action Plans’.

These plans and letters import into the program you’re using, and included in the plans are drip mail/email campaigns to thank referrers, keep your clients informed and therefore calmed down, always asking for referrals at the same time.

What will Trans-Plans do for you?

  • Reduce your overall stress level more than ANY other single action you can take
  • Stop the details from “falling through the cracks”
  • Save you approximately 150 – 200 hours by not having to create and key in the plans yourself
  • Keep you in touch with automated letters or e-mails, for your buyers and sellers throughout the listing and closing process
  • Give you a comprehensive “Action List” to present to buyers and sellers in your initial presentations with them
  • 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?”

“I would like to offer a non-solicited plug for Gary’s ‘Trans Plans’ action plans that he sells on his web site. I purchased them several months ago, and have been slowly modifying them to my way of doing business. I feel without his plans, I would not have been able to keep up my current 2007 production of 40+ transaction sides with no assistant.

To take your business to the next level, or just simplify your existing business, take a close look at what he has to offer. Thanks! ”

Randy Eide

…Finally I broke down and took a class from Gary David Hall. WOW! That was money Well Spent!  Gary knows his programs and is a good teacher. I learned a whole lot and was able to put it to good use.

…Another point: Listing Plans come with the program. Gary Hall wrote a set called Trans-Plans. They are VERY Thorough. I was surprised at some of the things he came up with to remind me to do. Some are not relevant to my practice but most are and it is very easy to delete the ones you don’t need.

Brent Link

Real Talk Post:

Question:

Has anyone yet used the Trans-Plans for Top Producer? Are their any recommendations for this?  It sounds great but $200 is a large investment?  I would like to see recommendations first.

Answer:

Amy – I use these action plans in Agent Office – same plans. They are great action plans because they are so complete. There are a couple of big challenges with any contact management program and the biggest one, imnho, is the follow-up action plans. First, you have to create them, then you have to launch them and use them, and then you have to update them (or do you???).

We had more than 100 action plans in our system before these came along. We can’t delete the old action plans because of how the system works, however, we use these new plans now, customized to our business which is now at 7 on our team, on the way to 9 before the end of the year.

Before these action plans came along, we were actually at the point where we were going to bring in the creator of TransPlans  (Gary David Hall) for a couple of days to re-write all of our plans. There are not a lot of options out there for this type of action plan, and these are very good and definitely worth the small cost.

Chris Newell

Announcing “Trans-Plans” Listing & Closing Plans

Agent Office Activity Plans & Letters for Listings & Closings

  • Two sets of plans

  • One set of letters from ‘me’, one from ‘us’

  • Over 500 activities per set

  • Most activities have extensive notes

  • 28 letters you need to send

  • Installs all plans & letters  in 7 clicks

  • Calls you need to make

  • To-do’s you need ‘to do’

  • MUCH more than ‘just’ transaction management

  • Newer agent or assistant? This is a “must have”!

“It’s a dynamic operations manual

for the listing & sale process!”

Click here for the rest of his comments…

Chris Newell

Are you where you want to be with regards to being organized?  When you take a listing, or sell a home, are you confident that the entire transaction will flow smoothly?

Was your original intention when you bought Agent Office, to get better organized?  If you haven’t put together your Activity Plans for Listing & Sales Transaction Management in the Plan Manager yet, what’s going to change to make that happen?

THIS will be that catalyst that will make it happen!

I’ve taught many hundreds of agents how to create “Activity Plans” in Agent Office.  VERY few of them have ever made the time to sit down and create the activity plans that will help them organize their listing & sales transactions, and/or provide an automated list to tell  their assistant what is expected of them.  Why?  Because it is extremely time consuming to create the lists of activities, and write the letters that you need to go with them.  These two sets of plans comprised of over 500 tasks per set install in 7 clicks, and already have the overwhelming majority, if not virtually all of the tasks you need to do, and the associated letters you need to facilitate the transactions.

If you have an assistant – how long did it take to train them?  How many hours did you lose in productive listing and selling time?  What if they quit next month?  You have to start all over again.  If you have Activity Plans in place, their transition and learning curve will be a very small percentage of what you just went through.

If you don’t have an assistant now, what happens when you’re ready for one?  If you have the plans in place, you’ll be way ahead of the game.

How about stress?  Why is this business so stressful?   Did you ever sit down and really evaluate why it is?  Well, a good many years ago I did.  There are obviously many reasons, but maybe the biggest one is because you have hundreds and hundreds of details constantly floating around in your head.  Even if you have lists on the inside of your file jackets, they only cover the surface of the myriad of details you keep in your head.  And using paper lists involves looking at them over and over again, and each time you look at them, you have to make decisions about which of the tasks on that list, you have to accomplish that day.  And that’s just for one property.  Then you have to open the next file, and make decisions for that property.  The number of details, and the number of decisions you have to make, add up to stress!

Having an automated to-do list for all your transactions takes all of those tasks out of your head, andputs them on your calendar, on the day that you need to do them!  Because you decided once, when you created the plan, when you want to do the tasks, the number of decisions you have to make are also reduced tremendously. Things no longer fall through the cracks.  Your mind is more clear and less stressed.  And you literally do away with dozens, if not hundreds of decisions, every day.  It is not possible to appreciate how much of a difference this makes, until you do it!  I know – from personal experience, and from hearing from people that I’ve created plans with in the past.

Trans-Plans is an extremely comprehensive set of Activity Plans, and the letters to go with them, that will enable you, your assistant, or your team, to be virtually instantly organized from listing date to closing date, and beyond.  AND the majority of the tasks in the plans have detailed descriptions of what each task is for/about, AND there are many handy tips on how to improve your business, by implementing new ideas, new services, and referencing Web sites.

Just load in the plans & letters in one quick step, delete the tasks you do not do in your business, add one here and there if there is something you do that is not already there, and you’re ready to go!  In just a few hours, you’ll be more organized than you have ever been in your entire career!  THIS IS NOT AN EXAGGERATION!

These plans are a compilation of “Activities” put together from several places.  The first is my own business, when I was an active agent.  In my last year I did 43 transactions.  Some agents did more, many did less, but it was certainly enough to be able to construct, and implement, and refine these core listing and transaction management “plans”.  My plans were then expanded when I automated an operation for an agent that did 140 transactions that year.

Additionally, they continued to improve by expanding them even more, with input from the many agents and teams around the country with whom I’ve worked over the years, who were kind enough to share theirs with me.  When I went out and built plans together with my clients, the end result was ‘Trans-Plans’, a combination of the ever expanding list I brought with me, and the tasks that they did in their market, which were in addition to what I had.

Typically when an agent purchases an Agent Productivity software or service, they add their contacts, and maybe use the calendar, etc., but they rarely make the time to sit down and create their own“Activity Plans”, or “Campaigns”.

That’s exactly why I decided to create this package.

I teach online interactive Agent Office classes.  While we are doing the Agent Office classes, agents kept seeing my plans and letters, and they kept asking if I would make them available.  So I did.

Click here for a letter I received from a client that I did my Tech-Speed program with.   It speaks to how much he likes using activity plans in Agent Office.