Which #PropTech – Why #PropTech
Many decision makers within the Estate Agency world are spending lots of man hours discussing Property Technology (PropTech). They ask themselves and their teams – Do we need it? How would we use it? Is there an ROI? What are our competitors doing?
Are they missing the biggest question? How will PropTech benefit our customers?
Speaking to Agents, most do not see the need to embrace technology. “It’s just another fad and it will go away, like all the others”. They then have a meeting with their teams who complain, on a daily basis, about the Cheap Fee On-Line agents. Their answer: We should drop our fees to compete! And there starts the “Race to the Bottom”.
Our industry is not about technology, it’s not even about property. Our industry is about people. Individuals who, for a plethora of different reasons, want to buy or sell a property. So #PropTech only works if it gives us time or information that allows us to engage with our customers.
There is Technology out there that can :
Get you more instruction by giving you the data that you would have collected with a board count or trawling www.rightmove.co.uk. Products like www.spectre.net The real benefit is the time you have saved, driving around, making notes, creating letters and bring all that together. That time saved should be spent engaging with customers.
Give you 24 hour opening times (Competing with the on-line agents). Clients can book Valuations, Book viewings even Make offers at any time of day or night. Products like www.hystreet.co.uk and www.onedome.com offer this facility TODAY. Your customers, especially #millennials and #Genz , can now engage with you the way their demographic requires.
Workflows allow all that “Stuff” , that needs to be done, at the touch of a button. Companies like www.dezrez.com provide a cloud based CRM system that not only collects and stores your data but produces all the paperwork, scheduling and reminders that you will need to engage with a customer in a professional and timely basis. No more copy and paste. No more manual diary entries. Again, more time where you can engage and continue to engage with your customers.
Keep your properties “alive” on the web portals you use. www.keyagent.co.uk will refresh your photos and floorplans to keep portal users interested in your client’s properties. Their strap line is “You didn’t become an estate agent to edit photos or floor plans” and I hope this is true of you. Think of the time saved and how you could utilise this time with customer engagement.
Reduce your “Fall Through Rate” by reducing the time from SSTC and completion AND allowing the customer to interact via a portal. www.movewithus.co.uk www.econveyancer.com and www.viewmychain.com offer different variations of this theme. One thing they all offer agents is – you guessed it – more time to engage with their customers.
So all in all, #PropTech simply allows you to concentrate on what you do best, engaging with your clients and selling property for / to them.
Oh… a footnote: make sure that any #PropTech you use has an “Open API” otherwise the time you have saved by introducing the technology will be eaten up while you copy and paste date from one system to another.
PropTech isn’t coming. It’s here. How you embrace it will determine your future.
Written by Nigel Stephens – info@nigelstephens.com
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