In this week’s Real Estate Sales and Technology news, we look at Zillow’s $3.5 billion Real Estate Technology Checkmate, Real Estate Referral Technology, How Real Estate Agents Lose Clients, and How to Build a Personal Brand for Real Estate Agents.

Zillow’s $3.5 billion checkmate in Real Estate Technology Innovation

Zillow is going for the gold. A few weeks ago, Zillow won the MSN deal allowing this them to power the real estate search experience on MSN. And last week Zillow acquired Retsly for an undisclosed sum, but clearly Zillow is not going to stop there.  Yesterday, Zillow announced it will also buy it’s competitor Trulia for $3.5 billion in stock. Yes, that’s BILLION. Zillow means business.

While competitors Realogy and Move will probably oppose this deal, reaction to the Zillow/Trulia deal on Wall Street was largely positive. This is a great example of the evolutionary speed of the online real estate industry. Just ten years ago Zillow & Trulia did not even exist. Realtor.com was just starting to run the show. Every client wanted to get their listing on Realtor.com. But now? Zillow has taken the lead in innovation, arranging all their technological chess pieces and gobbling up the right tools that will support it’s leadership in real estate sales technology.  

Read all the coverage on the Zillow deal at ABC News, where Zillow is leading us at Inman and how Big Data is Changing Real Estate at Mashable.

Are you getting paid for Real Estate referrals? 

New startup Balcony allows you to throw away your Excel spreadsheets and upgrade to a new way of tracking referrals. Balcony, launching this fall, is a referral platform that allows agents to search for, rate and review referral partners, track deals, and get paid for sending clients to another agent.

Balcony, along with Clearview Elite, is one of the nine innovative real estate technology companies, chosen by Real Trends for their Business Accelerator Program. This program introduces startups that are leading the way in harnessing the power of the Internet in the real estate technology industry.

While the real estate referral process can be frustrating for it’s lack of transparency, Balcony takes the guesswork out of each deal. Realogy’s luxury brand, Sotheby’s International Realty, brought on real estate tech firm Immobel to launch a new referral platform in June that allowed it to retire paper from its referral process. While some brands have their own internal referral process, Balcony is making a play at garnering an industry wide market share. For more information on how Real Estate Agents are using Balcony you can read more here.

 

How Real Estate Agents Lose Clients

Inman just posted a great article listing 5 Reasons why you are losing a listing. Some of the suggestions on preventing a past client from listing with a competitor are:

• Stay in regular contact. Nothing beats face to face contact, but use all avenues: phone, email, social media etc.
• Listen more, talk less. Move more from presenting and selling to asking questions to nurture a more personal connection.
• Create a unique selling proposition. What sets you apart from your competitors and why is that valuable to your client? 
• Create a robust 90-day marketing plan that outlines when their listing will appear on MLS, when the For Sale sign will go up, and when the open houses will be.

Read the original article here . And for more tips on how to never lose a client again check out Real Estate Career Mentor, Dal Sohl Strategies and RealtyTimes.

How to Build a Personal Brand for Real Estate Agents

Superstar Digital Marketer Neil Patel has written an epic guide on Building your Personal Brand which can be used for all Real Estate Professionals looking to take center stage.  Considered by Forbes to be one of the top 10 online marketers, Patel has gone on to create several high profile online marketing companies and was named a “top influencer on the web” by the Wall Street Journal.

This just published guide walks you through creating your real estate personal brand vision, defining your target audience, press coverage & outreach, mentoring, and authenticity of your brand. With the technological advancements in the age of transparency, people are much more likely to convert into a long term client with someone whom they are personally identified. 

You can read Patel’s free guide here. For more effective strategies to build your brand as a Real Estate Agent, check out AgentBoost. And for 3 keys to building your personal brand as a real estate agent, read more at Kaplan Real Estate Education. Or watch below this older, but still very relevant, video of Neil Patel’s strategy for building personal brand recognition.

Clearview’s Tuesday Tech Tip: Cirrus Insight  

Cirrus Insight is a browser extension that brings Salesforce CRM into Gmail so you can respond to customers faster and update Salesforce with new leads, contacts, and opportunities as you work in Gmail. Cirrus Insight also syncs Salesforce with Google Calendar and Google Contacts. Cirrus can cut down on the time and money spent duplicating information in each platform which, for many agents on the go, can be a lifesaver. And as of just this week, Cirrus Insight Mobile announced that it now provides CRM integration for the iPhone Inbox. For more information on Cirrus Insight Solutions for Real Estate, click here.

For more weekly tips, tools and trends to help you become better at luxury real estate marketing & sell more real estate this year, consider subscribing to our newsletter.

 

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