Over the years, Real Pro Systems has enjoyed a close relationship with Howard Brinton and his entire Star Power organization.  You see, year after year, Star Power has been an amazing force for passing on the best practices in the real estate industry, from seasoned veterans to the up and coming agents.  Howard’s energy and drive built a community of Stars who selflessly share what they have learned to any and all who attend Star Power events.  And so, when we learned last year that Howard was retiring, we held our breath.  Star Power is simply to0 valuable of a resource to let it go away.

We were delighted when Alex Charfan, stepped forward to take over the reins from Howard.  Alex is the founder of the Distressed Property Institute, which awards the CDPE designation (Certified Distressed Property Expert) to agents who complete their program.  He is an engaging speaker and proven entrepreneur who is committed to keeping the best Star Power has to offer, while continuing to innovate new programs and delivery mechanisms to make the Star Power network and programs even more effective.

This year’s Star Power annual conference is being held outside Nashville in Murfreesboro, TN.  With a stunning lineup of industry luminaries, the agenda looks to be very exciting.  If you’ve never been to a Star Power conference before, you will likely learn more in three days than you typically do in three years. Real Pro Systems is a Platinum sponsor of this year’s event, and we encourage agents who want to improve their game to attend.  You can find more information  and a discount here: www.starpowerconference.com.

Real Estate Websites are Not One Size Fits All

Real Pro Systems builds highly flexible websites that are easily tailored to an agent’s needs.  There is a lot of confusion in the marketplace about terms like “template” website, “cookie-cutter” website, “custom” website, and so on.  Here’s how we see the world of websites.

To us, a “cookie-cutter” website is a derogatory term, referring to a website that is not configurable; they all look alike, and the content is fixed.  For agents on a budget or with no budget, it might be the only alternative.  Sometimes these are free sites provided by a broker or offered as an add-on to a service such as an IDX.  Let’s face it; even with the lack of flexibility it’s better than no internet presence at all.  But all they offer is a “business card in cyberspace.”

Template sites are formatted with pre-defined templates.  You can sometimes add pages, but you have almost no control over the layout of the page or the formatting of the content.  These are primitive, but nevertheless, expandable websites. Generally, no content is provided, and creating your websites is a “do-it-yourself” project.  Frequently, you use an automated online system to build your website, and you have no support from a service department; you are on your own.

Production websites are mid-priced websites that come with some amount of content pre-populated.  Usually, you choose a design layout from a gallery of choices, and the company produces a website with that look and feel.  You could argue that these are “cookie cutter” in that each one is initially populated with the same content as a starting point; in order to maintain a price point, there is no choice.  But these production sites range dramatically in cost and capability.  Ironically, some of the most expensive websites in this category are the LEAST flexible!

Custom websites are just that- no strings attached as to what design elements or layout can be implemented.  Unfortunately, there’s also no limit as to how expensive they can be.  Agents often turn to a custom designer because they believe it is the only way to get the branding and look and feel that meets their needs.  It seems that most of the time, they spend $3,000 – 5,000 with a local vendor and end up with a website that is attractive and unique. There are vendors in the real estate space who will charge you $10,000-15,000 for a custom website, with unexceptional graphical design, so you don’t always get what you pay for.

Unfortunately, when you buy a custom website it typically requires you to keep going back to the designer every time you need a change made to a page because there are no built-in tools for website maintenance.  This is a terrible situation to be in because change is key to keeping search engines interested in your site.

It is essential to consider the importance of tools for extending and maintaining a website.  We need to make a distinction between website look and feel (the “skin”), the content, and the related internet marketing tools that must be integrated with a website for it to contribute to your business.  When you buy a custom website, it simply is not economical for the web designer to build a lead management system, a drip email campaign system, and email blast tool, a monthly newsletter, and the like.  And these are the very tools that comprise your internet marketing foundation!

So where does that leave us?  Real Pro Systems builds a powerful set of website management and internet marketing tools as part of the systems we offer.  The website doesn’t exist in isolation, it is part of an integrated system.  This is economical, because the cost of developing these tools is spread over thousands of clients, making it cost–effective for a beginning agent to get a powerful set of tools.  The custom website developer may only have a handful of real estate agent clients, and cannot afford to be building production software which is what these related marketing tools are.  So custom website design is not software tool production, and leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to internet marketing.  A gorgeous custom website may make a good impression, but without effective internet marketing tools integrated, it will not be nearly as effective at generating business as a modest production website system.

When we look at production website vendors and their tools, it is eye-opening to see the fundamental differences in what they offer.  Even our entry level Real Pro Silver system comes with a rich lead capture and follow-up system that rivals products costing five times as much.  And users of all of our systems including Silver can easily add as many pages of content to their websites as they wish.  The menu choices and arrangements (“navigation”) can be completely customized so it doesn’t even resemble the original production website.  SEO settings are completely configurable too.  We have had clients use our websites for niche marketing, recruiting agents, and even for a political campaign!  A “cookie-cutter” or “template” website doesn’t offer this range of flexibility.

Even with other prominent production website vendors, you don’t have this flexibility.  With some, it requires a call to customer service to get any changes made.  That might be OK if they offered good response to these requests, but unfortunately, that often is not the case.

The other factor that plays into this (and is invisible to the real estate agent) is the website’s architecture.  This ultimately is what drives the degree of flexibility in the system.  Many websites “hard-wire” the website look and feel into the “back end” code of the site, making changes nearly impossible.  Real Pro Systems’ Web 2.0 architecture decouples the look and feel of the website from the operating code of the internet marketing system.  This means that the flexibility of the website look and feel goes beyond adding and formatting pages, and goes beyond choosing a design from a gallery of layouts.

With Real Pro Systems’ architecture, you can commission us to create a completely custom look and feel for your website, but still retain all the benefits of the product-quality tools built into our systems!  Whenever we release a new version of our tools, you get those changes, just as if you had a production website, because it is built on our system.  No one else offers this flexibility.

In contrast, with every other company in the real estate web space, you get a limited set of choices- run with a production or cookie-cutter website and use the tools they provide, or go to a custom website designer and forget about the benefits of integrated tools.  At Real Pro Systems, our ever-expanding range of solutions enables you to choose the solution that best meets your needs, and your growth path is assured from Real Pro Silver (your internet foundation), to Real Pro Gold (advanced internet marketing) to Real Pro Platinum (the ultimate internet marketing and business management system).

Any of our systems can support a fully custom website, and as your needs grow, you can upgrade from one system to the other, retaining your custom website look and feel!  When you buy from Real Pro Systems, you not only get a great system with flexibility, but you have great flexibility across a range of systems.

As Real Pro Systems continues to grow, we’re always on the lookout for top talent in our industry.  And as momentum around our Real Pro Platinum product has surged, we’ve been on the lookout for a sales expert who knows internet marketing and the real estate industry inside and out.

It’s our pleasure to announce that Rick Headley has joined Real Pro Systems as a sales representative.  Rick comes to us with more than 13 years experience in our industry, not only selling systems for Number 1 Expert, but acting as a valued consultant and trusted partner to hundreds of agents around the country.  Rick will continue providing valuable insight to his clients, but now backed up by the technical innovation and extraordinary customer support that Real Pro Systems provides.

Rick has shared with us that he was “blown away” by the business management functionality in Real Pro Platinum.  “I have known the folks at Real Pro Systems for years, and we have frequently collaborated to help our mutual clients grow their businesses.  I knew them for their terrific lead generation and search engine-friendly websites.  But when I saw how Real Pro Systems had leapfrogged everyone else with the new Real Pro Platinum system,  I knew it was time to make a change- this is the future for teams and brokerages.  I’m very excited to represent Real Pro Systems and bring this solution to our clients.”

We’re excited too!  If you would like to connect with Rick, his email is rick.headley@realprosystems.com or on Facebook.

Over the last several years, the real estate market has experienced a severe downturn, resulting in many agents leaving the business.  Some had long successful careers and decided it was a good time to retire.  But many were essentially forced out of the business by market conditions and/or their inability to adjust to the new market quickly enough.

The shift has resulted in fewer agents working today, but most of those who remain are with us because they are better business people than those who couldn’t survive.  We witness this every day; the agents we speak with are savvier on average, both in technology and in business.  The difference is pretty dramatic.

Business goes in cycles, and a significant downturn means businesses close, and the remaining businesses absorb and consolidate their market share.  Even when the overall market size shrinks, the individual businesses remaining may experience significant growth!  In the market consolidation phase, it is crucial to adopt new strategies, processes and tools that poise you for future growth, and in so doing, you will achieve remarkable growth despite being in the middle of the market downturn.

As this is true for real estate agents, so it is true for suppliers of tools for real estate agents.  At Real Pro Systems, as we saw the clouds begin to gather on the horizon, we made a conscious choice to invest in strategies, tools and people that would enable us to consolidate our gains, improve our efficiencies, and weather the coming storm.  In 2007 we adopted a company-wide CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system that tracks every interaction from initial lead, through the sales process to completed order, through the production process to deployment and tracking the support process for as long as a client remains with us.  We decided to renovate the technology behind our flagship products, Real Pro Gold and Real Pro Silver, so we would remain highly competitive by advancing the state of the art in our industry.  And we even had the available resources to build Real Pro Platinum, a powerful team solution that is breaking new ground every day.

In our worst year our revenue sagged only 4% and we remained profitable, at a time when the real estate market and our competitors were getting clobbered.  Other vendors who did not invest in efficiencies or product improvements are now losing market share, and we are gaining.  As these differences become more apparent, between vendors who have continued to invest in their products and those who have not, we expect our growth to accelerate.  We just completed Q1 of 2010 with rapid growth and improved profitability over 2009.  In fact, it was the strongest quarter in our history by a considerable margin.  (As a privately held company we do not release financial figures.)

Have you thought about your business in terms of market share and market consolidation?  As agents leave the business, how will you move in and claim your share?  This is not a simple matter of a marketing tactic here or there, these are fundamental business process questions.

It’s often repeated that all marketing is niche marketing.  If you think of your business as a set of niches or market segments, what are those segments?  Which ones are you focused on?  Who is leaving or has left the business in your area?  What segment are they vacating or not defending well that you could possibly take on?  You might find you could grow your business substantially without much resistance, if you could pick one niche at a time to move in and dominate.

At the same time, what business processes or systems could improve your efficiency, providing more business with lower expenses?  If you want different results, you’ll have to do something different.  How do you measure the results for each investment you make?  What is the “yield” from each source of new leads?

One way to analyze this is to review each stage of your business pipeline, and see what area needs help.  Start with lead flow- are you generating enough leads?  How about lead conversion?  Are you finding that leads from one source convert more readily than another?  Are you getting to the leads in time?  Or are you finding that one agent on your team does a better job of lead conversion than the others?  This business analysis is crucial to identifying the one or two key process improvements that could have an enormous impact on your business.

During this time of market consolidation, we have to make the investments in tools, processes and people that will sustain us going forward.  We don’t know if the market will stay at its present subdued level or if there will be a substantial resurgence, or possibly even another leg down.  What we do know is that the stronger you are, the more disciplined your business is, the better your chances of surviving and thriving.  When we make investments for the long haul, our growth and our market position is more secure and sustainable.  In fact, making these improvements and investments mean we can grow, even in a downturn.

We have been using URL shortening utilities for a while now, especially when it comes to posting webinars and other links to our website on Twitter. Short links take up less space and solicit a great response from readers, making them a vital part of any social medial strategy! Now, thanks to VisiStat’s web analytics, it’s easier than ever to post and track link activity for any site. Visit Bizy.be and see for yourself how easy it is. Tracking shortened URL’s couldn’t be simpler!

VisiStat is a website analytics toolset that is included with EVERY Real Pro Systems website. It provides powerful visibility of who is coming to your website, and what got them there!

Bizy.be allows you to plug in a long URL in exchange for a shorter one, and provides a comprehensive report covering click-throughs, location information, and browser statistics for your readers. The accounts are free and take only a minute to set up.