Blog, Matt. Blog!

The Virtual Office Model (Part 8)

The FavoriteAgent.com Virtual Model

Imagine starting your very own real estate brokerage. I know what you’re thinking:

“But I don’t have the $20,000 for a franchise fee, or the $10,000 for a lease deposit and and first month’s lease payment.  For that matter, I don’t have the $50,000 it will cost me to buy the desks, tables, chairs, fax machine, copy machine, and all the endless stuff that I need to get things started.  And even if I had the $80,000 in hard start-up costs, and another $100,000 available for operating capital, I can’t begin to afford the advertising campaign that will be required to recruit agents and to let the public know I exist.”

So instead, you resign yourself to continue to schlep houses until you drop. Riding in cars with buyers. One frustrating transaction after another. Not that you mind making new friends, but enduring the daily grind of chasing from deal to deal gets old. Let’s be honest. You have ambitions to get out of the trenches and you have vision for how things might be. There has to be more than this. Right?

Well I have some great news! There is more!  So much more! I’m going to show you how you can own your own Virtual Office brokerage, and how you can do it inexpensively. I’ll show you how you can recruit agents, train them, and manage them better than in a traditional model company. Most importantly, I’m going to show you how you can make more money in the process — a lot more money.

What’s more, in this model you can be up and running in days, not weeks or even months. You don’t have to be able to ride out a long start-up period with yet another big slice of your hard-earned savings.   And what’s even better is that this model is thriving during the current depressed housing market. Sounds too good to be true, right? It’s not.

You could open your own Virtual Office brokerage with us and never miss a transaction. I want you to imagine being the person in the plan I’m about to lay out for you. It could very well be you, and the entire transition could take place in a few days.  You’ll see. I know you have your doubts, so we’ll just call you Thomas (as in doubting Thomas). Okay, Tom. Here is your plan:

Day 1. Getting everything in place. A building, a managing broker, and your Virtual Office technology platform.

* First, your building. Some states require you to have a physical brick-and-mortar location for your company (at least for another few years).  Legally, that can be your house, but I’m not suggesting for an instant that you use your house to meet clients. Here is our model.  I’m assuming you are a working agent, so you have been using both a lender and a closing attorney. Start there.Go and ask either of them — no ask both of them — if they’ll allow you and your agents to use a conference room to meet clients, if you continue to send them your business. If they won’t, then find another who will.  Believe me, this will be the simplest negotiation of your life. I’ve never heard of an agent being turned down when they asked for the ongoing use of a conference room.  Remember, they want your business, and what better way to get it than to let you and your agents use a conference room that sits empty most of the day.
* OK, now your Broker.  If you are not legally qualified to manage yourself or other agents, don’t panic.  The beauty of our industry is that we have lots of agents who are qualified and yet leaving the business.  Find a qualifying broker and make him or her a deal to pay them so much per deal to be the “legal oversight”, and to review your work. It shouldn’t take more than a few phone calls to set that up.  Remember, this arrangement can always be changed as you expand your business.
* Finally, Get your Virtual Office technology in place.  That one’s simple.  Call FavoriteAgent.com and we handle the rest.  In a typical office of 30 agents, we cover the the cost of roughly $35,000 per month for the agent’s technology.  How easy was that?!  No big checks.  No first and last month’s rent.  No deposits.  If you qualify to open an office, we pay the technology bills.

Now it’s been a pretty busy morning, so go ahead and treat yourself to a nice relaxing lunch.  While you’re having lunch, let’s think about your company name.  Have you decided on a name yet?  Well, with our Virtual Office license, you get to use the FavoriteAgent.com nationally recognized trade name, and immediately associate with nearly 20,000 other real estate professionals across the globe. We have agents in all 50 states, in every province of Canada, as well as Mexico, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Let’s see: “FavoriteAgent.com Premier Properties” has a nice ring to it.  Perfect!

OK. Lunch is over. It’s time to think about a few logistics. You need to order some business cards and yard signs.  No big deal.  Our corporate office has all the art work ready to send to the printer and sign company.  Oh, and don’t forget to make sure your voice mail has your new company name on the recording.   Now log into your MLS and download the email addresses for all the area agents and start focusing on a list of possible recruits. Don’t worry, recruiting will be easy.

Here’s what I mean: Recruiting always comes down to your value proposition to the agent.  And what you have to offer them is so much better than everything else out there, hiring agents will be a snap.  Here is your value proposition in a nutshell.  You give them freedom, better tools, and more money.  What more could they possibly want?

Freedom because your agents don’t have to waste half their productive time pulling floor duty, sitting in sales meetings, driving to caravan houses, or any of the other traditional agent busy-work.  With FavoriteAgent.com they have none of that.  Freedom is huge to a productive agent.

Like any of the national franchises, your agents will each pay 10% of gross commission to FavoriteAgent.com corporate.  But unlike those other national companies, with FavoriteAgent.com they actually get something tangible for their money.  Instead of paying a franchise royalty to use a national name, they are paying a technology license fee.  That technology license fee buys them everything they need to operate a Virtual Office real estate practice.  Here’s what I mean.

Each agent gets his very own LCM web gateway, his own LCM phone gateway (both are state-of-the-art lead capture technologies), his own personal website, his own integrated contact management software, his own virtual assistant and mobile applications.  They also get the most powerful Virtual Office real estate platform available today, complete with hundreds of training articles, videos, calculators, business planning modules and much, much more.  Our technology bundle would cost each agent over $1,100 per month if they were to license it directly.

Now remember, as the broker-owner, running a typical 30-agent office, FavoriteAgent.com will be providing your company with nearly $35,000 per month in Virtual Office technology.  You’ll also be happy to know that all of your agent accounting is included in that licensing fee, so you won’t have to spend your money to hire a bookkeeper to run your brokerage, or shut down the entire office for the month of January to get all the agent 1099’s sent out.

But besides all the freedom and all the tools, you’re going to attract your agents the old fashioned way — you’re going to pay them well!  The FavoriteAgent.com Agent Compensation Plan is probably the simplest and most generous you’ve ever seen.  Here it is:  Every single agent pays a 50% split on their first transaction with the company.  That’s to offset all the administrative costs in adding a new agent to the company.  But after that, all active agents keep a minimum of 80%. To remain active with the company, an agent only has to complete one transaction a quarter, or, they can work full-time in real estate.  Now, there are two ways an agent can make 90%!  First, by being a top producer.  If an agent completes four or more transactions in a thirty-day period, he is paid 90%.  Or they can make 90% by recruiting.  If an agent recruits five other agents to join your company, his commission is increased to 90%.

And that’s 90% commission with with no office rent, no transaction fees, no administrative fees, no nickel and dime fees, period.  So, how easy do you think it is to attract agents when you can give them freedom, you can give them a state-of-the-art technology platform and the ability to forever solve their lead problems, and you can pay them 90%?

Believe me, it can’t get any easier.  OK, enough about recruiting.  It’s been a tough day but well worth the time invested.  Go ahead and take the evening off and get some sleep. You’re going to need it.  Tomorrow’s going to be really busy!

Day 2. Today you have your initial coaching session with FavoriteAgent.com. It will take about an hour, and during that hour you’re going to learn how to set up and manage your online advertising.  By the end of the day, you’ll have a steady supply of new leads coming into your own Virtual Office contact manager.  Don’t worry, if you forget something, the coaching staff is always there to answer any questions you may have.  Now it’s time to do your homework.

The coaching staff is going to suggest that you take an hour to make sure that everything is set up just like you want it, and to learn your way around the Virtual Office software. They’ll also tell you to import all your contacts into your software. While you’re at it, why don’t you go ahead and email the customer service department your list of local real estate agents, complete with the phone numbers, fax numbers, and email addresses.  You know, the ones that you downloaded yesterday.  Within an hour or so, they’ll have them all in your contact manager and ready to use.  Was that easy or what?!

Day 3. Now it’s time to actually start recruiting agents. Better check your Pipeline. Oh my! You have seven new leads waiting to be called. Sure, you continue to practice real estate while you build your team, but now you get to keep 90% of your commissions instead of giving over a third to your old broker.  Now you can spend less time drumming up business too, because it is coming to you faster than you can handle it.  Now you can actually think about building your business by recruiting.  Maybe you already are a broker and have agents working for you, or maybe you are just starting from scratch.  Either way, using techniques we’ll show you, you should be able to recruit 30 agents in less than 90 days.

Now let’s look at a realistic scenario comparing this model to the traditional model. Let’s say you recruit 30 agents over the next few months, and those agents average one single transaction per month. Here is how your income looks:

* Traditional Model. With 30 agents and 30 transactions per month, using a typical traditional model broker split of 38% (or in other words, you pay your agents an average of 62%), and using an average GCI or gross commission income of $6,000 per transaction, you would have a franchise fee of $14,400. That plus any note payments you might have, and any mandatory signs and supplies you had to purchase. If you run your brokerage like the typical traditional brokerage, then you will bring about 2% to the bottom line or about $3,600! Don’t forget, you might not have that much business coming in, and your expenses will still march on, but for purposes of this illustration let’s say your agents come through and business is good.
* Virtual Model. With the same 30 agents and 30 transactions, using the national average company dollar of 15%, and the same 30 agents and 30 transactions per month, you’ll make $17,901. In other words, your Virtual Office company makes about five times as much money and has virtually no risk. No rent. No utility bills. No accounting.  No company advertising bills. No additional staff. The very picture of simplicity.  And you have lots of time available to actually do some production, if you decide you want to.

Remember, in the traditional model, your cash outlay is nearly $200,000 and your risk is very high. At that level, your return on investment is minimal and you have basically bought a job. Unless you can live on a $43,200 income, you are going to have no choice but to sell houses every day and compete with your agents.

In the virtual model, you’d make $214,812 on the revenue produced by one virtual office of 30 agents. Let’s say you continued to grow that office, adding 30 agents a year for the next five years. You’d be making $1,388,016, and it would all be profit! Your company will be a virtual real estate money-making machine and you’ll have very little, if any, stress. Your agents will make more money, and your customers will be better served.  You’ll have the benefit of a national brand and state-of-the-art technology, and you’ll own a business valued at roughly seven times EBITDA, Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization, or nearly $10 million.

Contrast that to the traditional alternative where you would likely still be leveraged to the hilt in your one brokerage of 30 agents, taking on a huge risk of capital, and working with diminishing margins as agents continue to demand more and more money and brokerage commissions continue to erode. Suppose you wanted to expand. You’d have to reinvest more capital to get and equip a larger facility.  And you’d have to add staff.  Your risk would continue to escalate with every expansion, and unless you’re a rare agent, you’d still be selling houses and own a business nobody would buy.

Day 4. Now comes the fun part… all you do from your fourth day on is make money. Now how cool is that!

Well I hope that helps you understand exactly how I’d recommend you open your own virtual office. It’s simple, and our company pays all the Virtual Office expenses for those qualifying agents who have big dreams but small balances. We’ll hold your hand every step of the way, and help you become successful. The only thing standing between you and a very enjoyable and rewarding life is your own fear to act. So, contact us, and we’ll help you get started doing real estate this new way!

<< Prev | The End

The Virtual Office Model (Part 5)

What Does it Mean to “Go Virtual”?

Let’s assume that you’ve acquired the essential technologies that I talked about in the previous installments in this series.  Now let’s talk about the practical side of practicing real estate from a virtual office.  By way of a short review of the previous four installments, Are You Ready for the One Minute Commute? discussed the idea of working remotely in a virtual office from a macro perspective and just how mainstream that idea is becoming.  Today, twenty-three percent of our nation’s workforce currently work remotely, and another 62% would like to.

In Part 1 and Part 2, I talked about building a virtual real estate practice and the crucial technologies that allow agents to receive the benefits of an office (communication, instruction, supervision, and money) in a web environment as opposed to a brick-and-mortar location.  At this point we were still very theoretical and macro in our discussion.

Part 3 and Part 4 got specific about which technologies are essential to the successful practice of real estate in today’s new real estate economy.  I listed the eight crucial technologies you need and showed you how you could get them for well under your recommended advertising budget.  If you missed any of those installments, you really need to go back and check them out.

Now I’d like to move away from the theoretical and begin to paint you a picture.  I’m afraid that for many of you taking this training, what I’m preaching sounds like science fiction, and not reality.  I realize that the average agent taking this training is a 52-year-old female who is very relational in her real estate practice and reluctant to rely on technology.

(Okay, for the 42% of you who are men, you too average 52 years old; you too are allergic to technology, although not quite as much; but you tend to be a little less relational in your practice than your female counterpart.)  You have been in the business an average of 10.5 years, so changing your mindset will be difficult.

I know that for many of you, “going virtual” sounds either too complicated, too impersonal, too expensive, or just plain too different to even consider.  But I’m telling you, as soberly as I can, that you really need to consider it.  And consider it quickly or you may find yourself considering another career.  I’m not trying to scare you, but I’m encouraging you to make the painless adaptation to this new age of real estate.  It really is easier than you probably believe.

I’d like to expand your thinking a bit (as if I haven’t already!) by giving you a “virtual tour” of a virtual company.  My company.  I’d like to take you through it, one part at a time, and contrast it with your real estate brokerage so you can see the practical advantage over a traditional model company.  Once you’ve seen it with your own eyes, you’ll be open to embrace this new way of doing real estate.

Let’s start with everyone’s favorite topic: money.  The average traditional brokerage in America pays its agents 62% of gross commission income (GCI) and brings only 2% to the bottom line.  In fact, some companies pay their agents even less and still see lower profit margins.  Many broker-owners continue to list and sell real estate because they can’t afford to keep the doors open without being the top producer in their own office.

When I started in real estate, I worked for a very traditional independent company.  A year and a half later, the owner decided to make it a traditional franchise company.  At one point, we had as many as 35 agents.  But for the entire two years I was with the company, we never had a single profitable month.  Why did we stay open?  The owner was also a large builder, and although he continually lost money in the real estate practice, the brokerage sold a lot of his new homes and he made good money on the construction.  As soon as he closed his construction business and became a developer, he sold the franchise, because there was no way to make a reasonable profit in today’s climate.

Contrast that to my current real estate brokerage.  We paid our agents an average of 85% of GCI and last year brought 13% to the bottom line — pure profit.  Now I know what you’re thinking: How can you run a brokerage on the remaining 2% of GCI?  Well read closely, because I’m going to tell you.  We have a virtual office model. Before you dismiss it as not being real enough, let me remind you that we have the largest office (yes, brick and mortar office) in our local market.  By virtual, I don’t mean without a physical location — I mean technology empowered.

Today’s new real estate model is about empowerment through technology.  To give you some specifics, I spent nothing for my 8,000 square foot, state-of-the-art transaction center last year.  My affiliated business arrangements (two in-house mortgage companies, an in-house law firm, and a title company), covered the entire physical overhead.

Our company doesn’t advertise — our agents do.  And our agents spend the same amount of money on advertising as our competitors, and yet they receive about 30 times as many customers.  Why?  Again, the power of our technology.  While our company is over twice the size of the brokerage I started in, we only have one full-time employee as opposed to the eight full-time employees they had.  How?  Again, technology.

We don’t have a receptionist.  We don’t have an MLS clerk.  We don’t have a file clerk.  We don’t have an office manager.  We don’t have a rental department and property managers.  We don’t have a bookkeeper.  We don’t have…  We don’t have a lot of personnel overhead. We don’t have a lot of office politics (It’s hard to be political all by yourself.).  We don’t have a lot of sick days.  We don’t have a lot of office turnover.  We don’t have a lot of bickering or griping.  What we do have is efficiency.

When I was an agent in a traditional office, when I took a new listing, I filled out a form and turned it into an MLS clerk.  Assuming the clerk was at work that day, or not behind from previously missing work, a day transpired before my listing was in the MLS.  Invariably it was entered wrong, but the clerk didn’t bother to call me with questions.  And how did I find out about the mistakes?  From my client who managed to find out about the mistakes before I did.

Then the client would call me, angry and I would turn in the corrections.  If all went smoothly, it would take a week for the listing to actually be entered correctly in the MLS, creating needless liability for the company (and me), and costing the company lots of money that could have been returned to the agents in commission dollars.

By contrast, our agents enter their own listings.  No lack of communication.  No time lag.  No bureaucracy.  No hassle.  No cost to the office.  The agents prefer it.  The clients aren’t angry because they caught the mistakes some minimum wage clerk made and assumed the mistakes were made by their agents.

At the traditional office where I began, either duty agents or a paid receptionist fielded all lead calls.  We had a strict policy in place that any call coming in requesting information about a specific property, was to be forwarded to the listing agent.  Pretty simple.  Now because all agents are honest, you know that policy was consistently obeyed, right?  Yeah, right!

I continually averaged 50-60 active listings while I was an agent with the company and I was available every single day to answer my phone.  Not once did a call come in from over 50 yard signs!  Not once!  The reason I know no leads came in is because I would have been given the lead.  Right?  Yeah, right!

Contrast that to our virtual company.  Our agents are allowed to advertise (including their yard signs) their own phone numbers as well as their own LCM Phone Gateway numbers.  And if a customer calls their LCM Phone Gateway, the call is electronically routed to the agent without anyone touching it, stealing it, or dropping the ball.  Simultaneously, both an email and text message are sent to the agent.

The email and text messages contain the caller’s phone number, the property called about, and the advertising source (whether the call came from a yard sign, a homes magazine, their website, or wherever).  Again, expensive and inefficient personnel has been replaced with inexpensive and very efficient technology.

In that traditional company any Internet leads that came in came to the broker.  The broker’s lead coordinator eventually got around to sending them to a handful of “broker’s pet” agents, who generally did little or nothing with them.  The company had a website, and it listed the agents on the company site.  The website was always out of date, and did very little in terms of capturing business.

Each of our agents has his own website.  They generate as much business as they want from them and nobody else ever sees or touches those leads.  The company also refers leads to some of our agents, and those leads can be seen and managed completely by our managing broker through our Pipeline Client Management platform.  We can see exactly what the progress is with any lead at any time.

If an agent is not doing his job in following up a company lead, the broker can pull that lead back from the original agent and reassign it to another agent with the click of a mouse.  It’s easy and it’s seamless.  The lead, complete with the entire history and notes, is removed from one agent’s contact manager and inserted, seamlessly, into the other’s.  How cool is that?!

I know that I’m causing some of you to have a meltdown, but stick with me.  Don’t feel like the lone ranger.  About two and a half years ago, a very successful broker-owner attended one of our National Agent Summits, a quarterly training seminar we host, where we teach the new model of real estate.

I won’t reveal his name, but you should know that he is extremely successful, and his company owns eight large offices in Atlanta.  His is one of the most innovative and most profitable operations in the country, and he actually brings almost 5% to the bottom line.  He’s one of the top real estate franchisees in the world, and the office where he works had 165 agents.

He drove to our office in his new Jaguar, dressed impeccably in expensive clothing and jewelry.  He was “the man”.  He was powerful and impressive.  When we all met around our large conference table, it was clear that this man was the “big dog” in the room.  Everyone waited for his reactions before speaking.  I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.  In our first session he sat with his arms crossed over his chest and his head cocked back a little (as if to say, “Go ahead, tell me something I don’t know”).  I have to admit, I was a little intimidated.  He was and is an extremely sharp guy.

By the second session, he was sitting on the edge of his chair, and by end of the third session he was taking notes furiously.  By the fourth session, he was begging for more information in wide-eyed disbelief.  We messed him up.  We completely blew his mind!  On his drive home he called our office and said he had been speaking with his partners and wanted to know what he had to do to purchase the development rights to Georgia.  He wanted to lock down our model in his state.  He had to see it to actually believe it, but after two full days of sitting in our classroom in the middle of our office building, watching real estate the new way — the FavoriteAgent way — he experienced an awakening.

I can assure you, it was not the profound wisdom that rolled from my lips (as eloquent as I am!); it was actually experiencing something so radically different from the traditional real estate model of which he was universally considered to be a master.  His real estate world will never be the same again.  He caught a vision of something so powerful, and yet at the same time so simple, that it literally messed him up.

Why did he want to buy the rights to Georgia?  Our company was much smaller than his.  Here’s why: When his eyes were opened, he realized that when our model of real estate came to Atlanta, his model was finished.  He paid his agents far less than we do, and yet he still netted less profit.  His overhead was staggering, and ours was minimal.  His agent services were good but ours were every bit as good.  He saw that we had everything that his company had, only we did it virtually.

I realize that I’ve already given you a lot to absorb and process, so I’ll break here for this segment.  In the next installment, I’d like to walk you through our office and give you a guided tour.  A “virtual tour” of our “virtual company”, if you will.  I will try to help you actually picture it.

Of course, you’re welcome to come actually visit anytime you’d like.  We’d love to meet you in person.

<< Prev | Next >>

The Virtual Office Model (Part 4)

Putting Together the Tools

If I had to start from scratch in a new market with no experience, I would start with only a few basic technologies, and in this installment, I’ll discuss those essential technologies that I believe every agent must have in this new age of real estate.

Want to hear the good news?  The entire thing can be done cheaper than sending out a typical direct mail marketing campaign every month.  I have virtually every piece of technology that I am about to suggest, and including the computer, I spend far less than my marketing budget for all of it!  Let’s take a look at it piece by piece.

Client Management Application. There are several client management software applications or CRMs available for real estate professionals.  Some of the more common ones are Top Producer, Agent Office, Market Leader, Salesforce.com (not real estate specific), and Pipeline.  All of the applications above except Pipeline cost between $50 - $100 per month.  Pipeline is free as part of the entire virtual office platform.  By the way, our company developed Pipeline because we had used all of the others and didn’t like the functionality or the price.  (See the advertisement at the end of this installment.)  Running your business without a client management application to keep up with all your customers will keep you from ever growing beyond a minimal level of production.

LCM Web Gateway. According to the National Association of REALTORS®, the typical real estate website has a capture rate of of less than 1%.  In other words, less than 1% of the total visitors to any website actually identify themselves and become a potential customer for the owner of that website.  But by using an LCM Web Gateway you can start capturing between 30-35% of all your website visitors, allowing you to start effectively tapping that Internet market.

Here’s how it works.  An LCM Web Gateway is a specialized mini-website module that is designed to be integrated to any real estate website.  It’s sole purpose is to capture the maximum number of visitors.  The first time through the gateway, the user has to register to use your website.  But from then on, he or she can come and go freely without ever registering again.

Why does the LCM Web Gateway work so much better than the registration forms on most real estate websites?  Because it’s specifically designed to maximize lead capture, while web forms are not.  Online lead capture is a science.  The reason it’s important to use an LCM Web Gateway is that the high cost of traffic on the Internet makes most online advertising ineffective.  But by using an LCM Web Gateway, instead of costing over $100 for each captured lead, you can now generate your own unending supply of new customer leads for as little as $3-5 each.

LCM® Phone Gateway. The LCM Phone Gateway is a telephony lead capture solution.  It is to the telephone what an LCM Web Gateway is to a website.  You simply integrate it to any advertising where a customer might call in, like your yard signs, fliers, homes magazine or newspaper ads, or anywhere a customer might find you and want to call.

Here’s how it works:  When a customer calls, regardless of whether he has caller ID block, his phone number is electronically captured.  Meanwhile, he’s seamlessly routed to a pre-recorded message that gives him the option of choosing to speak to you for more information or to allow you to call him back later.  And like the LCM Web Gateway, having an LCM Phone Gateway brings down the high cost of capturing those telephone leads.

Website. The website is probably the piece of the technology puzzle you already have.  If not, you can either build your own (there are dozens of books telling you how to do it) or you can buy one ready-made for anywhere from $30 - $200 per month, depending on the bells and whistles.  Remember, even the best real estate websites only capture about 6-8% of their traffic so you will need to install an LCM Web Gateway along with the site.

If I were you, I would use a free website like the Agent SimpleSite (free forever) that we give away for free to anyone who licenses our LCM Web Gateway technology.  The thing to remember is that the website is not as important as the lead capture gateway.

Laptop Computer. I see agents wasting money on computers all the time.  Having owned literally hundreds of computers, one thing I can tell you is that today’s latest and greatest will be old news in 6 months.  I run a technology company and we have dozens of office computers.  We have 500 mail servers, back-up computers, and hosting servers.  I am writing  this installment on last year’s latest and greatest laptop.

It is an HP Pavilion dv9000 widescreen computer with Vista 64-bit OS, 4G of RAM, 250G hard drive, an “N” wireless card, an Nvidia graphics card, an AMD Turion processor, built in stereo microphones, a web cam, hi-fi speakers by Altec Lansing, and a Lightscribe DVD and CD recorder.  I paid $834 for it two months ago (July 2008) at Sam’s Club and it would have cost nearly $3,000 this time a year earlier.

My point is that there are later and greater models out there but this one will easily keep me current for a couple of years.  You should be able to find last year’s latest and greatest for less than $1,000.  If you amortize it over two years it should cost you less than $50 per month, an investment that is well worth it.

Auto-attendant and Call Routing System. If there is one thing that amazes me is watching agents being slaves to their phones.  I personally think that is a sign of a low-producing agent.  Top producers manage their phones — their phones don’t manage them.  I use a system called Halloo for my company, but for a single agent or team, I would recommend Google Voice which is free.

My Halloo system is web-based, totally programmable, does call routing, voice mail, emailing of voice mail, logs calls, routes calls to my team in a rotary hunt group or simultaneously allowing the fist one that picks up to have the call.  It tries one number, and if no answer, tries another and another until it ultimately goes to a voice mail or someone else.  Their systems start at $10 a month and are well worth every dime.

E-Fax Machine. When I say e-fax, I’m talking about my faxes coming to me as an email document.  That way I can read them, and respond to them from everywhere I am, be it my Blackberry, my laptop, or my home or business office.  I use Faxaway and I don’t pay a dime.  All of our local agents use Faxaway as well.  The company also has paid plans but I use the free service.  Check them out.

Handheld Device or Smart Phone. I use a Blackberry Curve, having tried a number of hand-held devices and Palm Phones as well as other “smart phones”.  My Blackberry (also known as “Crackberry” because of the rapidly addictive properties of the device) handles my email (I use Gmail as my mail platform), my instant messaging, my texting, and allows me to have access to the Internet with a robust browser.

By the way, I also run Pipeline-i Virtual Assistant mobile application on my Blackberry, have about 500 MP3 audio files and about 10 movies for those times when I am stuck in a hotel at night and don’t want to watch TV.  Oh, and I have a full featured GPS and 2.3 megapixel camera on the phone as well.  What’s not to like!

You should be able to buy a new Blackberry with a national data package for less than $100 with a 2-year contract.  I spend about $80 a month for unlimited inbound and outbound calls, unlimited long distance, unlimited texting, unlimited Internet access, and nationwide access.  This tool allows me to conduct business from anywhere.

What a cool time to live in!  What’s funny is that most of you reading this installment are already spending more money every month on technology than I spend on mine.  You should easily be able to budget good virtual office technology and the advertising you need to drive the lead capture for less than the generally recommended 20% of gross commission income, and still have money left over.  And that budget will produce more customer leads than you can possibly handle!

Well, that’s it for this week.  In the next segment, I’ll talk about the practical side of running a virtual office real estate practice.  Having the tools is important, but putting it all together in a way that makes you money is another thing altogether.  You won’t want to miss the next installment.

<< Prev | Next >>

The Virtual Office Model (Part 2)

It’s Not the Building — It’s the Power!

In my last installment, I discussed how our industry is changing dramatically.  I discussed how over the last few years telework has become mainstream, and is now amounting to nearly a quarter of our work force.  I cited how working remotely is increasing in popularity as technology is developed and costs associated with commuting increase.  Five years ago nobody would have even considered a virtual office, and yet at the current rate of growth, in a few short years virtual offices will no longer be the exception, but rather, the rule. So what do I mean when I talk about a real estate “virtual office”?

First let me tell you what I don’t mean… When I start explaining our business model to other brokers or agents, they invariably think that I am talking about not having any office space.  In fact, at one time many of our competitors here in Fayetteville, North Carolina told their agents that we didn’t even have an office.  Nothing could be further from the truth!  We have a huge office.  In fact, our 8,000 square foot office is the largest brokerage office in our market.  We have desks, chairs, conference tables, computers, file cabinets, mail boxes, waste paper baskets, copiers, and all the “normal” trappings of a typical real estate office.

So what do I mean that we are a “virtual office”? I mean the collection of technologies that allow agents to receive the benefits of an office (communication, instruction, supervision, and money) in a web environment as opposed to a brick-and-mortar physical location.  Our agents are able to conduct business just as well in the field or at home as they can in our office building.  Today’s real estate virtual office is more about technology empowerment than about not going to a traditional office building.  Let me repeat that:  Today’s real estate virtual office is more about technology empowerment than about not going to a traditional office building.

I’m not talking about the absence of a brick and mortar physical location.  Instead, what I’m talking about is the power of the office — the communication, the instruction, the supervision, and the money — all being conducted virtually.  That allows our agents to function precisely the same way in any environment.  They can log in at home, or from the local coffee shop.  If they are on vacation, they can log in at the hotel business center and conduct business as if they were at our physical office.  There is simply no difference.

When a client or another agent calls our office, they don’t have to relay the message to a receptionist, who then tries to track down an agent.  Rather, the call is seamlessly routed electronically to the appropriate agent, or to a “hunt group” of agents, or simultaneously to a series of numbers for the same agent.  If the phone system needs to be reprogrammed, we can log in from anywhere and make the needed changes.

When a customer calls an agent’s listing from a yard sign, our technology automatically captures the caller’s phone number (even if they have caller ID blocked) and forwards the caller’s phone number to the listing agent by text message and email while playing a pre-recorded message to the customer detailing the property.  If the customer wants to ask additional questions about the house they simply push zero and the system automatically transfers the call to the agent.  And yes, if that system needs to be reprogrammed or changed in any way, it can all be done from anywhere.

Ok, Matt (you’re probably thinking), that’s nice.  You have a few expensive technology gadgets.  Actually, the truth is we have very few and their cost is minimal, but more on that later in this series.  I’m actually just scratching the surface.  Now is when it really starts to get powerful.  Imagine being the managing broker of our “virtual office” and having 75 agents under your supervision.

We have a technology platform that allows you to oversee every single history note that every one of your agents makes in his real estate contact manager.  It allows you to schedule an appointment for any agent.  It allows you both to make notes in the same customer file.  It allows you to see at a glance, every note in every file, by every agent, while preventing the other agents from seeing each other’s customers or notes, and it allows you to maintain a permanent record of all the notes, comments, and correspondence.

It gets better!  You would be able to refer a customer to an agent with the click of a mouse, have that customer’s information pop into your agent’s contact manager, complete with his entire history, then monitor your agent’s correspondence and prospecting activity with that referred client.  You could make notes to your agent as you supervise him, you could correspond with the customer while preserving a record in the customer file, and you could even pull that customer with the entire history and give it to another agent should there ever be a problem.  Oh, and all of that could be done from anywhere, on any computer, any time of the day or night.

Have I piqued your interest?  I thought so.  Stay tuned and we will discuss exactly how you could assemble the same basic technology platform to accomplish this type of virtual office environment.  And we’ll talk about how you can do it on a budget — great systems don’t have to be expensive.  Finally, we’ll discuss how you could even take the model to the extreme and actually run a complete real estate company without the expensive overhead of a traditional office.  You won’t want to miss a single installment so stay tuned.

<< Prev | Next >>

Regional Vice President Compensation

As a Regional Vice President of Business Development, you share in the Company Dollar with the Virtual Office Team Leaders that you’ve recruited. The more Team Leaders you recruit, and the more Virtual Offices you open, the more money you’ll make. Of course, you’ll also be responsible for managing the Team Leaders you recruit, and from time to time you may need to relieve a Virtual Office Team Leader while you find his or her replacement.

With FavoriteAgent.com, your only limitation is your dream. We’d like to see you open 50 Virtual Offices but you may not be that ambitious. Nevertheless, you’ll make seven figures with only 20 average Virtual Offices. Even with a handful of Team Leaders recruited, you’ll make a lot of money!

Try out our RVP Compensation Calculator to see just how great this opportunity might be!  Click here to launch the calculator.  While you’re at it, go ahead and check out our company’s growth strategy as well.

Virtual Office Team Leader Compensation

Nationally, the average brokerage size was 23 agents in 2008. The primary limiting factor in brokerage size is the high cost of real estate. In FavoriteAgent.com’s virtual model, there are no limitations! Sign as many agents to your team as you can manage effectively.

As a Virtual Office Team Leader with FavoriteAgent.com, you make much more than your traditional model counterparts and you have effectively no overhead to be concerned with. Our Virtual Office Team Leader compensation plan is very simple:

Start with 50% of Company Dollar.
Recruit 10 agents and you get 55% of Company Dollar.
Recruit 20 agents and you get 60% of Company Dollar.
Recruit 30 agents and you get 65% of Company Dollar.
Recruit 50 agents and you get 70% of Company Dollar.

All this and the company pays for all the technology and agent accounting. In a typical office of 30 agents that amounts to about $35,000 per month! That means you get to keep your entire split and focus on simply building your team by recruiting. Now how cool is that?!

Go ahead and check out our compensation plan and see just how great our opportunity can be. Click here to launch our Virtual Office Team Leader Compensation Calculator. For most Team Leaders it is like night and day compared to their old-school brokerage experience.  And while you’re at it, check out our company’s growth strategy too.

Recruit and Manage Virtual Office Team Leaders

As we hire Virtual Office Team Leaders to open and supervise local offices throughout the US, each market area will ultimately have multiple offices and a Regional Vice President of Business Development who will recruit and manage those local Team Leaders.  We are currently hiring Regional Vice Presidents of Business Development for the following markets:

• Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA
• Austin-Round Rock, TX
• Baltimore-Towson, MD
• Birmingham-Hoover, AL
• Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH
• Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY
• Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, NC-SC
• Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL-IN-WI
• Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN
• Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH
• Columbus, OH
• Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX
• Denver-Aurora, CO
• Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI
• Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT
• Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX
• Indianapolis-Carmel, IN
• Jacksonville, FL
• Kansas City, MO-KS
• Las Vegas-Paradise, NV
• Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA
• Louisville-Jefferson County, KY-IN
• Memphis, TN-MS-AR
• Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL
• Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI
• Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI
• Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN
• New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA
• New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA
• Oklahoma City, OK
• Orlando-Kissimmee, FL
• Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD
• Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, OR-WA
• Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI-MA
• Raleigh-Cary, NC
• Richmond, VA
• Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA
• Sacramento-Arden-Arcade-Roseville, CA
• Salt Lake City, UT
• San Antonio, TX
• San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA
• San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA
• San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
• Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA
• St. Louis, MO-IL
• Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL
• Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC
• Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV

To be considered, applicants must possess qualifications to manage a local brokerage as well as extensive sales and recruiting experience.  Our Regional Vice Presidents of Business Development are very well compensated.  If you have the necessary skills and work ethic, and you’d like to help us change the way real estate is done in America, let’s talk.  Click here and fill out the simple online application and someone will contact you.

Use Our Virtual Office Technology

Make your own leads and stop depending on lead vendors, your broker, or your friends!  A recent survey of nearly half a million veteran agents revealed that the number one concern facing agents today is having enough customers. This is further compounded by the recent decline in the national housing market. Meanwhile some agents are having their best days ever, making more in a month than most agents make in a year. So what is so different about these agents? Simple — they’ve quit depending on everyone else.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.
Pipeline-i® Virtual Office is an innovative technology designed by agents, for agents that empowers you to generate more customers than you can possibly handle, all for less than a cup of Starbucks a day. The Pipeline-i® Virtual Office technology package includes integrated lead capture with our LCM® Web Gateway, our LCM® Phone Gateway technologies, our Agent SimpleSite®, and unlimited personal business coaching.

Check out what you get with Pipeline-i® Virtual Office…

• LCM® Gateway Web and Phone Lead Capture Modules
• Agent SimpleSite® Website
• Pipeline-i® Client Management
• Pipeline-i® Virtual Assistant
• Personal Business Coaching

We became a leader in the technology industry by making simple tools for real estate professionals. Our tools are unique because they’re designed by agents, for agents. That means they meet agents’ practical needs, but more importantly, they’re also simple - designed to learn in five minutes or less. Our core technology package Pipeline Virtual Office includes exactly what every agent needs to thrive in real estate.

So what are agents saying?

Agent Tom Bruno says…

“FavoriteAgent Rocks! I have been with them for a little over three years. No problems- no downtime- and they are there if you need them! I stopped doing floor duty, open houses (unless the seller wants me to) and farming to capture buyers and sellers because this program works!”

Tom Bruno
Albuquerque, NM

Agent Randy Roach says…

“Favorite Agent is the reason that I am where I am today. Without hearing about FavoriteAgent.com, I would still be using the old traditional ways of doing business that aren’t very efficient. It has enlightened me on the importance of the internet and has drastically changed the way I have been doing business over the last two years for the better. Everything is internet based and has been very good for our business. Pipeline Virtual Office is an exceptionally cost effective way to make and manage leads. We have been very happy with our results. If you’re looking to increase your business, I would definitely recommend FavoriteAgent.com.”

Randy Roach
Phoenix, AZ

Agent Jason Jarstfer says…

“As a new agent, I was broke and ready to quit real estate after 4 months due to the lack of business. Then I found the FavoriteAgent.com lead capture technology [Pipeline Virtual Office], and my business has never been the same. (I’ve used their systems for the past two years.) When I started with them, I was a rookie agent and had only sold one home. After my first full year with them, I was named the top producer in my company of 21 agents (for 2006 and again in 2007), and was ranked in the top 3% of all the agents in my MLS. All the other agents in our region are saying 2007 was the slowest year they’ve seen, but I’ve had more business than I could handle. So much that I recently hired a full time administrative assistant and started my own team. FavoriteAgent.com helped me solve the “no-business” problem! Thanks guys!”

Jason Jarstfer
Radcliff, KY

Agent Joseph Ignat says…

“I actually came across Favorite Agent while doing floor duty reading Broker Agent News, and it had an article Matt Jones wrote for the magazine telling how he was able to do 100+ listings in his first calendar year. Whoa! That got my attention. I found out he used a lead capture gateway [now called Pipeline Virtual Office] and that he was continually studying and changing it to make it work better.

So I had to at least give it a try. I found out you didn’t just join a company you joined a family. At Favorite Agent, all the way from the President to Customer Service, they actually cared about my success. They really take the time to give an agent that’s stuck some coaching advice. This is so good because you get a chance to talk with someone who’s actually done it and is talking with many agents from around the world daily, so you get ideas that others are just not doing. With Favorite Agent I’ve been able to make it through the slowing real estate market because I have the one problem every agent wished they had: TOO MANY LEADS! (Help! I can’t keep up! ;-).

Joseph Ignat, P.A.
Tampa, FL

P.S. If you want some stats, I personally give Favorite Agent credit for 22 transactions in the year and a half I’ve been with them.”

Agent Kyle Wilson says…

“Before I was introduced to the FavoriteAgent.com technology I was a struggling agent closing, on average, one deal a month. I was driving some pay per click traffic to a standard, template real estate website and closing a few deals as a result. At the time this was the best marketing system I had found because I could at least generate leads somewhat consistently. Little did I know that I was paying way too much per lead and per deal because I didn’t understand how important it was too have a lead capture system in place. As a result I was spending a lot to make a little.

When I heard about the FavoriteAgent.com lead capture technology and integrated database [Pipeline Virtual Office] I was skeptical. They told me if I replaced my current website technology with their LCM Gateway, that I would increase my capture rate from 1 customer out of 100 visitors to 25-30 out of 100! After several phone calls with the helpful staff, I took the leap of faith and purchased the system. Within two days of directing Internet traffic to my FavoriteAgent.com LCM Gateway, my lead count exploded. I was spending the same ad dollars but now I was generating 25-30 times more leads than before. After cutting my ad dollars way back so I could keep up with the leads, I decided to start building a team of agents to multiply myself.

With our team, we closed 126 transactions in 2006 and 130 in 2007, which was a “slow market” according to the so-called experts. And we did it at a fraction of the advertising dollars we would have spent using traditional marketing methods. In fact, 7 of the 10 top producers in our company of 150 agents used this system to build their successful businesses. When I started, I knew nothing about Internet marketing, lead generation, lead capture, pay per click, Google AdWords or anything before I began to research it myself. FavoriteAgent.com made it so simple with their systems, training and customer service that anyone can learn the concepts and get their Internet business up and running within a few days. Needless to say, I highly recommend this system to anyone serious about increasing their transaction volume while decreasing their current marketing budget.”

Kyle Wilson
Boise, Idaho

Agent Terry Richards says…

“Pipeline Virtual Office is the number one reason I have had success in real estate. I was able to jump feet first into a competitive market and not only write deals for customers immediately but shorten the real estate learning curve that cripples most agents. FavoriteAgent.com is for any agent who is serious about success!”

Terry Richards
Boise, Idaho

Agent Matt Jones says…

“That’s right I’m an agent, but I’m also the President and CEO of FavoriteAgent.com. We have agents all over the world using Pipeline Virtual Office to make their own leads for as little as $3 each. Our typical agent spends only about $250 in advertising and makes between 80-90 leads.   Sign up today and I’ll pay your $1,000 activation fee for you.  How cool is that?  So go ahead and sign up today and start making your own leads tomorrow!”

Matt Jones
President/CEO
FavoriteAgent.com

Common Questions

How much does Pipeline Virtual Office cost? The complete Pipeline Virtual Office technology package costs only $550/month, with a 2-year contract. To learn more about our pricing, click here.

Why is Pipeline Virtual Office so cheap? Good question. For a slick website, a state-of-the-art lead capture, a contact manager, and personal business training, agents might expect to pay up to $1500/month.

Today an agent can get our full technology package for less than the price of your lunch each day! You’ll have to agree that any agent that’s truly serious about his or her career can make that size of an investment, especially considering you can save 50% by committing to a two-year contract.

Online marketing? What’s that?
It’s the wave of the future, but don’t worry, you don’t need to be an expert. The average online marketing campaign takes about 15 minutes to set up. It’s so easy your mom could do it. So why is it important? Because even armed with the best lead capture technology on the market, if nobody visits your website, you can’t capture them.

How much does advertising cost? The best part is online marketing is scalable to your budget. You can spend as much or as little as you want. And there are no lengthy contracts, so you can stop and start your campaign when you want. Our average agent spends only $250/month on advertising.

Become a “FavoriteAgent”

Let’s be honest: my approach to real estate — the FavoriteAgent.com approach — is way outside the traditional box.  So much so that it’s attracted the attention of CNN who identified our company as “changing the face of real estate in America”.  (Watch the video below.) But believe me, it needs changing.
Get the Flash Player to see this player.

The fact is that traditional real estate is adrift today.  Realogy Corporation, the largest and most traditional real estate company in America and parent company of Century 21, ERA, Coldwell Banker, and Sotheby’s International Realty, posted operating losses of over $2 billion for the 12 month period ending in March 2009!  In almost every market, large traditional companies are closing their doors forever.  Why?

Because real estate is not changing — real estate has already changed.  Sure, people are still buying and selling homes more than ever before, but the methodology for attracting customers and delivering real estate brokerage services to the public has changed.  The undeniable fact is that technology has changed our industry just like it has every other industry.

But, change is good!  Old-school real estate must give way to real estate the new way.  It’s the natural evolution of our industry.  And I believe our company has identified this new direction and we’re already training and empowering agents to succeed in this new age of real estate.

So if you find yourself identifying with my outlook on our industry and with real estate the new way — the FavoriteAgent.com way, and you’d like to explore a closer relationship, there are several ways you can take that next step:

License Our Virtual Office Technology

Join a Virtual Real Estate Office

Help Us Open a Virtual Real Estate Office

The Summit

The following is excerpted from a NewsGeni.us featured article, September 10, 2008.

Twice a year, Matt Jones — broker, coach, and author — opens his doors to a small group of agents for the FavoriteAgent.com National Training Summit, a free two-day crash course on his company’s “new way” of doing real estate. Anyone who has attended this seminar before can tell you that Matt Jones’ unique outlook on the business can radically transform your practice.
Get the Flash Player to see this player.

The Summit is for agents who are working harder, only to achieve fewer results, or agents who thought they knew the business, but are realizing that it has changed. Whether you are struggling to survive in the “Internet age” of real estate, or are simply looking for a fresh approach, The Summit is for you.

Unlike most real estate training, the seminar is provided for agents at no cost. Not everyone can afford to shell out hundreds of dollars, leave their businesses, and go to a high-priced conference so that “experts” can sell them their latest line of products. A conference doesn’t have to cost several thousand dollars for agents to take away something valuable.

The Summit will cover topics like strategic planning, virtual office technology, Internet marketing, and Matt’s unique listing strategy that he has taught to over 80,000 agents across the world. Here are some of the things agents have said about the training:

“Great Presentation! Informative, Entertaining, the CMA Section alone was worth sitting here all day.” - Linda Smith, Rose and Womble Real Estate

“Of all the course I have attended and books that I have read, this is by far the most sensible, different, and hands-on information that I have received. I’ve already mentioned it to several persons that I know, as it’s truly creative and gives information that no one else is using. It’s amazing!” - Janet Beddoe, Cape Coral, FL

“I am learning a lot from your presentation, and I have received ideas that are foreign to me. I do believe that this information will make a difference in my business. I have been considering leaving real estate, but I will stay another year with your new ideas to implement. Your presentation is a blessing.” - Cindy Merz, Medina, OH

So why are we telling you about this? We’re telling you because this year Matt has agreed to extend that invitation to our readers! Offering this two-day seminar free of charge is a mind-blowing value. Those who are able to get a seat are truly in for something special:

Everyone is invited.  However, attendance is limited so that the sessions can be more intimate, and the slots are filled on a first-come-first-served basis. Reserve your seat as soon as possible! We are currently planning the following Summit events.

Hickory, NC (Coming in Spring 2010)

Take a moment to fill out this quick, 1-minute registration. Our event staff will contact you to confirm your seat and to send you some advance information. Thanks.

Matt Jones
President/CEO
FavoriteAgent.com

Register Now!