For years agents have learned and perfected communication skills to discover the needs and wants of their clients and customers. This information can include personal profiles about the family, the interests of the family members and many times their preferences for products and services in other areas of life besides the perfect home.

Agents typically were not equipped with the tools or propensity to keep this valuable information organized in an easily trackable format. Until agent productivity software was developed, most of us missed the opportunity to keep this information in a useful, and easy to retrieve system.

Electronic contact management and database tools offer an easy way to update and review customer contacts, replacing the old “rolodex” system. However, many business professionals still do not understand the power of categorizing their sphere, contacts, past clients, customers and prospects in a way that can offer both present and future revenue.

Building and maintaining a database is a guaranteed way to start looking at generating income in a new way. Agents have traditionally attempted to “keep contact” with past clients after a sale for both referrals and future business, yet few have mastered the art of using the new tools to harness the expanded value of that contact in ways that go beyond the initial services of buying or selling real estate.

New business opportunities develop from mergers, acquisitions and cross marketing events that would make the quantification of that database a new frontier of revenue for the agent of today.

Products like TopProducerİ and Online Agentİ designed for the real estate business integrate the contacts with both communication and organizational options to keep a database nurtured. However, not a large enough percentage of agents understand the power of quantifying their client/customer base beyond future business, and even fewer actually use these products to help systematize and organize their day-to-day business.

The new client relationship management vision is to define more personal levels of customer contact to create a more value added relationship thus really building a client for life. This new spectrum of value added services and products are intended to expand beyond real estate into the day-to-day consumer needs.

The power of electronic communication makes contact simple, easy and economical. As the customer of today wants information 24x7, having an email database available offers much more flexibility for client/customer and prospecting. Agents today can easily begin building this valuable resource in a number of ways:

1. Use the phone to call past clients, customers and prospects for their email addresses. Offer them the opportunity to enjoy discount coupons, free reports and updates from you on a regular basis. Ask permission and say thank you.

2. Check out the value of using online electronic matching systems, like SOAR e-MLSİ, or Fusionİ products to inform buyers of new properties as they become available on MLS. Sellers can be updated on a frequent basis to keep abreast of property values in their neighborhood. Using these products gives the agent the opportunity to make a scheduled phone call to see if their needs to be changes in the search criteria, or if any of the properties sent through email are of interest.

3. Incorporate an automatic sign up for your newsletter button on your website for prospects to register for your electronic newsletter. This simple software tools subscribes visitors automatically for your reports and information, thus building your database without direct efforts.

4. Use AutoResponders to disseminate reports available from your website. Drive prospects to the site from printed materials like classified ads, brochures, flyers, signs, and direct mail. It becomes an information exchange…free reports for a free download.

If you are not a fan of agent productivity software products currently available, there are other options for contact database management, and some of them are nearly free. Tools like Outlook, or Outlook Express have great address book and contact programs to “capture” email addresses via email communication. Other popular products are ACT! and Goldmine to begin organizing your e-database.

The sooner you begin asking, organizing and quantifying your clients and customers both electronically and in hard copy, the sooner you can begin discovering new ways to service, communicate and offer value added services to really create “clients for life”

Published: January 2, 2002

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