There is so much great technology being utilized nowadays to generate solid new business for real estate agents. What amazes me, though, is that most all of this technology is being put into play on the residential side of the business with very little of it making its way into the commercial side of the business.

In a recent discussion I had with a nationally known commercial real estate technology expert, we both agreed that the commercial real estate brokerage business is about five to seven years behind the residential side of the business in employing new technology at the agent level. As a result of this, commercial agents are working so much harder than they need to be.

On the residential side of the business agents are utilizing their own agent Web sites to generate millions of dollars of additional sales each and every year for themselves. Some of the top level residential agents even generate tens of millions of dollars in additional sales each year through their own personal Web sites.

On the commercial side of the business it is almost nonexistent to find an agent who has his or her own personal Web site. At most, and still not very often, an agent might have their own individual Web page somewhere inside of the Web site of the company that they work for.

Residential agents utilize e-mail autoresponders to follow-up with their clients and prospects. When a prospect visits an agent's Web site and enters their name and e-mail information, a series of custom messages are then sent over time to the prospect mail-merged with a salutation to the prospect personally by name. This then builds credibility and a relationship with each prospect to help ensure that the prospect selects the agent as the real estate expert they will do business with. Other autoresponder campaigns are also utilized by residential agents to follow-up with potential buyers, sellers, past clients, and, in some cases, almost anyone who lives in the territory that they serve. This really puts an agent's prospecting and follow-up communications on auto pilot.

On the commercial side of the business, I do not know of any one agent who utilizes autoresponders in their real estate brokerage business.

Continuing on, a good number of residential agents send e-mail newsletters to their clients and prospects regularly. They recognize both the ease and incredible cost savings in doing this when compared to utilizing traditional mail. They also recognize that the agent who dominates their territory first with a good e-mail newsletter will be shutting-out their competitors as other agents who try to follow this approach will have much greater difficulty gathering the e-mail addresses of the people in their territory. No one wants to receive two, three, or four e-mail newsletters discussing what's happening with real estate in their area.

The only commercial agents I know of who send out regular e-mail newsletters to their territory are the ones I've coached and personally taught how to do this.

Even when it comes to a technology as simple as mailing to one's prospects on a regular basis, residential agents traditionally do this day-in and day-out. Commercial agents, on the other hand, rarely mail to their prospects at all. Any commercial agent who implements a regular mailing campaign, similar to what they receive in the mail at home from residential agents, will gain an unbelievable increase in business in their territory in a very short period of time. There is virtually no competition in this arena for the commercial agent who decides to send out quality mailers to his or her territory once or twice a month. You simply can't prospect thousands of people every single month by phone or in person, but you certainly can reach them effectively and build your image as an agent with them every month through the mail.

And finally, when it comes to education and training, both residential real estate companies and their agents have been utilizing telephone seminars for many years. The ability to have people calling in from all over the world, listening to one or more real estate experts talk about what it is that has them be so successful, is a phenomenal training opportunity. With today's vanishing training budgets it is also tremendously cost effective, too. Although I'm currently talking with one major commercial real estate company and one national network about hosting a series of telephone seminars for all of their agents, I know of no commercial real estate company that has ever utilized this technology to date for their own training.

With all of this great technology available it's time for both the commercial brokerage companies and their agents to embrace the technology and implement it into their own real estate businesses. The ones who do so now will easily find themselves leaving their competitors way behind them.

Published: March 9, 2004

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Jim Gillespie, Ph.D., is America's Premier Real Estate Coach℠. He has over 20 years of experience in real estate sales and is a past president of three different real estate companies. His FREE real estate E-newsletter with tips and creative ideas to help agents make more money is now read by over 35,000 agents nationwide. You can subscribe to his FREE E-newsletter by visiting RealEstateSalesCoach.com or contact him at Jim@RealEstateSalesCoach.com.