​Lead prospecting is one of the most (if not the most) important profit generating activities that every real estate professional should do. It involves a significant amount of time allotment, effort, planning and money; however, it is the most effective way to exponentially scale your business. And with the internet emerging as one of the top places where people do their home search, the challenge faced by many real estate leads prospectors is to sift through a vast sea of leads—many of which are not exactly qualified ones.

To that end, getting a customer relationship management (CRM) platform is the most effective way to gather and manage your leads. CRMs have gone a long way from merely being a repository of contacts and documents, a good number of them have an array of lead qualifying features that empower real estate professionals to determine the quality of the leads they are touch-basing with and even the method of approaching the conversation even before making that call. 

Lead selection or qualification is a very important dimension that real estate leads prospectors should consider to make their prospecting efforts more worthwhile. Incidentally, you can probably relate this to this month’s upcoming basketball frenzy, the NCAA’s March Madness—where out of the hundreds of teams that play through their respective conferences, save for the conference winners, only 36 of the “most qualified” teams have the right to get a bid to compete for the national title. Going back to real estate, having an effective lead quality solution greatly increases the chances of winning a conversion.

Commissions Inc. (or CINC) is one of the most effective and user-friendly lead management solutions available to real estate professionals. On top of the usual database functions, CINC has several features that allow real estate leads prospectors to peer into a lead’s search behavior and make a quick, intelligent judgment of the prospect’s quality. 

Here are 4 great features that can help you engage the right kind of leads. 
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This is one of the most basic and readily available information that CINC presents to a real estate leads prospector. The columns for Registration and Last Login show you when the lead registered or logged in to your website. As real estate professionals, we all know that time is of the essence, and the best window to get in touch with these leads is within 2-3 minutes upon registering to your site. CINC does not only show this but also sends a real-time alert to the agent assigned to the lead.
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The number of times a lead views a property is also a good indicator of interest. The property with the most number of views tells a leads prospector that the person is either really interested in that particular property or that the lead is interested in the criteria that fits that property.
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This is a very clever feature of CINC where the software’s algorithms determine the likelihood of interest that a lead has on a property based on the different kinds of search criteria inputted by the prospect. The higher the score, the higher the likelihood of interest. Having this kind of data is a very powerful tool for real estate leads prospectors to have since it already filters out leads that have a low level of interest on a particular property. This is especially useful when prospecting seller leads.

For those of you who are not familiar with DISC profiling, D-I-S-C pertain to the personality type of the lead. This allows a real estate leads prospector to control the conversation in a manner that the lead will be most responsive to. For instance, D-personalities are very direct; so, if you are talking to one, you need to go straight to the point and not beat around the bush. We will talk about DISC personalities on a different article.

​Commissions Inc. is a very powerful CRM, and giving enough time to fully utilize its features will prove to be advantageous in your leads prospecting efforts. In real estate, time is money, and these intuitive lead qualifying functions will help you increase your productivity and business.
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If you need help with Commissions Inc., our Real Estate Leads Prospector team will be glad to show you how we can help fully utilize its features for your business. For more information on real estate lead prospecting and management, visit http://www.RealEstateLeadsProspector.com or call 407-401-9225.

Information security threats have risen throughout the years, and the 2016 saw two very controversial ones: the hacking of over a billion Yahoo! accounts and, more recently, the supposed Russian hacking of the US presidential elections (let me repeat that… “supposed”). People today have never been as closely connected to each other throughout human history thanks to the internet and the derivatives thereof—social media and mobile technology being the biggest. And with these things being closely integrated into our daily lives, there is a great need to protect ourselves from these threats.  Especially in the business of home buying and selling, where most of the transactions with your real estate leads and clients are done online, securing your business from internet security breaches is paramount.

Imagine if one of your real estate leads’ or clients’ personal information get stolen and it was traced back to you. Worse, what if someone uses this information to stalk your clients and inflict physical harm? Bad for business. Bad for your conscience. Bad for you.

Here are 5 easy ways to secure your business from online threats.

Having secure passwords are by far THE most basic means of online protection. However, as elementary as it may seem, a lot of times we get too lazy to memorize passwords and end up using just one for all our online accounts. This practice is very dangerous. If a hacker figures out your password, it leaves all your online accounts vulnerable to intrusion. Make sure to have unique passwords especially for the accounts you use to store the information of your real estate leads and clients. Also, do not forget to change your passwords from time to time.

Much like how the Achaeans in Greek Mythology used the Trojan Horse to be willfully taken in by the citizens of Troy only to find out that inside it was a band of warriors led by Odysseus who stormed out and opened the gates of the city leading to its eventual demise, malware works in a similar fashion. These pieces of code invade your computer by hiding in other pieces of software that you might unknowingly allow into your system. They may come in through email attachments, downloads, unsecure websites, and other forms that are meant to deceive (or even entice) you to accept. Once in, these malwares transmit information from your computer to whoever created and sent them giving these hackers full access to your information. With that, it is important for any real estate professional to invest on malware protection and keep it constantly updated to ensure the information security not only of their business but also of their real estate clients.

Having a computer dedicated to your real estate business is a must. As much as possible, do not mix your personal accounts with business. Not only will this keep you (and your staff) more productive, but it also lessens the incidence of unwanted malware entering your business systems. As much as possible, limit administrative access only to key people in your office to avoid others installing or downloading apps that might be laced with malware.

Looking back to the hacking incident that Yahoo! suffered from, this only proves how unsafe it is to use emails in daily communication, especially in business. Investing on a Customer Relationship Management platform (e.g. Top Producer, Market Leader, Commissions Inc, Podio, etc.) to manage your transactions not only makes it more efficient for you to keep better track of your business but it also adds an extra layer of security especially when communicating with your real estate prospects and clients. A CRM also serves as a hub for all your team members to communicate with each other without using external emails and makes sharing business related information easier and more secure.

If you do not have the budget for all these (yet), the Google ecosystem is the best alternative for your real estate business. Google apps is not only cost effective but is also constantly updated with latest security patches. The apps have great collaborative functionality, have a wide array of integrations, and is relatively running on a more secure environment compared to its counterparts.

Do remember, however, that there is no such thing as 100% foolproof protection against hacking. As internet security technology progresses, so do the methods used by hackers. So, it is up to us to be vigilant against these threats to protect our businesses and our clients.

Do you have a system like Top Producer or Commissions Inc but feel overwhelmed integrating it to your business? We’ll be glad to help implement these for you. To know more, visit us at www.RealEstateLeadsProspector.com or call us at 407-401-9225.

The success of any business, especially in real estate, lies greatly on knowing your numbers. Are you hitting your monthly sales goals? Are your agents converting enough leads? If not, how much more real estate leads prospecting does your team need to do to reach the goals that you set? These are very important numbers that constantly need to be tracked and reported on a timely manner. ​​​

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​But reports aren’t always friendly to the eyes. Often, when you receive a spreadsheet riddled with all sorts of numbers, it would take a considerable amount of time to make sense of these values, let alone see the trends hidden behind the sea of data that will ultimately influence your next business decision. Any successful real estate business, especially sizeable teams, greatly depends on reports for keeping up to speed with the following: 

• Key performance indicators
• Monthly to annual performance check and balance
• Sales tally
• Lead conversion rates
• Marketing metrics

These numbers greatly impact the direction your business will take, thus understanding and making sense of them as quickly and easily as possible is paramount. This is where the power of visual presentations come into play. So, is there any form of technology available for real estate professionals? Good news—yes! 

Introducing Klipfolio.

Klipfolio is a dynamic online presentation tool suitable to all types of businesses; whether small or large enterprises; from e-commerce to real estate. This tool simplifies all aspects of reporting and, more importantly, makes understanding your data easier by leaps and bounds. Klipfolio minimizes error-prone manual data inputs and reduces the long hours needed in creating reports. Simplifying the reporting process is of great importance, especially when the success of your business relies on knowing how efficiently you convert your real estate leads. 

Here are 5 reasons why real estate professionals will benefit from Klipfolio.

1. It’s efficient - connecting other applications and adding a graph in REAL-TIME has significantly turned visual reporting to the next level!
2. Cloud based application - YES! it works online. Klipfolio is a cloud app to build powerful real-time online business dashboards.
3. Real-Time dashboard updates - You can open and see your reports, graph and others in real-time while on-the-go via PC or smartphone.
4. Mobile friendly - Yes, you read it right! You can access your reports using your smartphone too! Awesome, right!?
5. Light-weight file formats - You can send a shareable link or download your report into an image or pdf to send to clients. No more zipping and unzipping large files and crossing your fingers while hoping your file will successfully be sent from the onset.   

At this point you might wonder why we are so fond of Klipfolio and can’t stop bragging about it. Well to start, we love graphs, let alone simplified reports. Furthermore, in sending reports to clients, we prefer a report that they will understand better—nobody wants to see grids with numbers written everywhere which no one will understand.


Imagine the confusion it would take for others to understand this report.

​Klipfolio, as an automated online business dashboard app, will get to the summary of what you want to show your clients with the convenience of real-time data updates. Just imagine seeing your team’s lead conversion rates real-time!

​Klipfolio is an online business platform which can link to your other applications, CRM, social pages, analytics, and others. The sample above is linked primarily to Google Drive and other sources which they call “Service Connectors” are already available in this tool, ready to link to whichever application you use for real estate. You can connect them to this tool easy peasy! ​​​

​How can we use this tool for real estate leads prospecting? Simple, you use data gathering your ranking, your sales projections, pending transactions, your marketing scheme and other activities to showcase to your clients in one summarized presentation. You can link your reports to Klipfolio and send the image or PDF link to your client anytime, anywhere, real-time, and hassle free! 

You can tap into Klipfolio to use as a CRM for purposes such as lead conversion, market analysis and monthly business reviews! Just link the correct data to your preferred “dashboard” and you won’t have to open multiple apps to check how your business is going. Klipfolio dashboard gives your sales team access to the most valued metrics and recent data that they need.
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​The possibilities of this reporting tool are endless. You are only limited to what you want to accomplish and, the more you dig deeper into this tool, the better you will enhance your report to your liking. Investing a little time to learn the tool can help your business thrive by leaps and bounds.

Don’t have the time? That is where we come in. Our team has great experience with Klipfolio and we can help you integrate it onto your business. We are here to do all the technical legwork needed to operate the tool and generate all the reports that you need. 


Here are several samples we have created for our clients

Our group in Real Estate Leads Prospector have experts who can simplify reports for you via Klipfolio. We have studied how this tool works and, more often than not, the results and learnings we find are beneficial to both the team and our clients. After all, we do not just help our clients in leads prospecting, we also assist in simplifying tasks for them so they can do what they are intended to do.  Need help with Klipfolio? Visit www.RealEstateLeadsProspector.com or call   407-401-9225. 
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