If I had to start from scratch in a new market with no experience, I would start with only a few basic technologies, and this week I’ll discuss those essential technologies that 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 typical direct mail marketing campaign every month.  I have virtually every piece I just suggested and including the computer I spend less than $400 per month for all of it!  Let’s take a look at it piece by piece.

Customer Relationship Manager or CRM. There are several contact 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.  By the way, our company developed Pipeline because we had used all of the others and didn’t like the functionality or the price.  Feel free to check out Pipeline.  It really is free with no strings attached.  Running your business without a contact management application to keep up with all your customers will keep you from ever growing beyond a minimal level of production.

Interactive Voice Response or IVR System. This is a telephony lead capture solution (you may have seen it called a “call capture hotline”) that you should have attached to anything where a customer might call in.  I have it on pages of my website, my yard signs, and anywhere a customer might find me and want to call.  The way it works is when a customer calls, regardless of whether they have caller ID block, their phone number is captured, while the customer is routed to a pre-recorded message that might have information about a house, or an advertisement to your website.

Generally speaking, an IVR platform is easy to set up and implement and costs based on usage.  I use a company called Proquest Technologies and have used them since 2002.  Their system can be licensed for about $39.95 per month plus usage air time.  The average customer spends $60 per month.  This piece is a must have because the ability to capture customers is the most important thing in today’s real estate climate.

Internet Lead Capture Gateway or LCM. In the interest of full disclosure, this is the piece of the technology puzzle that our company sells.  This is the Internet equivalent of an IVR system.  It is not a website, but rather is designed to work in tandem with a website.  Here’s why: Real estate websites typically capture about 1% of the traffic that goes to the website.  If 100 visitors go to the site, they capture 1 of them and that visitor becomes a “lead”.

The reason websites do so poorly at lead capture is that they are designed to give out information and not to capture visitors.  We invented and perfected a technology that was designed to do only one thing — to efficiently capture visitors to our website.  After four and a half years we have perfected the science of lead capture and we now are capturing 30-35% of all website visitors.

The reason this is important is that it brings the customer acquisition cost down to a minimum.  Agents using this technology, typically make their own leads for about $3 each!  With lots of low cost leads you have the ability to do unlimited business. Check out our LCM solution.

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 along with the site.

If I were you, I would use a free website like Point2Agent (free for the first 6 months) or the Agent SimpleSite (free forever) that we give away for free to anyone who licenses our LCM 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 article 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, a 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 at Sam’s Club and it would have cost nearly $3,000 this time last year.

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.

My Halloo system is web-based, totally programable, does call routing, voice mail, emailing of voice mail, logs calls, routes calls to my team in a rotary hunt group or symultaneously 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 Palm 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’s 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 $150 with a 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.

Now let’s total up the monthly bills on the technologies I just recommended:

1. Pipeline Basic CRM — FREE!
2. Proquest IVR — $60
3. Pipeline Pro LCM — $120
4. Agent SimpleSite Website — FREE!
5. Laptop Computer — $50
6. Halloo Auto Attendant — $10
7. Faxaway Fax — FREE!
8. Blackberry Handheld Phone — $80

Total is a whopping $320 per month in technology costs!  That’s less than a car payment, or in other words, you can have a state-of-the-art Virtual Office for about $10 per day!  What a cool time to live in!  What’s funny is that most of you reading this article are already spending this much money every month so for you it is simply a matter of rearranging and reallocating and not finding new money in the budget.

Well, that’s it for this week.  In my next segment, I will 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 article.